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 MoreBible
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