Artibus et Historiae no. 16 (VIII)
1987, ISSN 0391-9064Up
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WALTER CAHN - Moses ben Abraham's Chroniques de la Bible
In the Royal Library in The Hague there is a little-known manuscript with illustrations of the prophecies of Daniel, probably executed in north-eastern France around 1300. The text is a French paraphrase of the Bible with special emphasis on the Books of Daniel and Maccabees, compiled by Moses ben Abraham, a Jew, for his patron William X of Auvergne. The express purpose of this work is to trace the lineage of noble clans and peoples to their Biblical origins, to speculate on struggles of ancient empires and marvels still to come. Despite the Christian reading the translator gives to Hebrew prophecy, there are discrepancies with the Latin Vulgate text which also come to light in the illustrations. It can be determined, on the basis of historical analysis, that the work in The Hague is a copy of an original made some fifty years earlier, and that it must have been the object of eschatological speculation and was therefore acutely topical for an audience entering a new century.
