Let's play tag

The wise Iyov has tagged me.

Here's what I am assigned to do:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

Although I am not supposed to cheat, I will cheat...a little. I'm going to have two entries. The first is, literally, the closest book I picked up. The second is also a book, it's also the first I opened in a blind search--but I have it in PDF.

1. The physical book:

This book [ie,Tychsen's Tentamen de Variis Codicum Hebraeorum... 1772] sought to undermine Kennicott's project by questioning the criteria by which biblical manuscripts were chosen and evaluated, as well as the quality of the manuscripts themselves. Tychsen was roundly criticized by a number of scholars, which in turn prompted him to publish a defense in 1774. Mendelssohn seemed to be keenly aware of the controversy over Tychsen's work and the climate that bred such a reaction, and he made it clear where his empathy lay.

Edward Breuer, The Limits of Enlightenment: Jews, Germany and the Eighteenth-Century Study of Scripture, pg. 123.

2. The e-book:

Which usage, by the by, I ob-
serve, renders the Hebrew language the
most perfectly consistent with itself (in the
eye of unprejudiced reason) of any lan-
guage on earth. I must now illustrate
the truth of all this, lest it be thought I in-
dulge myself in the luxuriance of im-
agination.

"It appears to have been Adam's man-
"ner in naming of things, to consider
"some particular observed of them, and
"from that to name them: thus knowing
"Eve to have been taken out of him,
"himself being called Aïsh (איש, Gen. ii. 23.)
"Man, he called her Ashah,
" which we render woman.

Norman Sievwright, The Hebrew Text Considered; Being Observations on the Novelty and Self-Inconsistency of the Masoretic Schem of Pointing the Sacred Hebrew Scriptures, 1764. pg. 124.

Other than changing the long S to our standard lowercase s (eg, I observe, rather than I obferve) I preserved the formatting of this book exactly, since it captures some of the...charm? history? to see such antiquated printing conventions as, for example, the means of quotation. Why is my quote from pg. 124? Because Sievwright was so wordy and Germanic, that the 6th, 7th and 8th sentence from the beginning of pg. 123 is on pg. 124!

I tag Ari, Ishim, Dave, Gil, and Menachem.