Sources The sources of this work are numerous. Aside from the
Arukh of
Tzemach ben Poltoi, which he utilized (it should be stated, however, that
Solomon Judah Loeb Rapoport and
Abraham Geiger deny this), he used a vast number of additional works. Above all, he placed under contribution the information received, in both oral and written form, from R. Maẓliaḥ and R. Moses ha-Darshan, the former of whom, in particular, through his studies under Hai, had made himself the repository of Eastern learning. The entire extent of Nathan's indebtedness to his authorities can not be estimated because of the hundreds of books he cited, many of which have not been preserved. But none will deny his obligation to
Gershom ben Judah, whom he repeatedly quotes, though, as Kohut rightly maintains against Rapoport, he can not have been his disciple. Similarly, he used the writings of
Chananel ben Chushiel and
Nissim ben Jacob, both living at
Kairouan. So frequent were the references to Chananel in the lexicon that
Rabbeinu Tam regarded the work as based entirely on Chananel's commentaries, while
Isaac ben Moses of Vienna, as a matter of course, referred to R. Hananeel almost all of the lexicon's anonymous statements.
Hai Gaon figures very frequently in its pages, sometimes designated as "the Gaon." It has notably assimilated all philologic material contained in his commentary on the
mishna in order
Tohorot.
Method and scope Since the structure of the
Arukh consists, as it were, of so many bricks, it is hard to decide whether the builder possessed all the linguistic learning stored up in it. None can gainsay the author's philologic spirit of inquiry – quite remarkable for his day, which antedated the science of linguistics; his frequent collation of "variæ lectiones" is notable, while his fine literary sense often saved him from crude etymological errancies. The multitude of languages in the
Arukh is prodigious even for a period of polyglot proclivities. The non-Jewish
Aramaic dialects are encountered side by side with
Arabic,
Persian,
Medieval Greek,
Latin, and even
Old Slavonic, while
Italian seems as familiar to the author as the various rabbinic forms of style. This multiplicity of languages, however, is currently generally considered a mere mark of the compilation's multifarious character; the credit for the exegetic employment of the several languages is given to Nathan's authorities rather than to himself. While he undoubtedly possessed a superficial and empiric knowledge of Latin and Greek, of which the former already contained an admixture of contemporary Italian, and the latter (subdivided into spoken and written Greek) was still partly used in southern Italy; while he may have acquired a desultory acquaintance with Arabic, and certainly was quite familiar with Italian, yet it may be stated almost with certainty that the majority of his etymologies were compiled and copied from his various source-books. For this reason, the various dialects appear in the
Arukh under several names, each originating seemingly in a different author, as Arabic, for example, which occurs under three distinct denotations, possibly without Nathan being aware of their synonymity. To the exact cause may be assigned the
polyonymy of the Hebrew and rabbinic dialects in the
Arukh and the presence of a great deal of geographic and ethnographic information that the author did not acquire in actual travel. As regards the grammatical derivation of
Hebrew words, Nathan deviated from the principle of
triliteral roots discovered by
Judah ben David Hayyuj and adopted by the Spanish grammarians as a rule; like most French and German rabbis, he considered two letters, and at times one, sufficient to form a Hebrew root.
Its importance The
Arukh is a significant monument in the history of culture. Aside from its purely scientific value as a storehouse of old readings and interpretations as well as of titles of many lost books, it is important as the only literary production of the Italian Jews of that age. Moreover, though mainly a compilation, it is one of the most noteworthy medieval monuments of learning. Compiled at the historical juncture when Jewish scholarship was transplanted from Babylonia and northern Africa to Europe and was subject to aberration, it signally emphasized the necessity of preserving the old rabbinical treasures and traditions. Its service in this respect was equivalent to that rendered by the two great products of contemporary Spanish and French Jews – Alfasi's Talmudic code and Rashi's commentary. Together the three contributed toward the spread of rabbinic study. Besides, one has to depend upon the
Arukh for whatever knowledge one may have of the intellectual condition of the Italian Jews in the 11th century. Since its author, for example, uses the Italian language freely to elucidate etymologies, he frequently offers the vernacular nomenclature for objects of natural history that he repeatedly calls into service for purposes of illustration of the customs of foreign peoples, the character of the reading public of his day can easily be inferred. The dawn of
skepticism may be discerned in his remark that as regards conjuring and amulets, neither their grounds nor their sources were known.
