The Perush ha-Tagin of Abraham Pico between Bibliography and Forgery

In Agostino Giustiani’s polyglot Psalter, published on Genoa in 1516, one finds several quotations from Kabbalistic works that defy identification. Two of them purport to be taken from a book on the tagin (later identified with a version of the Sefer ha-Tagin), written by Abraham Pico. This work was wrongly described by Hebrew bibliographers, and from these descriptions, a blatant falsification was forged in the 18th century. This forgery introduced one of the two known quotations from Pico’s work into a large patchwork of passages entirely copied from the Shene Luḥot ha-Berit by Isaiah Horowitz. The true story of this text together with the numerous false paths taken by scholars is reconstructed here, and ends with the discovery of the true original Hebrew text preserved in a manuscript of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. The author demonstates that, by a fortunate strike of luck, this very manuscript had belonged to none else than Agostino Giustiniani