04:32:06


[Login]   
[Book List]  
 
Bidding Information
Lot #    11685
Auction End Date    9/20/2005 11:06:00 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Gorolot Ahitophel
Title (Hebrew)    גורולות אחיתופל
Author    [Unrecorded]
City    Casablanca
Publisher    J. Lugassy
Publication Date    c. 1940
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    [12:] ff., 133:96 mm., wide margins, light age staining. A very good copy bound as published. Not in CD-EPI.
          
Detailed
Description		    A Book of Lots ascribed to Ahitophel the Gilonite, adviser of King David, which is part of a whole genre of fortune-telling books. In Judeo-Arabic. This book of fate was used in popular divination and named after Ahithophel. In Jewish legends of the Middle Ages Ahithophel plays a role somewhat similar to that of Mephistopheles. Cassel would even translate "Ahithophel" as "the Brother of the Evil One"; regarding tofel as an ancient formation of diabolus, in support of which he cites the Germanic tiuval and tievel-teufel (R. Moses Isserles, again, relates having read in a "very old book," in which were contained the philosophies and the portraits of various thinkers, that Socrates had received his wisdom from Asaf the Korahite and Ahithophel ("Torat ha-'Olah," i. xi.). In accordance with the popular view of Ahithophel's character, as being at once diabolic and omniscient, in the Middle Ages the authorship of a cabalistic work, "Sefer Goralot" (Book of Lots), was attributed to him. According to its preface, it discloses the "great secret of securing an answer without the drawing of lots or computation, by indifferently putting one's hand on a tablet containing the numbers one to ninety, or eighty-nine." The book furthermore is said to have lain hidden in Alexandria, and afterward to have been used in Tiberias and elsewhere, "the usual legend concerning pseudepigraphic writings," as Steinschneider puts it.
          
Paragraph 2    "גורלות אחיתופל" בערבית באותיות עבריות. עם סגולות ורפואות, בעברית, בעמוד הראשון ובעמוד האחרון.
          
Reference
Description		    JE
        
Associated Images
1 Image (Click thumbnail to view full size image):
  Order   Image   Caption
  1   Click to view full size  
  
  
Listing Classification
Period
20th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Other:    Morocco
  
Subject
  
Characteristic
Language:    Judeo-Arabic
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica