The aim of this project is the digital edition of an anonymous and concise Biblical Hebrew dictionary of roots that circulated in humanist circles. Preliminary work has enabled me to identify five witnesses: Vatican, BAV ebr. 413; Cambridge, St-John's college I. 10; Rome, Biblioteca Angelica Or. 12; Oxford, Bodleian Hunt. 292 and Hamburg, SUB Cod. hebr. 74. It was also possible to identify the title of the work Qitsur shorashim which appears in a book inventory recorded by a Provençal Jew on the back of one manuscript he owned. Codicological and palaeographic analyses have allowed me to conclude that the five manuscripts text were copied between the 13th and 16th centuries by Spanish, Provençal, Italian, Byzantine and Oriental hands. Three of the codices belonged to Christians and one of them was probably written for a German humanist. It therefore seems necessary to reconsider the place of this dictionary in medieval lexicographical production and to evaluate its role in the teaching of Hebrew within Jewish communities and among Christians who wished to learn the language of the Bible.
