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Targum

By Marc Michaels on Fri 7 Jun 2024

My colleague, Estara Arrant posted an image on social media of one of the nine fragments that constitutes T-S K22.16, jokingly remarking that the streaky brown mess resembled a slice of toast.

As one might expect the catalogue entry on these fragments is short. Very short. It consists of one word - ‘illegible’. This of course piqued my interest. What was the ‘toast’ hiding? Also, I love a challenge. Thus, the day after the 2024 Ullendorff lecture, Estara brought the manuscript into the Genizah Unit and we set to work to solve the puzzle.

Whilst we refer to this as toast,... Read More

Has tags: Genizah Fragments, Targum

 

By Kim Phillips on Thu 8 Feb 2024

Among the most charming of the dozens of thousands of Bible fragments found in the Cairo Genizah,1 are the hundred or so in which the biblical text is written in some sort of shorthand, or abbreviated, manner.2 At least three different methods of abbreviation are found among these manuscripts. Sometimes, only the opening few words of each verse are written (the ‘Lemma Method’). The great pronouncement of comfort in the opening... Read More

Has tags: Bible, FOTM, Genizah Fragments, serugin, Targum, vocalisation

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee on Thu 13 Jan 2022

Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 27 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in April 1994, by Uwe Glessmer of the University of Hamburg:

With Heinz Fahr, I have published an edition of T-S B13.12, entitled Jordandurchzug und Beschneidung als Zurechtweisung in einem Targum zu Josua 5, which appears as No. 3 in the Orientalia Biblica et Christiana series published by J. J. Augustin (Glückstadt, 1991).
The manuscript T-S B13.... Read More

Has tags: Bible, circumcision, Genizah Fragments, Targum

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee on Thu 18 Nov 2021

Our Throwback Thursday this week is taken from issue 11 of the printed edition of Genizah Fragments, published in April 1986, by Michael Klein:

The Cairo Genizah has proved to be a unique kaleidoscope of mediaeval Jewish society. Its many thousands of manuscript fragments have shed light on almost every aspect of Jewish life in the Mediterranean basin. The texts and documents reflect both the sacred and mundane realms of daily life.
In the synagogal domain, new liturgical customs and texts have... Read More

Has tags: Bible, Genizah Fragments, Targum

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee and Deborah Farndell on Wed 17 Nov 2021

In 2014, UL conservator Mary French was asked to examine a parchment fragment in the New Series which had been encapsulated with a small piece of parchment folded over and obscuring a word. When she opened the Melinex pocket she was perplexed to find that some areas of the parchment were translucent, sticky, and unexpectedly pliable. Concerned that it might mean there was a humidity issue in the manuscript storage room, Mary measured the relative humidity levels and found they were elevated in areas near to some air vents. These vents were capped, and in 2016, our Conservation and... Read More

Has tags: conservation, Genizah Fragments, parchment, Q&A, Targum

 

By Melonie Schmierer-Lee on Thu 4 Nov 2021

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 More

Has tags: Bible, Genizah Fragments, printed, Targum

 

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