Nathan ben Jehiel

His Travels.

Italian lexicographer; born in Rome not later than 1035; died in 1106. He belonged to one of the most notable Roman families of Jewish scholars. Owing to an error propagated by Azulai, he has been regarded as a scion of the house of De Pomis. Now, however, it is regarded as almost a certainty that he belonged to the 'Anaw (Degli Mansi) family. Nathan's father, R. Jehiel b. Abraham, aside from being an acknowledged authority on the ritual law, was, like the majority of the contemporary Italian rabbis, a liturgic poet. The details of Nathan's sad life must be excerpted and pieced together from several autobiographic verses appended to the first edition of his lexicon. It appears that he had begun life not as a student, but as a pedler of linen wares, a distasteful occupation. The death of his employer caused him to abandon trade for the Torah. He returned home, where his father began to bestow upon him the treasures of learning, the accumulation of which was continued under foreign masters. First, Nathan went to Sicily, whither Maẓliaḥ ibn al-Baẓaḳ had just returned from a course of study under Hai, the last of the Pumbedita geonim. It was there that Nathan garnered that Babylonian learning which has led some to the erroneous belief that he had himself pilgrimed to Pumbedita. Then Narbonne enticed him, where he sat under the prominent exegete and haggadist R. Moses ha-Darshan. On his way home he probably lingered for a while at the several academies flourishing in Italy, notably at Pavia, where a certain R. Moses was head master, and at Bari, where R. Moses Kalfo taught. He arrived home, however, from his scholarly travels some time before the death of his father, which occurred about the year 1070, and which gave him the opportunity of illustrating the simplicity of funeral rites which he had been advocating. The presidency of the rabbinic college was thereupon entrusted by the Roman community to Jehiel's three learned sons: Daniel, Nathan, and Abraham—"the geonim of the house of R. Jehiel," as they were styled ("Shibbole ha-Leḳeṭ," 2:5). Daniel, the eldest, seems to have composed a commentary on the mishnaic section Zera'im, from which the "'Aruk" quotes frequently, and to have stood in friendly relations with Christian scholars. The three brothers rapidly acquired general recognition as authorities on the Law; and numerous inquiries were addressed to them. Their most frequent correspondent was R. Solomon b. Isaac (Yiẓḥaḳi), an Italian scholar who is not to be identified with Rashi.

The "'Aruk."

Nathan's private life was extremely sad. All his children died very young; and the bereaved father sought solace in philanthropy and scholarly application. In the year 1085 he built a communal bathhouse conforming to the ritual law; and about seventeen years later, Sept., 1101, he and his brothers erected a beautiful synagogue. In February of the latter year had been completed the noble structure of his studiousness—the "'Aruk."

The sources of this work are numerous. Aside from the "'Aruk" of Ẓemaḥ b. Palṭoi, which he utilized (it should be stated, however, that Rapoport and Geiger deny this), he used a very large number of additional works. Above all, he placed under contribution the information received, in both oral and written form, from R. Maẓliaḥ and R. Moses ha-Darshan, the former of whom, in particular, through his studies under Hai, had made himself the repository of Eastern learning. The entire extent of Nathan's indebtedness to his authorities can not be estimated, for the reason that of the hundreds of books cited by him many have not been preserved. But none will deny his obligation to R. Gershom of Mayence, whom he repeatedly quotes, though, as Kohut rightly maintains against Rapoport, he can not have been his personal disciple. Similarly he used the writings of R. Hananeel b. Ḥushiel and R. Nissim b. Jacob, both living at Kairwan. So frequent, in fact, were the references to R. Hananeel in the lexicon that R. Jacob Tam, for example, regarded the work as based entirely on the commentaries of that author ("Sefer ha-Yashar," p. 525), while the author of the "Or Zarua'," as a matter of course, referred to him almost all of the lexicon's anonymous statements. Hai Gaon, again, figures very frequently in its pages, sometimes simply designated as "the Gaon," while it has particularly assimilated all philologic material that is contained in his commentary on the mishnaic order Ṭohorot.

Method and Scope.

Seeing that the structure of the "'Aruk" consists, as it were, of so many bricks, it is hard to decide whether the builder really possessed all the linguistic learning stored up in it. None can gainsay the author's philologic spirit of inquiry—quite remarkable for his day, which antedated the science of linguistics; his frequent collation of "variæ lectiones" is notable, while his fine literary sense often saved him from crude etymological errancies. But, withal, the multitude of languages marshaled in the "'Aruk" is prodigious even for a period of poly-glot proclivities. The non-Jewish Aramaic dialects are encountered side by side with Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, and even Slavonic, while Italian seems as familiar to the author as the various rabbinic forms of style.