TRANSCRIÇÃO INTERPRETATIVA DO “DISCURSO SOBRE A SIGNIFICAÇÃO DAS LETRAS HEBRAICAS” DE MOSES RAPHAEL D’AGUILAR (IN: EH 48 A 11, PP. 57V-59V), COM INTRODUÇÃO E NOTAS

Abstract

This paper contains a presentation (with introduction and notes) and an interpretative transcription – i.e. the critial edition of a text in which the editor transcribes the original work coorecting errors by conjecture (emendation ope ingenii) (DUARTE [1997-], entry, apud BORGES et al., 2012 p. 31) – of the “Discurso sobre a significação das letras hebraicas” (= “Discourse on the meaning of the Hebrew letters”), by Moses Raphael D’aguilar, a Portuguese philosopher of uncertain date of birth, but who was an important scholar and active member of the Sephardic community in Amsterdam, until his death in 1679. For the transcription of the document, we used as source the manuscript EH 48 A 11 from Ets Haim Bibliotheek/Livraria Montezinos. In the transcribed work, which occupies the page 57 verse to 59 verse of EH 48 A 11, the author presents the letters of the alefbeit and hypothesizes about its mystical meanings, revealing a backgrouding grammatical thought which is symmetrically opposed to the conventionalist grammatical thought espoused by Spinoza in his Compendium of the Grammar of the Hebrew Language (1677).