As such, it is of great importance for its preservation of the pristine text. It has almost no later additions and, along with other accurate manuscripts, can thus serve as an invaluable comparison for scholars attempting to identify just what is Rashi’s original text, and what are the additions of later manuscript and printed versions. The manuscript was sold at £490,000 to a private buyer.
Rashi’s commentaries – the pristine version?
Written in northern France around 1200, apparently by a scribe called Jacob, this vellum manuscript of Solomon ben Isaac Rashi’s Commentary on the Prophets (II Samuel 22:1 to Zechariah 6:13) is incomplete, but Rashi (1040-1105) was responsible for the most important and influential Hebrew biblical commentary of the Middle Ages and this is one of the two or three oldest extant manuscripts of Rashi’s commentaries on the Prophets.
