De Hebreeuwse Esopet in Latijns gewaad

An essay investigating how the Prague 1661 Hebrew-Latin edition of Berekhya’s Mishley Shu’alim or Fox Fables as Parabolae vulpium came into being. Text sources primarily being studied are the very book’s fore-word by the then-famous polymath Athanasius Kircher, who had been having in mind producing a bilingual edition of these witty tales for decades, and the preface by the author of the book Melchior Hanel. It is this gifted pupil of his who finally carried out his master’s plan by producing a real book, which displays on facing pages Berekhya’s Hebrew text now vocalized along with Hanel’s Latin translation. A principal piece of hand-written evidence is presented here for the first time, concomitantly in the formats of a facsimile transcription and a critical text edition. The item consists in an undated sheet of paper preserved in Kircher’s Roman archive containing Fox Fable Nr.1, copied out by him in the Hebrew square script and cast into a Latin version of his own creation. The piece of text appears to be an early draft by Kircher himself of a Hebrew-Latin edition of the Fox Fables, antedating the finally published book by 25 years and which was never to grow beyond this nascent stage. Both Hebrew Fox Fable Nr.1 and Kircher’s Latin counterpart of it are offered in an annotated Dutch translation as well. The author of the essay seeks to assess Kircher’s Hebrew proficiency and to determine to what extent the master did contribute to his pupil’s achievement. The essay concludes with some succinct remarks on the Jewish Aesop and his tale-telling acumen as shown in the first fable