Jewish Scribes Research Articles

Иудейская литература периода Второго Храма как возможный источник для концепции Ефрема Сирина о боговдохновенном учителе-писце (на примере шестого гимна «О Распятии»)

In his 6th Hymn De crucifixione that is consecrated to the interpretation of three days problem of Jesus’ resurrection, the Syriac poet-theologian Ephrem the Syrian (4th c.) functions as a teacher of astronomical and calendric lore. The article focuses on the probable sources of the construction of Ephrem’s authority as a teacher in this hymn. The author demonstrates that the astronomical discourse in the Syriac hymn is constructed with the specific structural devices, e.g., the first-person discourse, the term “calculation” and metaphorically expressed with the image of the scribe. These elements have obvious parallels within the Jewish Aramaic texts of the Second Temple, e.g., “the Aramaic Astronomical Book” and “the Document of Levi”. Like in Ephrem’s Hymn De crucifixione, in these texts are used the astronomical and other arithmetical calculations. The Jewish scribes who composed these works, transformed the old Babylonian mathematical lore into new narrative forms. In the course of this, these real scribes used fictive authority of the biblical figures associated with writing, e.g., Moses, David, Enoch, Noah and others. The author gives heed to the similar use of these biblical figures in Ephrem’s hymns and draws a conclusion about the self-definition by Ephrem as the scribe who is inspired by God and obtain a capability to interpretate God’s “secrets”. As a result, Ephrem “blends” the Christological typological interpretation of the “secret” or “symbol” with ancient Jewish and Mesopotamian connotations. Hence, in his sixth Hymn De crucifixione, the Syrian poet functions not as a theologian but as a teacher with quasi-prophetic status who is aligned with Moses and David and imitates their writing and interpretative activities. In the opinion of the author, these conclusions could shed light not only on the origins of Ephrem’s works, but on the origins of the Syriac Christianity as a whole.

Sapientialised Priest?: Reconsidering the Priestly Torah in Sirach

Abstract Scholars have maintained that Ben Sira belongs to a priestly group, or a circle of scribe-sages subjugated to priests, and that the book of Sirach hints at a merger of the created and priestly orders. The book’s harmonization of sapiential and Zadokite strands of Judaism might justify its identification with Jerusalemite priestly groups, but it is misleading to conclude that Sirach merges these two separate traditions. Its wisdom discourses are an adaptation of Proverbs in which Ben Sira, as a Jewish scribe, grants authority and power to the Zadokites on the model of Proverbs’ divine wisdom.

Stars without a Table: Planetary Horocrators from the Cairo Geniza

This essay describes a list of planetary horocrators—that is, the planets ruling each hour of the week—found in an eleventh-century manuscript from the Cairo Genizah. Four different fragments of this manuscript have thus far been identified, and they enable the reconstruction of the list's original layout. Such a list can easily be tabulated, but the medieval Jewish scribe who produced it preferred to spell it out in its entirety, and in a very disorganized manner. In part, this was because the Jews of medieval Cairo were more used to working with lists than with tables. But given his interest in various methods of divination (his manuscript also included a handbook of goralot, or lot-casting), our scribe may have deemed that the cumbersome and opaque layout of his list might enhance its perceived validity.

Blotting Out the Name

Abstract Part 1 of this study considered how the rabbinic prohibition against erasing the Tetragrammaton led to scribes performing diverse procedures to resolve scribal errors. In part 2 it will be shown that special procedures were performed in Torah scrolls, namely, skiving, excision, and removing sheets. Washing off the divine name was not found in the corpus examined. Despite the rabbinic prohibition, medieval Jewish scribes occasionally marked the Tetragrammaton with a strikethrough or erased it through abrasion. This may have been the handiwork of Karaite scribes who did not see themselves bound by the midrashic interpretation of Deut 12:4. The scribes who wrote the Aleppo Codex may have abraded erroneous instances of the Tetragrammaton in order to create a model codex. Scribes in the isolated Jewish community of Kaifeng, who erased erroneous instances of the Tetragrammaton, may not have been familiar with rabbinic strictures.

