The marginal notes of Tosefta MS Erfurt

Manuscript Erfurt 12 of the Tosefta (now Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Ms. or. fol. 1220) is one of three major textual witnesses of the Tosefta. This manuscript has over 80 marginal notes which have not merited scholarly attention. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of all the marginal notes, including an evaluation of their ink composition, a palaeographic assessment of the scripts, as well as a philological assessment of their contents. Combining these methodologies differentiates between the glosses of the scribe and those added by later hands and identifies their provenance, allowing us to trace the history of the manuscript via the emendations that took place in the scholarly communities in which the manuscript was studied. One of the important outcomes of the research is an early dating of the manuscript to eleventh-century Italy, overturning the scholarly view which dates the manuscript to twelfth-century Rhineland.