"In The Hebrew Bible Manuscripts : A Millennium, scholars from different fields and dealing with different material sources are trying to consider the Hebrew Bible as a whole. The development of new databases and other technological tools have an increasing impact on research practices. By inviting doctoral students, young researchers, and established scholars to contribute, this interdisciplinary book showcases methods and perspectives which can support future scientific collaborations in the field of the Hebrew Bible. This edited volume gathers relevant research from Dead Sea Scrolls Studies, Cairo Genizah Studies, European Genizah Studies, and from Late Medieval Biblical Manuscript Studies"--

Winner of the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex. Journalist Matti Friedman’s true-life detective story traces how this precious manuscript was smuggled from its hiding place in Syria into the newly founded state of Israel and how and why many of its most sacred and valuable pages went missing. It’s a tale that involves grizzled secret agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who, as it turns out, would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book. What it reveals are uncomfortable truths about greed, state cover-ups, and the fascinating role of historical treasures in creating a national identity.

Collection of essays published elsewhere previously from 1954 to 2002.

This book tells the largely unfamiliar story of intellectual transmission, cultural exchange and practical cooperation, social interaction, and religious toleration between Jews and non-Jews in the Muslim as well as Christian world during the late Middle Ages. The story is composed of ten narratives, each of which brings to light a different aspect of Jewish life in a non-Jewish medieval society. The book is beautifully illustrated with images from the Hebrew holdings at the Bodleian Library, one of the largest and most important collections of Hebrew manuscripts worldwide. They range from Christian codex fragments as early as the 3rd century to a copy of Moses Maimonides' Mishneh Torah signed by Maimonides himself.

In The Hebrew Bible: A Millennium, manuscripts, texts, and methods applied in Hebrew Bible studies are considered through time. The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Cairo and European Genizot, as well as Late Medieval Biblical Manuscripts are examined.

For some five hundred years, Hebrew books have been counted among the treasures of the University of Cambridge, and Cambridge University Library's current holdings of Hebrew manuscripts (excluding most of the 140,000 fragments in its Genizah collections) are in excess of a thousand items. A wide range of Hebrew literature is represented, with substantial numbers in Bible, Bible Versions and Commentaries, Talmud, Halakhah, Liturgy, Science, Poetry, Philosophy and Kabbalah. The bulk of the material is late mediaeval but there are also earlier items, among them the famous Nash Papyrus from the second pre-Christian century. Although this collection is among the world's most important, attempts, beginning in the mid-Victorian period, to describe it in detail, and to publish the results, have never met with success. In this volume, Stefan Reif, assisted by Shulamit Reif, has attempted to set the situation right by providing careful descriptions that will guide researchers in codicologial matters and will alert them to data of special scholarly significance, without overwhelming them with the kind of prolix treatment that characterised manuscript study in the nineteenth century. The volume has benefited not only from local Cambridge expertise but also from world-wide scholarly co-operation and includes many references to recent publications, as well as a representative selection of photographed folios. There are essays on the history of Hebraists and Hebraic at Cambridge that will interest historians, as well as extensive indexes that will provide easy access to the rich and varied contents of the descriptions.

This volume includes contributions presented at two conferences, in Mainz (Germany) and Jerusalem (Israel). The articles present a number of new discoveries of binding fragments in several European libraries and beyond.

Publisher Description

Comprehensive catalogue of Hebrew Bible fragments in the Taylor-Schechter Additional Series, describing 14,679 items.