Johnstown weekly Democrat. (Johnstown, Cambria County, Pa.) 1889-1916, 1890-04-18
A LIBRARY OF BIBLES.
THE SCRIPTURAL COLLECTION MADE
BY A RESIDENT OF BOSTON.

Old Jewish Manuscripts That We're Hard
to Obtain-A Roll from the Famous Jeru-
salem Deaier-The Wonderful Chained
Bible"-A Piece of Papyrus.
S. Brainard Pratt, of Forest Hills, is
the owner of the largest and finest col
lection of Bibles in this part Of the coun-
try. For upward of twenty-five years
Mr.. Pratt has been accumulating this
collection, and now has over three hun
dred volumes and a great variety of
manuscripts of the Bible. Some of his
Bibles are nowhere else to be seen in this
country.
Beginning with the manuscripts, is a
| Jewish roll Of the five books OF Moses.
These Jewish rolls are very difficult
things to get. Mr.. Pratt had been try
ing for ten years to find one, when a
learned German professor, DR.. Gregory,
of Leipsic, secured this one for him. 1t
is contrary to the Jewish law to allow
one to fall into the hands of GENTLE.
When one is worn out, or for any reason
of no further use, it is buried in the
| biOuhu dho DldCC VI I'D AhbCh
forgotten as soon as possible. 1t would
be considered sacrilege to destroy one in
any other manner as much as to let q
Christian have It, This roll in Mr..
Pratt's possession was made by a learned
rabbi of Posen, Prussia, for his own use,
and at his death his children thought
more of the money than the sacredness
of the roll and sold it to DIR. Gregory, 1t
came into Mr.. Pratt's hands for $65.
The roll is of vellum, which is a mate
rial of finer texture, thinner and smother
than parchment, and is a continuous roll
4St feet long, made by sewing together
lot of skins some 90 inches in length.
Not an erasure or correction appears on
the whole manuscript, as the copyist is
obliged, if he makes an error, to destroy
the entire skin on which it has occurred
and begin his work again.
THE TWELVE MINOR PROPHETS.
Mr.. Pratt has since received several OF
these rolls, one of the most interesting of
which contains the twelve minor proph-
cts, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah,
Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah,
Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi This
roll was used for long time at syna-
| goge in Jerusalem, and was finally laid
aside, as the letters were too fine for the
eyesight of the reader, and another was
made in larger letters The discarded
roll was condemned to be buried, but the
Rev. DIR. Selah Merrill, who was then in
Jerusalem, persuaded the man to whom
the duty was intrusted that it could be
buried in Boston just as well as in Jeru-
salem.
Mr.. Pratt has another roll from Jeru
salem containing the Book of Genesis
This was purchased by the Rev. IL. @.
Turnbull, d. D., at the shop of NJ. w.
Shapiro, a famous Jerusalem dealer in
ancient manuscripts, who became noted
for almost succeeding in swindling the
British Museum out of $780, 900, which he
demanded for an alleged ancient copy Of
some rare Biblical manuscript 1t took
the keenest experts on the subject in the
world to prove the manuscript spurious.
This roll in Mr.. Pratts possession is fine
specimen of Hebrew lettering, with one
funny thing about it. 1t is against the
law to send a roll of any part of the
Scriptures out of Jerusalem. But the
Jewish standard of absolute correctness
and perfection in their roll is so high that
an imperfect copy doesn't count, and a
single letter wrong or missing makes the
whole roll imperfect and worthless in
their sight. So the first letter of the first
word of the first verse of the first chap
ter of Genesis is omitted. This vitiates
the whole business, and the roll is of no
account, it can lawfully be sold, it can
go into the hands of a Gentle, and it can
be sent out of the sacred limits of the
holy city.
Four more of these curious rolls came
from Constantinople to Mr.. Pratt's Ii
brary, containing respectively the books
of Ruth, Songs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes
and Lamentations, all of them on parch.
ment. He has two parchment rolls of
the book of Esther, which came from
Constantinople, one of which was for
merly read from in a synagogue in the
sutans capital, and another ON an ex-
quisitely carved ivory roller, which is
written in characters so small as to be a
perpetual wonder and tribute to the ex-
raordinary patience and finger cunning
of the copyist. He has a roll of Esther
on paper from Russia and one on parch-
ment from Germany.
a GREAT CURIOSITY.
One of the greatest curiosities in the
whole collection is "chained Bible. -
This medieval relic was printed at Stras-
burg in 1880, less than half century
after the invention of printing, and
twelve years before the discovery of
America. 1t is in four immense folio
volumes, each being 20x13lx5 inches in
size, and containing a voluminous COM
mentary on the sacred text, both text
and commentary being in Latin, the
tough old black letter being used, which
none but a few adopts can read. The
binding of these ponderous tones is
heavily REINFORCED with iron plates and
clasps, and heavy iron chain is at
tached to each of them, by which the
old books were secured to pillars in the
churches where they were kept. These
volumes were printed by John Guten-
berg, the father of printing, and were
doubtless among the first Bibles ever
nrinted