Abraham the Jew and the attributed book · Lexicon

From the book

The Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Attributed to Abraham the Jew · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordAbraham Juif is the authority named at the head of the manuscript. Abraham also occurs within the patriarchal blessing invoked for its recipient; that biblical occurrence has a different function.
In the bookThe attributed teacher’s priestly and philosophical titles authorize a guarded art. His address to the Jewish nation is joined to a Christian greeting, and the opening narrator interprets his threats and blessings within an explicitly Christian account.
TranslationAbraham Juif is rendered Abraham the Jew. The edition preserves the source’s name and titles without supplying a biography or treating the attribution as proof of authorship.
A place to readRead the title at scan 9 alongside the account of teaching and blessing on 3v, scan 20.

Meaning

The title begins Abraham Juif and follows it with Prince, prêtre, Lévite, astrologue et philosophe. These titles join political, sacerdotal, celestial, and philosophical authority in one attributed person. The title then addresses the Jewish nation scattered through Gaul and offers a greeting in the name of Jesus Christ. The juxtaposition is written into the witness and belongs to its self-presentation.²⁷²

The name alone does not settle the historical identity of a compiler, the date of an underlying composition, or the relation between this witness and other books attributed to an Abraham. The catalogue’s placement under Abraham Juif records the attribution under which the manuscript is described. The lexicon uses attributed teacher when a distinction between the literary authority and the present writer is necessary.

Use in the book

The title’s sequence of offices prepares the book’s range. A philosopher can explain the first agents of nature; an astrologer can discuss celestial powers; priestly titles can authorize access to mysteries. The extended title promises explanations of poetic fables, Christian mysteries, chemistry, and pharmacy according to numbers. Its authority is consequently made to stand at the meeting of the subjects the treatise will connect.

The opening prose speaks about this teacher in the third person. On 3r, scan 19, the narrator refers to ‘our Jew’ and explains the curses with which he supposedly threatened his nation. The narrator also speaks of Christian chemists. That movement of voice is important: the name at the title is not a guarantee that every sentence in the treatise is represented as Abraham’s first-person speech.

The account on scan 19 includes a Christian anti-Jewish accusation that suffering is punishment for the crucifixion. This is the manuscript’s polemic and part of the evidence for its interpretive setting. It supplies no historical explanation of Jewish suffering. An account of the attributed authority must preserve the passage’s voice while keeping the accusation attributable to that voice.²⁷³

The next side describes the teacher’s practice more concretely. He explains metallic transmutation in the country’s language but in a veiled manner, depicts vessels, marks degrees of heat, and teaches the colors that succeed one another in cooking. Priests and scribes are especially bound to silence. The authority therefore transmits observable features of a work within a system of restricted disclosure, rather than merely possessing a prestigious name.

The blessing that follows turns directly to whoever may receive the secret. It combines Noah’s increase and food, Abraham’s descendants and the stars, and Isaac’s blessing of Jacob. Abraham here is the patriarch whose blessing is invoked. The two uses of the name should not be collapsed: the title names the attributed teacher, while the blessing places the new recipient within a scriptural pattern of increase and inheritance.²⁷⁴

Places to read

Manuscript Title page · Scan 9The attributed name, offices, address, greeting, and extended title.
Manuscript 3r · Scan 19The narrator’s account of the teacher’s curses and consolations.
Manuscript 3v · Scan 20The account of veiled instruction, oath, vessels, heat, colors, and patriarchal blessing.

Translation

The title heading Abraham the Jew translates Abraham Juif directly. Prince, priest, Levite, astrologer, and philosopher retain the separate offices listed below it. Their accumulation is part of the source’s authorization of the book; the translation does not substitute a single descriptive label.

In the running account ‘our Jew’ follows notre juif and preserves the narrator’s wording. The historical attribution is kept distinct from the biblical name in ‘the blessing of Abraham.’ Neither occurrence is expanded into an identification the text does not supply. The lexicon’s headword makes the attributed book available for discussion while preserving that limit.

Abraham Juif

Attested: H001-S009. The name is attested in the source heading, not merely supplied by the modern catalogue.

Abraham

Attested: H001-S020. The biblical name occurs in the blessing invoked upon the recipient of the secret.

Source note

Getty Research Institute, finding aid for accession 950053, Box 1, Hogart manuscript 3. The date of approximately 1800 and the catalogue attribution describe the surviving witness.

Manuscript 3r, scan 19. The accusatory account of Jewish suffering is the narrator’s Christian anti-Jewish polemic; its attribution should remain explicit.

Compare Genesis 9:1–3, 22:17, and 27:27–29 for the Noah, Abraham, and Isaac/Jacob blessings gathered in manuscript 3v and its continuation. The manuscript combines and enlarges these scriptural patterns.