BEN-ASHER, AARON B. MOSES, of Tiberias or Mocziah (rorpn olpv:), as this town was then called, immortalized his name by his accurate edi Ion of the text of the Hebrew Bible, which is the present Textus receptus. He flourished about A.D. 900 to 960, up to which time the Massoretic text was in a very unsettled state, as is evident from the Theological Decisions of Mar-Zemach b. Cha jim, who was Gaon from A. D. 889 to 896, where 'we are told that the various readings of the Baby lonian and Palestinian codices were then not con fined to unimportant points, such as plene and defective, great pauses which require the beginning of a fresh paragraph, and small pauses which only require a little space between the two sentences, accents, and orthography, but even to the division of verses ;. as well as from the fact that Saadia Gaon (A. D. 892-942) still followed readings and divisions of verses in his translations of the Bible different from what we now have. Impressed with the importance of having a settled and uniform text, Ben-Asher, who was a consummate grammarian, and thorough master of the Massoretic rules, de voted the greater part of his life to collating and editing the Hebrew Scriptures, which he executed with such care and minuteness, and in so masterly a manner, that notwithstanding Saadia's opposition to it [SAAOIA] and Ben Naphtali's strictures upon it [BEN NAPHTALI], his revision superseded all other editions, was soon regarded as sacred, and became the standard text from which copies were made, both in Jerusalem and Egypt. So great was its reputation, that the great luminary Maimonides (A.n. 5135-1204) in his treatise upon writing the sacred Scriptures, sets forth Ben-Asher's revision of the text as the most correct ; and tells us that after examining other revisions, and finding them differing greatly from each other, he him self adopted it as his model, because,' says he, `I saw that there is great confusion in all the codices which I have consulted with regard to these matters ; and even the Massorites, who wrote and compiled works to shew which sections are to be gin new paragraphs, and which not, are divided upon these matters according to the authorities they leaned upon, I found myself necessitated to write thus all the sections of the law, both those which begin new paragraphs and those which do not, as well as the forms of the accents, so that all copies might be made according to it. Now, the
codex which is followed in these matters, is the one well known in Egypt, which contains the four-and twenty Sacred Books, which was in Jerusalem for many years, that all the codices might be corrected after it, and whose text all adopted, because Ben Asher corrected it, and laboured over it many years, and revised it many times; it is this codex which I followed in the copy of the law I wrote.'—(Mishne Thora, Ililchoth Sefer Thora, sec. viii. p. 96), and it is this revision from which also our Hebrew Bibles of the present day are printed.
Ben-Asher also wrote, I. A work called nizrin norp, treating upon the doctrine of the He brew vowel points in their practical application to the Scriptures, as well as upon the accents and Massora ; the latter point was also set forth in a separate treatise called r-lorri d31 int.tp• From this work emanated 41n V.rs n'p671 +"?rIm, the various readings of the vowels, con sonants, and accents, printed in the Venice and Basle editions of the Rabbinic Bibles, as well as in other editions, and in Fiirst's valuable con cordance. II. n-ionn nu , n, Treatises upon the doctrine of the Hebrew accents, vowels, etc. This contains the following sections, not marked : 1. vinyton to 11D, on the accents. 2. 11D on the order, titles, and peculiarities of each portion of the Bible. 3. nimit.mni-6in rik on the Hebrew letters, their classification, etc. 4. tb1:.'t'i 'VD and ri-p,zip tt'lj?z nt.:, a fragment on the doctrine of the accents. 5. on the peculiar accents of the Psalms, Proverbs, and Job. 6. Tr.3, a fragment also treating upon the accents. This was reprinted in the Rabbinic Bible, Venice, 1518, under the title npj, . _ with the inscription =Inn +rp-lp "pp omitting, however, sections 3 and 5, and making some transpositions. It has also been re-edited, with corrections and additions, after a manuscript in the possession of Luzzatto, as well as with a valuable introduction, notes, and supplements, by Leopold Dukes, Tubingen, 1846. III. o+?inci, a treatise upon assonances, in which Ben-Asher gives eighty Hebrew words, resembling in sound, but differing in sense. (Comp. Graetz, Geschichte der 7uden, v. p. 344 ; Fiirst's Bibliotheca 7udaica, i. p. mo.) —C. D. G.