“You have sinned because you left the synagogue (during the service). Besides, you sent for the keys in order to give the pawns to (the Christian women) who would then go to their house of frivolity [SHB: prayer], [i.e., church]. Look how you have replaced the holy (synagogue) with an abomination” [SHB: impure, i.e., church]!
No effort was made to connect these paragraphs. They function as separate texts that are related thematically to women and/or prayer, like three research notes that are put into the same file for future reference.
Linguistic Independence of Single Paragraphs
Although it is sometimes assumed that the language of SHB tends to be smoother and reworked compared to the language of parallel passages in SHP, linguistic evidence actually supports the independence of individual paragraphs, wherever they may be found, as being more or less awkward or reworked. Moreover, the linguistic independence of individual paragraphs applies to all parallels in the twelve editions of Sefer Hasidim, not just to SHP compared to SHB. A single paragraph in any edition can have an earlier linguistic form than any of the other parallels of that passage found anywhere else. This is another reason why all parallel passages need to be compared.
Simha Kogut demonstrated this in his detailed comparative study of the language of SHP and SHB (actually SHM 2).21 His linguistic analysis of a sample of parallel passages in both printed editions showed that a single passage found in either one could be linguistically earlier than the parallel passage in the other. The textual quality of individual parallels varies, showing omissions by scribes based on similar phrase endings (homoioteleuta) in both directions, and there are variant readings due to scribal errors when any two or more text parallels are compared.22
Kogut’s findings support the approach taken here that Sefer Hasidim was composed in single or small groups of paragraph units that the author at first and then others combined differently in various short and long editions. Because paragraphs were combined more than once, we see variance in the sequencing of parallel passages in the different editions.
It is also sometimes claimed that Parma is closer to Mittelhochdeutsch and is therefore earlier than SHB. But it is not the case that the convoluted Hebrew found in many Sefer Hasidim passages, in SHB as well as SHP and in other manuscripts, derive from contemporary medieval German syntax. There were no written prose models of medieval German available even to hear, only poetry, and everyday spoken medieval German or proto-Yiddish that Jews could hear and speak would not be convoluted but relatively clear and linear. The complicated Hebrew syntax of Sefer Hasidim is due to Judah’s attempt to create a new form of narrative Hebrew from earlier Hebrew models, not from contemporary German patterns. Any parallel paragraph in any edition of Sefer Hasidim can be more or less awkward than its parallel elsewhere.23
Single Paragraphs of Sefer Hasidim Circulate in Other Texts
Examples of Scholem’s and Dan’s impression that most of Sefer Hasidim is made up of relatively disjunctive passages are short quotations from Sefer Hasidim found in Judah’s other writings and in the works by other authors. In such cases, single paragraphs stand out as independently produced texts. For example, Dan cited Sefer Hasidim passages found in different texts as in Oxford Opp. 540 (Neubauer 1567) and Oxford Opp. 111 (Neubauer 1566). They are traditions that were not only composed but also transmitted singly. A story in Sefer Hasidim also appears in the thirteenth-century Hebrew story cycle of ninety-nine stories, and there are other such brief Sefer Hasidim parallels in other Hebrew compositions.24
From these single passages, Dan inferred that when they are not found in our Sefer Hasidim (ha-sefer she-be-yadeinu), meaning mainly in Parma, they derive from the lost “original sefer hasidim” (sefer hasidim ha-meqori).25 But such paragraph texts are not traces of “the original Sefer Hasidim” because there is no evidence that one original Sefer Hasidim ever existed, and the paradigm that assumes Judah himself wrote only one edition of his short passages needs to be set aside. The paradigm I am proposing instead is of an inverted pyramid. It assumes that Judah first wrote thousands of individual paragraph traditions. He combined these into some of the dozen or so editions preserved in over twenty manuscripts. Some editions are made up of topical notebooks, but others contain short passages with no obvious similarities. The origins of how Sefer Hasidim came into existence should be sought not in the long edited texts but in the short paragraph units that circulated and that the author, and then others, combined into the dozen or so parallel editions of Sefer Hasidim that survived. The rest of this chapter illustrates how individual paragraphs circulated throughout the corpus of Sefer Hasidim manuscripts and in the first edition.
Single Paragraph Parallels in Short Manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim
One way to see how single paragraphs circulated as Sefer Hasidim is to consider the shorter manuscripts and compare how parallel single paragraphs vary within blocks of text parallels from manuscript to manuscript. This section of the chapter is not a description of the different manuscripts of Sefer Hasidim. That is found in the Catalog. Rather, I want to illustrate here how individual paragraphs differ when we compare blocks of parallel texts in different manuscripts. Although the analysis that follows requires paying close attention to many details, this is the best way to demonstrate how paragraphlength texts circulated throughout the corpus of Sefer Hasidim parallel editions.
Of the dozen editions of Sefer Hasidim (see below), six are found in only one manuscript each. They are: Frankfurt Oct. 94; Zurich Heidenheim 51; Oxford Mich. 568 (Neubauer 1098); the Zurich Fragment; Vatican 285 A, and Freiburg 483. When we look at each of these manuscripts and compare any parallel passages in other manuscripts, we find the presence or absence of individual parallel paragraphs. These comparisons demonstrate that single paragraphs circulated throughout the corpus of Sefer Hasidim manuscripts.
For example, in the Frankfurt manuscript, single, unnumbered paragraphs on different topics are mostly found as single paragraph parallels in other manuscripts. Unnumbered paragraphs are indicated below in square brackets. Three different paragraphs each claims that it is a shortened version of a fuller parallel paragraph found elsewhere. For example, in Frankfurt f. 270r, line 11, [1] the text says: “and he elaborated on this further” (ve-he’erikh sham yoter). A parallel passage with such additional sources is found in parallels in Milan Ambrosiana X.111 sup. [18], Oxford Opp. 340 (Neubauer 875) [18], Moscow 103 [18], as well as in Nîmes 26 [18] and SHB 18. Only Frankfurt par. [1] abbreviates the text, and that paragraph is more derivative than the parallels that contain the fuller version of the passage.
Or, Frankfurt, f. 270v, [14] ends with the phrase “and he expanded further with verses and other proof texts” (ve-he’erikh yoter bi-fesuqim u-re’ayot). The version of the same passage but with biblical and other proof texts is found in SHB 1120, its only parallel.
In contrast to these two examples of MS Frankfurt abbreviating a paragraph that has a parallel elsewhere with more sources, Frankfurt, f. 271r, [19] refers at the end to such a parallel but it does not exist: “and he added many talmudic proofs” (ve-he’erikh harbeh re’ayot min ha-talmud). But in the parallel to Frankfurt [19], SHB 1065, there are no additional references, and this means that the expanded paragraph to which Frankfurt [19] refers apparently has not survived.
Frankfurt [33–40] and [46] correspond to single parallels in the same sequence but with omissions in Ox. Opp. 614 (Neubauer 2275) and Ox. Or. 146 (Neubauer 782) [1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 15, 17, 18] (for both). An exception to the parallel sequence is Frankfurt [46] that corresponds to Oxford Opp. 614 (Neubauer 2275) [13] and Oxford, Or. 146 (Neubauer 782) [13] and also to SHP 211 and former JTS Boesky 45, 103. There also are single paragraph parallels for each of these paragraphs in SHP and former JTS Boesky 45 but, with one exception, not in SHB and its parallels.26 Frankfurt [42, 44, 45, 47–49] seem to be unique to this manuscript, but Frankfurt
