Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah, MS Parma 2705 is a Hebrew parchment manuscript copied in Guarda in 1346. It is preserved in Parma, Italy, at the Biblioteca Palatina. In the De Rossi catalogue, it is also identified as De Rossi 72.

A Hebrew Manuscript from Guarda

The manuscript contains Rashi’s commentary on the Torah, one of the most influential works of medieval Jewish biblical interpretation. Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, lived between 1040 and 1105, and his commentary became a central text in Jewish study across the medieval and early modern worlds.

The Guarda manuscript is important because it places the copying of this canonical Jewish text inside a Portuguese Jewish urban context. It shows that fourteenth-century Guarda was not only a place of Jewish residence, but also a place where Hebrew books were copied, studied, owned, and transmitted.

Colophon and Scribe

The manuscript’s colophon records that it was completed in Guarda, described in Hebrew as a town at the edge of the Kingdom of Portugal. The scribe was Yosef ben Yitzhak ben Yosef Delouiah, also written Dalviah.

The manuscript was later associated with Isaac ha-Levi ben Yosef ibn Turiel, whose ownership is recorded in the manuscript’s history. This link connects the codex not only to scribal production, but also to the circulation and possession of Hebrew books among Jewish families.

The importance of Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah, MS Parma 2705 comes from this documentary precision. Its colophon gives a date, a place, and a named scribe. For Guarda, it is one of the clearest surviving material witnesses to Hebrew literacy, Jewish learning, and manuscript culture in the medieval city.