The Great Parchment: Flavius Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version (review)

In the summer of 1486, the apostate Jew Flavius Mithridates began teaching Hebrew to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and also began translating a large corpus of Hebrew kabbalistic books for him. The translations, some of which were later available to Christian Hebraists such as Egidio da Viterbo, are estimated to have amounted to 5,500 pages, about 3,000 of which have been recovered. Chaim Wirszubski's pioneering studies of the translations and their Hebrew antecedents deal with only about half of what is preserved.

This volume inaugurates an ambitious international project to publish the complete library of Mithridates' kabbalistic translations for Pico. It presents his Latin translation of a Hebrew manuscript, ha-Yeri'ah ha-Gedolah, "the Great Parchment," that served as a commentary on a diagram of the sefirot similar to one that is included here. Giulio Busi introduces Mithridates' Latin text, explains its importance, and summarizes its divisions. The "Great Parchment" probably was written in Italy in the early fourteenth century, by a member of the circle of Rabbi Menahem Finzi of Recanati. It is "a forgotten masterpiece of kabbalistic literature," "one of the most obscure texts of the whole kabbalah," that "even a very skilled mystic would perceive . . . as a labyrinth" (24, 28–29). Mithridates remarks, "Truly, it is a divine book, even if hardly comprehensible."

The composition is divided into seventeen "tales," which are not narratives, but a series of midrashic juxtapositions of biblical verses interpreted to indicate the character, relations, and operations of the ten sefirotic emanations of divinity. Mithridates' translation differs from all the Hebrew manuscripts by arranging the tales in descending order, from the highest sefira, Keter, to Malkhut.

Saverio Campanini introduces and provides a critical edition of Mithridates' Latin from the Vatican Library manuscript ebr. 190 (fols. 150v–165r). In a historical note, he cites Mithridates' tart marginal comments about Popes Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, about Pico's Margherita and, most significantly, about Giovanni Mercurio da Coreggio. Busi introduces and edits a Hebrew reconstruction of Mithridates' source from four early manuscript testimonies and also provides an English version of the Latin. A list of manuscripts and indices of names and references to the ten sefirot complete the book.

Before the time of Mithridates, Jews did not teach Kabbalah publicly; a single teacher would tutor a single qualified student. This Latin translation, "written by a hasty and often inaccurate hand, which seems to be Flavius Mithridates'own writing" (52), was the means for one Christian, Mithridates, to teach another, Pico, who could not yet read Hebrew. The teacher would have needed to explain the meaning of words, the unfamiliar method of exposition, and the implicit relations between Hebrew words that are different from Latin. WhateverMithridates taught Pico, who added at least one marginal note to the translation, impelled him to study Hebrew diligently, even as he prepared his 900 theses for disputation in Rome.

The presentation, translations, and interpretations of the three versions are accurate and instructive. Admirable work inevitably stimulates, beyond gratitude, suggestions for making it perfect. In my opinion, complete separation of the three versions in different sections of this book hinders comparison among them. Future volumes in this series will also require editions of Latin and Hebrew, as well as a modern translation, most usefully to English. The Latin and Hebrew texts can be kept apart, because the different alphabets and, in this work, the different order of the texts would make juxtaposing them unnecessarily complicated. The English and Latin, however, could helpfully be arranged on facing pages. This English translation marks and identifies some biblical quotations (in the King James version) and also explains some of the content. If it faced the Latin and included the full annotation given the Hebrew, it would convey the fullest sense of both...