Jekuthiel Ben-jehudah Cohen

Jekuthiel Ben-Jehudah Cohen (also called SALMAN NAKDON, i.e. the Punctuator, and by contraction IEHABI), a distinguished Masorite and editor of the Hebrew Scriptures, flourished in Prague in the latter half of the 13th century. He edited a very correct text of the Pentateuch (published for the first time by Heidenheim in his edition of the Pentateuch called עינים מאיר [Rödelheim, 1818-21]) and the book of Esther (also published by Heidenheim in his סדר ימי הפורים [Rödelheim, 1825]), with the vowels and accents, for the preparation of which he consulted six old Spanish codices, which he denominates ת8א, א8ק, א8ח, אמ8ס,א8ז, א8ט, and which Heidenheim explains to mean any אחד, תיקון, קדמון, השוב, מסוריות, תקן, טוב, the prefix א denoting Spain (comp. עין הקורא on Numbers 34:28). The results of his critical labors he further embodied in a work entitled עין קירא (The Eye of the Reader), and makes frequent quotations from the writings of many distinguished Jewish commentators of his and the preceding age. An appendix to the work contains a grammatical treatise entitled כללי הנקוד דרכי הנקוד (The Laws of the Vowel Points). Comp. Zunz, Zur

Geschichte und Literatur (Berl. 1845), p. 115; Fürst, Bibliotheca Judaica, 2, 53; Geiger, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift f. Jüdische Theologie, 5, 418- 420; Steinschneider, Catalogus Libr. Heb. in Bibliotheca Bodleiana, col. 1381.