“Scriptor noster maior de arabico”, la escribanía de árabe en los reinos cristianos hispánicos

El presente trabajo alberga como principal objetivo provocar una revisión historiográfica del tema propuesto, para sustentar así el acercamiento, análisis y estudio de la escribanía de árabe en los reinos cristianos hispánicos entre el siglo XIII y el tránsito a la Modernidad. Para ello, se llevará a cabo una labor de recuperación del patrimonio bibliográfico que transitará por los estudios de documentación romanceada conservada en los archivos españoles y los diversos trabajos de las últimas cuatro décadas que examinan las figuras colindantes de judíos escribanos, trujamanes de árabe, escribanos moriscos, mudéjares diplomáticos y escribanos romanceadores. De este modo, hilvanando los resultados geográfica y diacrónicamente, se pretende ofrecer una visión lo más completa, uniforme y documentada posible sobre esta figura semiinstitucionalizada, que desempeñó labores de escritura cuando se precisaba, siempre tras la conquista de un territorio dominado por el Islam; y que, pasado un tiempo, cuando los habitantes de la zona aprendían la lengua de los vencedores, dejaba de hacer falta y, sencillamente, desaparecía.

Blotting Out the Name

Abstract Early rabbinic interpretation of Deut 12:4 prohibited erasure of the Tetragrammaton, which required Jewish scribes to employ creative methods to resolve extraneous instances of the divine name. This may be foreshadowed in the writing of divine appellations in Paleo-Hebrew in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Medieval Jewish scribes employed diverse methods to deal with errors involving the Tetragrammaton. In codices this involved marking God’s name with dots, rectangles (also used in liturgical scrolls), lines, and supralinear circelli. Some scribes indicated the Tetragrammaton’s erasure by leaving it unpointed and recording a correction (usually Adonai) in the margin, without any additional notation. A special procedure involved a nonstandard usage of the Qere notation. All of these methods were performed in accordance with rabbinic strictures. Part 2 of this study will consider exceptions to the rule and the special case of liturgical Torah scrolls.

Script-switching between Hebrew and Arabic Scripts in Documents from the Cairo Genizah

Abstract In the multi-lingual world of the Cairo Genizah, Arabic (including Judaeo-Arabic), Hebrew and Aramaic were used in legal documents and letters. Jewish scribes excelled in Hebrew and Arabic penmanship. The mixing of Hebrew and Arabic alphabets in documents by particular writers affords important sociolinguistic insights. This article presents case studies of two Genizah writers, Daniel b. ʿAzaryah (11th century) and Ḥalfon b. Manasse (12th century), who were both highly innovative and exceptional in their use of scripts and vocalisation signs. Their scribal habits and decisions allow us to understand attitudes of writers towards the two scripts, and levels of literacy within the Jewish scriptorium, and provide an important contribution to our understanding of medieval allography and script-switching.

From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon by Seth L. Sanders

Reviewed by: From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon by Seth L. Sanders David M. Carr seth l. sanders, From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon (TSAJ 167; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). Pp. xiv + 280. €120. This book is an epigraphically focused exploration of scribal consciousness and interrelationships of Babylonian and Judean scribal cultures, with a focus (in the case of the latter) on the Second Temple period. The body of the book starts with a substantial chapter providing a richly detailed overview of the invocation of the figure of Adapa in a variety of genres of Mesopotamian literature, not just the iterations of the myth of Adapa and the South Wind and at the head of lists of primeval sages (apkallū), but also in a widely circulated incantation collection (udug.hul, "evil demons"), several Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, catalogues of texts and authors, and (with the demise of native kingship) even identification of Adapa as the founder of massive Resh temple of Seleucid-period Uruk (and named author in a catalogue fragment found there). Based on this broad survey, Sanders argues that Adapa was the most prominent image in Mesopotamia of a human figure who traveled to heaven, was enthroned there, and mastered the secrets of the universe. As such, S. argues that Adapa is the most likely model for later Judean elaboration of the figure of Enoch in Second Temple Judaism, rather than the figure of Enmeduranki, who is often seen as Enoch's precursor. S. notes that Enmeduranki is noted as communing with the gods only in two somewhat idiosyncratic Neo-Assyrian texts, and he does not even clearly travel to heaven in them (cf. Adapa and Enoch). In chaps. 2 and 6, S. draws on a variety of theoretical resources to explore how Mesopotamian ritual texts about Adapa (chap. 2) and Qumran texts (chap. 6) provide scripts by which textual professionals could participate in the divine realm. In the case of Mesopotamia, exorcistic and divinitory texts provided a means by which scribes could take on the masterful persona (//mask) of Adapa in order to draw on divine power. Similarly, in the case of Qumran, texts such as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Self-Glorification Hymn (see esp. 4Q491) reconfigure elements of Daniel 11–12 and other biblical texts to provide a textual means by which readers at Qumran could join the heavenly council of the holy ones. Both bodies of literature, so S., are crafted in a scribal context that does not distinguish linguistic (social) and natural orders the way Westerners are prone to do, so that Adapa-like textual mastery of these literary scripts can provide cosmic mastery and communion with divine beings. The intervening chapters (3–5) build a history of how Second Temple Jewish scribes came to adopt and reframe Babylonian science. In chap. 3, S. argues for a movement from the preexilic use of "unproblematic language of direct perception of God" (p. 110; e.g., Amos 7:7; Isaiah 6; and the Micaiah vision of 1 Kings 22) to extended Ezekielian discourses about visions of God that are approximate (a likeness, ), mediated, and often distinctively somatic (introduced by "hand of Yhwh" [] language; e.g., Ezek 1:3; 40:1). In chap. 4, S. then looks at how Ezekiel's visionary emphasis and focus on exactitude in dating and measurement (in the temple vision of chaps. 40–48) is continued in later Enochic literature. That literature, however, is distinguished from earlier biblical literature that was hostile to Babylonian science (e.g., Deut 4:19) in now narratively depicting a Torah figure, Enoch, being "shown" Babylonian-like calculations (e.g., 4Q209 frag. 25, line 3) and other [End Page 124] astronomical wisdom. In this way, S. sees Enoch's revelation as being introduced in a way analogous to Priestly language of Moses "being shown" the pattern of the Priestly tabernacle (Exod 25:40; 26:30; see also 27:8). In chap. 5, S. explores the possible means by which such Babylonian science might have found its way into Second Temple Judean apocalyptic texts. He provides an overview of...

Milvia Bollati, Flora Cassen, and Marc Michael Epstein, The Lombard Haggadah. Introduction by Christopher de Hamel. Ed. Sandra Hindman. Les Eluminures. New York: Paul Holberton, 2019, 239 pp., colored ill.

Those of us who work with medieval illustrated manuscripts are often guilty of ignoring the major contributions by medieval Jewish scribes and illuminators or the manuscripts produced for Jewish consumers. To remedy this situation, Milivia Bollati, Flora Cassen, and Marc Michael Epstein here present the most impressive Lombard Haggadah, both by examining its background, purpose, design, and by providing a complete facsimile of the manuscript. Famous Christopher de Hamel (Cambridge) adds a pleasant introduction in which he emphasizes the considerable degree of overlap of Christian and Jewish manuscript production. The Lombard Haggadah is the earliest stand-alone Haggadah and is one of only three illustrated medieval Haggadot still privately owned (Sandra Hindman, 8). This manuscript was on public display in New York in April 2019, and was for sale. <?page nr="510"?>It is not clear to me whether any buyer acquired it.

Were the Yeshivot in Spain Centers for the Copying of Books?

Este artículo se ocupa de la copia de manuscritos hebreos en la Península Ibérica durante la Edad Media. Los lugares geográficos que se mencionan en los colofones de los manuscritos son la base para localizar los centros de copia. Aunque se sabe muy poco sobre el ambiente de trabajo de los escribas hebreos, podría suponerse que esta actividad se llevaba a cabo en la propia casa del patrón o en la del escriba. Sin embargo, encontramos una información fundamental en los colofones escritos en Sefarad: algunos manuscritos copiados a lo largo del siglo XV hasta la expulsión lo fueron en diversas yešibot de toda España. Aquí hacemos una descripción de las yešibot, sus jefes, los escribas y las personas que solicitaban las copias. Aunque la cantidad de manuscritos que contienen esta información no es muy abundante, popdemos suponer que otros se copiaron en ambientes similares. De ser así, las yešibot serían una especie de scriptoria de judíos. Este estudio puede arrojar alguna luz sobre la cultura del libro en la Península Ibérica durante la Edad Media.

At the interface of syntax and prosody: differentiating Left Dislocated and Tripartite Verbless Clauses in Biblical Hebrew

The so-called tripartite verbless clause in Biblical Hebrew consists of two nominal phrases and a pronominal element. Three analyses of the pronominal element have been advanced, each with implications for understanding the structure of the sentence. A first approach has been to view the pronominal element as a copular constituent, which serves only to link the two nominal constituents in a predication (Albrecht 1887, 1888; Brockelman 1956; and Kummerouw 2013). A second approach has been to view the pronominal element as the resumptive element of a dislocated constituent (Gesenius, Kautzsch and Cowley 1910; Andersen 1970; Zewi 1996, 1999, 2000; Jouon-Muraoka 2006). A third approach combines the first and second approaches and is represented by the work of Khan (1988, 2006) and Holmstedt and Jones (2014). A fourth approach views the pronominal element as a “last resort” syntactic strategy—the pronominal element is a pronominal clitic, which provides agreement features for the subject (Naude 1990, 1993, 1994, 1999, 2002). The pronominal element is obligatory when the nominal predicate is a referring noun phrase—the pronominal clitic is used to prevent ambiguity in the assignment of subject and predicate (see Doron 1986; Borer 1983). As is well-known in the linguistics literature, cross-linguistically left dislocation involves a “gap” at the boundary between the dislocated constituent and the matrix sentence. In spoken language, this gap may be realized by a small pause or an interjection (Berman and Grosu 1976). In this paper we consider the prosodic evidence that is available from the Masoretic accentual tradition. The Masoretes were Jewish scribes who attempted to preserve the precise reading tradition of the biblical text through the addition of a complex system of “accents” which were superimposed on the traditional Hebrew text between the sixth and the tenth centuries CE. Although the accentual system also was used for cantillation purposes, its complex system of conjunctive and disjunctive accents provides important evidence for prosodic phrasing, which can be utilized for differentiating the role of the pronoun in these two types of sentences which are otherwise structurally identical.

Hatpasah – Jewish translata documents from medieval Catalonia: formulae, law and society

ABSTRACTThis article presents a type of medieval Jewish document – a reproduction of an authenticated copy – called in Hebrew hatpasah. These documents, with accompanying formulae, were a Catalan Jewish approach to reproducing private deeds, in tandem with and parallel to Latin translatio. Such authoritative copies could work together, supersede, replace and, at times, conflict with Jewish legal norms. This practice seems to have arisen from contact between Jews and the Christian notary system, and was first initiated by Jewish individuals who conducted private transactions before Christian courts and notaries. These parties and the Christians notaries sought the assistance of Jewish scribes and courts, who assisted in authenticating the Hebrew signatures on the Latin documents being reproduced. Over time, Jewish scribes started to produce analogous reproductions of Hebrew documents, first for submission to non-Jewish notaries and, eventually, for use in Jewish courts. In this process, Jewish litigants, and later professional scribes, translated and internalized Latin formulae into Hebrew. Thus this case sheds light on the extent to which Jewish scribes were integrated into Latin notarial culture, and how that system’s norms influenced their practices and were integrated into Jewish law.

Writing Jewish Astronomy in the Early Hellenistic Age: The Enochic Astronomical Book as Aramaic Wisdom and Archival Impulse

The full publication of 4Q208 and 4Q209 in 2000 has enabled a renaissance of research on the Enochic Astronomical Book, illumining its deep connections with Babylonian scholasticism and spurring debate about the precise channels by which such “scientific” knowledge came to reach Jewish scribes. This article asks whether attention to Aramaic manuscripts related to the Astronomical Book might also reveal something about Jewish scribal pedagogy and literary production in the early Hellenistic age, particularly prior to the Maccabean Revolt. Engaging recent studies from Classics and the History of Science concerning astronomy, pedagogy, and the place of scribes and books in the cultural politics of the third century bce, it uses the test-case of the Astronomical Book to explore the potential significance of Aramaic sources for charting changes within Jewish literary cultures at the advent of Macedonian rule in the Near East.

Jewish Scribes and Christian Patrons: The Hebraica Collection of Johann Jakob Fugger

AbstractAcquiring Hebrew books was a common practice among Christian humanists. More surprising, perhaps, is that a large group of Hebrew manuscripts was produced for a Christian library. A Jewish scribal workshop organized by Johann Jakob Fugger (1516–75) in Venice—here analyzed for the first time—is one of the rarest examples of this phenomenon that emerged out of Renaissance book culture. To understand Fugger’s extensive bibliophilic enterprise, this essay examines the circulation and dissemination of Hebrew texts from the Jewish bookshelf among Christians, the relationships between Christian patrons and Jewish scribes, and the role of manuscripts as agents of print and as objects of collecting.