Influence and editions The
Arukh rapidly achieved a wide circulation. According to Kohut, even
Rashi was already in a position to utilize it in the second edition of his commentaries, having been acquainted with it by
Kalonymos ben Sabbatai, the noted rabbi who had moved to
Worms from
Rome. Kalonymus, however, can at best have transported to his new home but meager information concerning the
Arukh, as his removal occurred about thirty years before its completion, the first folios he may have seen since he was intimately acquainted with Nathan. A generation after the time of Rashi, the
Arukh is found in general use among the Biblical commentators, the
tosafists, and the legalistic and the grammatical authors. Numerous manuscript copies were brought into circulation; and with the introduction of printing its spread was widely extended. The first edition, which bears neither the date nor the place of publication, probably belongs to the year 1477, while in 1531
Daniel Bomberg of Venice issued what is no doubt the best of the early editions. In both the copying and the printing processes, however, the work suffered innumerable alterations and mutilations, which have been recently repaired to a certain extent by the scientific edition issued, based on the first editions and of seven manuscripts, by
Alexander Kohut.
Supplements and compendia A further proof of the popularity gained by the
Arukh lies in the numerous supplements and compendiums which soon clustered about it. Until recent times, all rabbinic lexicons have been grounded on the
Arukh. The first supplement was written in the 12th century by
Samuel ben Jacob ibn Jam'i or Jama' of
Narbonne, under the title
Agur, a small work of little significance. In the 13th century,
Tanhum of Jerusalem wrote a lexicon,
Al-Murshid al-Kafi, which completed, corrected, and replaced the rare
Arukh. At the beginning of the 16th century,
Abraham Zacuto, author of the
Yuḥasin, composed a supplement entitled
Iqqere ha-Talmud, of which only a fragment of the latter part has survived. About the same time,
Santes Pagnino, a Christian and
friar of the
Dominican Order, issued an
Enchiridion Expositionis Vocabulorum Haruch, Thargum, Midraschim Rabboth, et Aliorum Librorum. The general method of the
Arukh was also adopted by
Elia Levita, who, in his
Meturgeman and
Tishbi, advanced a step in that he differentiated the targumic and the Talmudic words and also sought to complete his prototype. The manner and the matter of the
Arukh were closely followed by Johannes Buxtorf in his
Lexicon Chaldaicum Talmudicum, and by David de Pomis in his
Tzemach David. Early in the seventeenth century,
Menahem Lonzano issued his small but useful supplement, ''Ma'arikh,
concerned particularly with foreign words. Ma'arikh ha-Ma'arekhet,'' a compilation by
Philippe d'Aquin, appeared in Paris in 1629. No doubt the best supplements to the
Arukh were written in the same century by
Benjamin Musaphia, a physician at
Hamburg, and by
David Cohen de Lara (d. 1674). Mussafia's ''Musaf he-'Arukh
(1655), probably known also as Arukh he-Hadash,
according to Immanuel Löw, devoted itself mainly to Greek and Latin derivatives, leaning largely on Johannes Buxtorf. David Cohen de Lara published the Keter Kehunnah
(Hamburg, 1668), in which he had set before himself polyglot purposes, and which, though brought down to "resh," was published only as far as the letter "yod". His minor work, on the other hand, Ir David
(Amsterdam, 1638), of which the second part was called Metzudat Tziyyon'', confined itself almost exclusively to Greek derivatives. The nineteenth century witnessed the publication of several works accredited to the classic lexicon.
Isaiah Berlin (d. 1799) wrote ''Hafla'ah Sheba-'Arakhin
, annotations to the Arukh
. I. M. Landau appended similar notes to his unscientific edition of the Arukh
; while S. Lindermann has issued elucidations under the title Sarid ba-'Arakhin'' (Thorn, 1870). Besides, there are several anonymous dictionaries attached to the same classic, e.g., the abbreviated
Arukh, Arukh ha-Katzar, known also as
Kitzur Arukh, which was successively printed at Constantinople (1511), Cracow (1591), and Prague (1707), and which contains merely the explanation of words, without their etymologies. Another brief
Arukh, frequently cited by Johannes Buxtorf and discovered in a manuscript at Bern, has been found to contain numerous French and German annotations. A dictionary of still wider scope than the
Arukh is the
Sefer Melitzah of
Solomon ben Samuel.
Solomon Marcus Schiller-Szinessy, in fine, records the existence of a
Lexicon of the Difficult Words in the Talmud. Between 1878 and 1892,
Alexander Kohut published
Arukh Hashalem, a vastly expanded version of the Arukh incorporating conclusions from modern philology. ==See also==