Editing Medieval Ashkenazi Masorah and <em>Masora Figurata</em>: Observations on the Functions of the Micrography in Hebrew Manuscripts

Abstract

This paper is part of the Subproject B4 of the CRC 933 from Heidelberg University entitled ‘Material Text Culture’. It deals with the material forms of the Bible and its Masorah in Ashkenaz. The MS Vat. Ebr. 14 copied by Elijah ha-Naqdan in 1239 in Northern France offers a great variety of Masoretic notes: regular, ornamental or figurative. This paper presents an extension of the critical edition of Masoretic notes published in the monograph The Masorah of Elijah ha-Naqdan: An Edition of Ashkenazic Micrographical Notes (forthcoming 2015). It assesses here about the praxeological questions of how Figurative Masorah served, in concrete manner, as an aid to the study of the Bible and whether forms and Masoretic contents in these drawings relate to one another or, also, to classical rabbinic sources.