Berechiah ben Natronai Krespia ha-Nakdan (Hebrew: ברכיה בן נטרונאי הנקדן; fl.
Hermann Gollancz, on the other hand, conjectured that he had a brother, a French Tosaphist, called Samuel ha-Nakdan who is mentioned for the year 1175 and that Berechiah was not so much a punctuator of the Bible himself but hailed from a family of Nakdanim.
[4] This was confirmed by Adolf Neubauer's discovery that, in the preface to his fables, Berechiah mentions the "turning of the wheels of fate to the island of the sea (England) for one to die and the other to live," a reference to the English massacres of 1190.
[1] Most were probably translated from the French fable collection Ysopet by Marie de France (though uncertainties about the exact dates of both authors preclude any final decision about which of them was the source for the other).
[6] Berechiah's work adds a layer of Biblical quotations and allusions to Aesop's tales, adapting them as a way to teach Jewish ethics.
73), and derives from an Eastern source, probably the Vaka Jataka:[7] The Wolf, the Lion's prince and peer, as the foe of all flesh did appear; greedy and grinding, he consumed all he was finding.
Birds and beasts, wild and tame, by their families urged to the same, brought against him before the Lion an accusation, as a monster worthy of detestation.
And that you may my words obey, swear me that you'll eat no flesh for two years from to-day, to atone for your sins, testified and seen: 'tis my judgment, you had better fulfil it, I ween."
Berechiah was also a translator, his version being extant of Adelard of Bath's Quæstiones Naturales, entitled Dodi ve-Nekhdi or Ha-She'elot.
[9] He also wrote Ko'aḥ Avanim, a translation-adaption of a Latin lapidary containing a description of sixty-three species of stones and their magical properties.
[10] Besides these works, Berechiah is also said by Zunz to have contributed to the Tosafot,[11] and, as his name implies, was probably an expert in Hebrew grammar, for which reason he is quoted by Moses ben Issac ha-Nessiah of London, in his Sefer ha-Shoham.