BEN-NAPHTĀLĪ, MŌŠEH BEN-DĀWĪDH. - A Masorete who lived around the middle of the 10th century in Palestine, not in Baghdad, as some mistakenly thought after Elia Levita. He devoted himself to establishing the biblical text with the apparatus masora (v.).
We know of no manuscripts that wholly and certainly transmit to us the Masoretic punctuation of B.-N., unless it is collected in the group of manuscripts akin to Reuchlin’s codex of the prophets (a. 1105-1106 = Ms. Durlach 55 of the Karlsruhe library). B.-N.’s punctuation, although it had attained an advanced degree of precision in noting minutiae both in vowels and accents, was surpassed in the 13th century by the rival school of the Ben-'Āšer (v.).
BBL.: On the differences between the two Palestinian schools, V. the work of Mischel (10th century), edited by L. Lipschütz, B.-N. Der Bibeltext der Tiberischen Masoreten. Eine Abhandlung des Mischels b. 'Uzziel veröffentlicht und untersucht (Bonner Orientalische Studien, 25), Stuttgart