Frankfurter Moses Ben-simeon

Frankfurter Moses Ben-Simeon, a distinguisned printer and Hebraist lived at Amsterdam between 1700 and 1762. His reputation as a scholar chiefly rests on the "Great Rabbinic Biblet (called משֶׁה קהַלִּת, the Congregation of Moses, Amsterd. 1724- 1727, 4 volumes, fol.), which he edited, and to which he gave the greatest part of his life and fortune. This work constituted in itself a library of Biblical literature and exegesis, and is indispensable to every critical expositor of the O.T. Besides giving the text in Hebrew and Chaldee by Onkelos, it contains the Massora, the commentaries by Rashi, Aben-Ezra, Kimchi, Levi b. Gershon, Jacob b. Asher, Samuel b. Laniado, Ibn Jachjo, Duran, Saadia, Chaskuni, Sephorno, a number of other rabbis, and by the editor, Frankfurter. Not less noteworthy are his Index Rerum, the different Introductions written either by himself or by distinguished rabbis; his Index to all the chapters and sections of the O.T., giving the commencement of the verses; a treatise on the design of the law by Obadiah Sephorno; the Great Massora; the various readings of the Eastern and Western Codd.; a treatise upon the Accents; and last, but not least, the differences in text between Ben-Naphthali and Ben-Asher, to the latter of whom so great prominence is given by Mamonides, who, in his treatise upon the sacred Scriptures, regards Ben-Asher's revision as the most correct, and adopts it himself as a model. It is frone this revision of the text that the Hebrew Bibles of the present days are printed. Frankfurter wrote also glosses on the different portions of the Bible, entitled מנחה קטנה (a small offering); מנחה אדולה, (the great offering); מנחה הערב (the evening offering). — Kitto, Cyclopadia of Bib. Lit. 2:37: Etheridge, Introd. to Heb. Liter. 101; Parst, Biblioth. Jut. 1:295. SEE RABBINICAL BIBLES. (J.H.W).