Shabbethai Premsla was a
Galician philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...
and scribe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who lived in
Przemyśl
Przemyśl (; yi, פשעמישל, Pshemishl; uk, Перемишль, Peremyshl; german: Premissel) is a city in southeastern Poland with 58,721 inhabitants, as of December 2021. In 1999, it became part of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship; it was pr ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...
, from which his name derives.
Premsla was the author of a commentary on
Moses Kimhi
Moses Kimhi (c. 1127 – c. 1190), also known as the ''ReMaK'', was a medieval Jewish biblical commentator and grammarian.
Birth and early life
Kimhi was born around 1127, the eldest son of Joseph Kimhi and the brother of David Kimhi, known as ...
's grammatical work, ''Sefer Mahalak'', in which he defends the author against the criticism of
Elijah Levita
Elia Levita (13 February 146928 January 1549) ( he, אליהו בן אשר הלוי אשכנזי), also known as Elijah Levita, Elias Levita, Élie Lévita, Elia Levita Ashkenazi, Eliahu Levita, Eliyahu haBahur ("Elijah the Bachelor"), Elye Bok ...
, a commentator on the same work. His annotations to the prayers, which were published in
Dyhernfurth
Brzeg Dolny (german: Dyhernfurth) is a town in Wołów County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship in south-western Poland. It is located north-west of Wrocław on the Oder River, and is the site of a large chemical plant complex, PCC Rokita SA. As o ...
, Poland, were reprinted many times. He was a
Talmud
The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...
ic scholar, and one of his
responsa, on the writing of the
Tetragrammaton
The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are '' yodh'', '' he'', '' waw'', an ...
, is found in the ''Teshubot ha-Geonim'', published in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
in 1707. Four of his works, which were left in manuscript, are known, including one on the necessity of grammatical studies.
Hayyim Bochner was his pupil.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Premsla, Shabbethai
Talmudists
Medieval Hebraists
Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe)