Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 60 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 2010, by Ronny Vollandt:
The installation of a Hebrew press at Constantinople in 1503 by David b. Nahmias ushered in a period of prosperity for Jewish printing in the Ottoman Empire. Gershom Soncino, head of the Soncino family and universally acknowledged towering figure of five centuries of Hebrew printing, followed in 1530 and established his Jewish publishing house in... Read MoreBible
Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Vince Beiler
on Wed 29 Sep 2021
Vince, what are you working on at the moment?
Right now, I’m going through several hundred classmarks in the Firkovich II B collection, looking for joins between manuscripts. These are biblical manuscripts acquired by the noted Crimean Karaite collector Abraham Firkovich in the 19th century and subsequently sold to the Russian National Library in St Petersburg. While the classmarks collected by Firkovich number nearly 15,000, the II B collection is nearly one-tenth of that size, containing some 1,500 classmarks, many of which are Bibles that date to the 10th–13th... Read More
Has tags: Bible, Firkovich, Genizah Fragments, masora, Q&A
Joseph Habib
on Fri 17 Sep 2021
An Anonymous Karaite Commentary on Hosea from the Cairo Genizah ● By Friedrich Niessen ● Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, Volume 13 ● Brill 2021
In his preface to his commentary on the book of Hosea, St. Jerome, one of the greatest Biblical scholars of his time (5th century C.E.), wrote desperately,
If, in the exposition of all the prophets, we need the Holy Spirit’s intervention in order that — by whose inspiration they were written — they may be explained through... Read MoreHas tags: Bible, Book, commentary, Genizah Fragments, Karaite
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 9 Sep 2021
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 40 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 2000, by our late colleague Friedrich Niessen:
A passage in II Samuel 10:15–19 deals with David’s campaign against the Aramean king, Hadadezer, and Shovakh, the commander of his army. This is the only context in which the name Shovakh appears in the Bible in such a form. A different person with the same name occurs in a traditional Jewish legend, which relates that after the conquest of... Read MoreHas tags: Bible, chronicle, Genizah Fragments, Samaritan
Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Kim Phillips
on Wed 25 Aug 2021
Kim, what are you working on today?
I’m working on T-S A43.6, and its associated fragments. They are a Shorthand Bible, or a Psalter, to be more precise.
A Shorthand Bible – is this the same as a Serugin manuscript?
Sort of. For the past too-long I’ve been looking at the different ways the mediaeval Jewish community in Fustat produced Bibles (or parts of Bibles) written in abbreviated form. It turns out there are three basic ways they did it: sometimes they just wrote the initial word, or few words, of a given verse, then the same for... Read More
Has tags: Bible, codex, Genizah Fragments, Q&A, serugin
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 22 Jul 2021
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 17 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in April 1989, by Geoffrey Khan while he was a Research Associate in the GRU:
Among the treasures of the Cairo Genizah collections are a number of Hebrew Bible manuscripts written in the Middle Ages by members of the Karaite Jewish sect. These manuscripts are unusual in that the text is written not in Hebrew, but in Arabic script, sometimes with Hebrew pointing. The synagogue in which the... Read More
Has tags: Arabic, Bible, British Library, Crusaders, Genizah Fragments, Hebrew, Karaite, language, Shapira
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 1 Jul 2021
Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 32 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in October 1996, by Jack R. Lundbom, while he was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall:
What induced me to consult the Taylor-Schechter Genizah fragments in the Cambridge University Library was an interest in section markings in ancient biblical manuscripts. Modern critical editions of the Hebrew Bible, e.g. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, designate these sections open or closed, the former by a... Read More
Has tags: Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Genizah Fragments, scroll, sigla
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 10 Jun 2021
Nick Posegay's article 'Sticking to the Script: How an incredible journey of Hebrew letters helps us recall the Arabic language' has just appeared in The Scholar, an annual magazine for Gates Cambridge scholars and alumni. Nick's article tells the Genizah story to a general audience through the lens of T-S Ar.5.58, a leaf from a Bible glossary with the vocabulary for a portion of 1 Samuel:
"The scribe’s booklet was... Read More
Has tags: article, Bible, Genizah Fragments, glossary