How Jesus Used Questions in Communication

This qualitative study using data drawn through content analysis, with an intercoder reliability of 0.4, focused on the questions Jesus asked as recorded in the gospel of Matthew. It addressed three questions: (1) What purposes did Jesus’ questions serve? (2) What were the effects of Jesus’ questions? (3) How did Jesus use questions to enhance communication? The 90 or so questions of Jesus addressed to individuals, His disciples, Jewish scribes, Pharisees and elders, and crowds fell into five categories according to purpose: (1) questions to teach or bring out a point, (2) questions to lead to analysis, (3) questions to rebuke, correct, (3) questions to deal with a question, and (5) questions to check. The effects or results of the questions include understanding the point, reversal of argument, wonder on the part of the questioners and listeners, and cessation of attempts to trap Jesus by His words. Jesus reiterated questions with slight modifications, used successive questions that built up to a climax, and used questions that moved from general to specific. Principles helpful for the present-day communicator were drawn from the findings.

Judeo-Greek wedding poems from the fifteenth century

AbstractThis paper is the first edition of a new collection of Judaeo-Greek texts. Moscow Guenzburg 746 is a very small ms., a Romaniote siddur, which contains eight wedding poems at the end. Four of the poems are in Hebrew, while the remaining four are in Greek. These poems, which are not attested to anywhere else, show strong relations with much later Christian love lyrics in Greek, that despite being erotic, were not necessarily aimed at weddings. The poetical language between the two traditions is the same, as is shown in the commentary. Since the ms. is dated to 1419, transmitted through an unknown Jewish scribe, it exhibits the oldest collection of Byzantine “tragoudia” known so far.

Calendars Beyond Borders: Exchange of Calendrical Knowledge Between Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe (12th-15th Century)

Abstract During the Middle Ages, calendars played a significant role in both the Jewish and Christian communities as a means of reckoning time and structuring religious worship. Although calendars spawned a rich and extensive literature in both medieval Latin and Hebrew, it remains a little-known fact that Jews and Christians studied not only their own calendrical traditions, but also those of their respective rival group: Jewish scribes incorporated Christian material into Hebrew calendrical manuscripts, while some Christian scholars even dedicated entire treatises to the calendar used by Jews. The present article will examine these sources from a comparative perspective and use them to shed new light on the intellectual exchange that took place between Jews and Christians during the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. Particular attention will be paid to the role of oral vs. written transmission in the transfer of calendrical knowledge from one context to another.

Conflict between Jews and Converts in Aragon Following the Persecution of 1391: New Testimonies from the Formulary of Yom Tov Ben Ḥannah of Montalban

Study and edition of a letter written in rhymed prose contained in the epistolographic formulary by Yom Tov Ben Ḥannah, scribe to the Jewish community of Montalban, in the Kingdom of Aragon. Written a few years after 1391 by the scribe on behalf of the local aljama, the letter was sent to the trustees of the Jewish community of Daroca, and its purpose was to collect money from Yosef Caro, a Jewish smith who had fled from Montalban to there, following a dispute with another elderly smith who was an apostate. A reading of the Hebrew text shows that the conflict goes beyond a simple dispute between craftsmen, and involves a clash between Jews and their former brethren. This new phenomenon of mass conversion is also corroborated by a Hebrew poem of the Montalban’s Jewish scribe that is edited and translated in addition. The analysis of the text reflects the tension between Jews and converts in the aftermath of the 1391 riots.

Turning tradition into eternal truth

The concept of revelation is as old as Israelite religion itself, harking back to the practices of divination and prophecy. The innovation that gave the concept new meaning was its application to a collection of written texts. Revelation became a document. There are precedents for the phenomenon in Mesopotamia, where the concept of revelation was invoked to buttress the authority of received texts. The Jewish scribes, too, used the argument of revelation as a means of persuasion. It was not their only strategy. Texts might also be presented as a legacy from famous ancestors from a venerable past in order to enhance their authority with an audience that might otherwise be reluctant to accept them.

The Jews and the Origins of Romance Script in Castile: A New Paradigm

Languages define cultures, and languages are defined by the way in which they are written down. Christian, Jewish and Muslim speakers of Spanish, in its early Castilian form, only began to develop their own written code in the final decades of the twelfth century. The oldest Aguilar Jewish document written in Romance is dated 1187, a date and a code which seem to implicate the soferim scribes in the movement to provide an alternative to Latinate writing. Monks belonging to the new twelfth-century orders imported from Languedoc the idea of producing an exclusively Romance code for legal documents in Spain. It was soon taken over and developed by other groups in the hybrid society of medieval Castile. Professional Jewish scribes appear to be amongst the earliest to join the trend and contribute to its success.Keywords: Aguilar; Castile; Jewish Charters; Romance code; Spain