Thirteenth-century Hebrew Research Articles

Jewish Forerunners of the Spanish Biblia romanceada: A Thirteenth-Century Witness (Bodleian MS Hunt. 268)

Abstract Despite Church prohibitions, almost twenty medieval Bibles in Spanish survive. The Old Testament versions derived in many cases from translations from Hebrew made by Jews. These were characterized by a unique rabbinical “calque-language” that would be preserved by Sephardim for centuries after the Expulsion in 1492; but the Inquisition destroyed the medieval Jewish copies. This article studies a new witness, the oldest known: a thirteenth-century Hebrew commentary on the Hagiographa with Spanish glosses. These fully confirm the amazing continuity of the Ladino scriptolect.

The Beard as Spectacle and Scandal in a Thirteenth-century Hebrew Maqāma

Abstract The Eighth Maqāma by Yaʿacov ben Elʿazar (Toledo, ca. 1200) tells the story of ʿAkhbor, a bearded beggar-preacher who is revealed to be rich and lecherous. His sexual preference for a black maid leads his four white/Arab maids to murder him viciously, but not before taking revenge on his beard. In fact, the most notable feature of the false preacher is his gargantuan beard, which occupies a full one-third of the maqāma, and other beards are also excessively described. Following Robert Bartlett, I will relate to the beard as “social text” and explore its abundant symbolical meanings within the surrounding cultures of Islam and Judaism, as well as against the backdrop of Iberian contemporary society. Further, in order to better understand Ben Elʿazar’s manipulation of both the beard and the genre, as well as his emphasis on sexual, anal and scatological humor, I will have recourse to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theoretical discussions of “the grotesque body,” “the carnivalesque,” and to his generic model of the Mennipea.

Samuel of Norwich in the marshlands of King’s Lynn: economic tribulations reconstructed from a newly discovered thirteenth-century Hebrew starr in Cambridge University Library*

Samuel of Norwich in the marshlands of King’s Lynn: economic tribulations reconstructed from a newly discovered thirteenth-century Hebrew starr in Cambridge University Library*

Fairies, Lovers, and Glass Palaces: French Influences on Thirteenth-Century Hebrew Poetry in Spain—the Case of Ya'akov ben El'azar's Ninth Maḥberet

This article provides an intertextual reading of Love of Sahar and Kima, the ninth mahberet of Y'akov ben Elazar's Sefer ha-meshalim. This tale highlights the contrast between physical and spiritual love, feudal and religious constraints, and courtly ideas and a parody of those ideas. The paper expands upon the current knowledge of the thematic, structural, and ideological parallels between Y'akov ben Elazar's work and the literature of medieval France, and presents a number of prominent and specific examples that indicate the influence of the Matiere de Bretagne on this mahberet. Simultaneously, the paper identifies Ya'kov ben Ela'zar as an original European writer who made use of existing literary models, but who was independent in his muse and inspiration. The originality of this paper lies in the fact that for the first time in scholarly research, it is proven that there are vestiges of the fairy tale in Sefer ha-meshalim, and that this mahberet can be read as a rationalized fairy tale like those in French literature.

A Hebrew “sodomite” tale from thirteenth-century Toledo: Jacob Ben El‘azar's story of Sapir, Shapir, and Birsha

The purpose of this article is to provide a close reading of a thirteenth-century Hebrew narrative by Jacob Ben El‘azar of Toledo that recounts the tale of a “sodomite” who meets a violent end. The story focuses on the amorous affair of Sapir, an adult male, his beloved Shapir, a male youth around the age of puberty, and Birsha, a nefarious old man who lures Shapir away from Sapir, though Sapir ultimately seeks out Shapir and is reunited with him. Sapir and Birsha dispute over the boy and ultimately submit their case before a judge. The judge declares that Birsha deserves the death penalty, though he is spared this sentence and ordered only to forfeit the boy. Nevertheless, Sapir and Shapir take the law into their own hands and brutally murder Birsha. At the heart of the narrative is the tension between two models of eroticism between males, epitomized by the relationships of Sapir–Shapir and Birsha–Shapir, one sanctioned and the other condemned. The question that will be dealt with here is to determine what exactly distinguished the two relationships. Was Birsha considered a “sodomite” as opposed to Sapir, despite the fact that they both loved the male youth Shapir? Were they distinguished by their age, the nature of their desire, their sexual “identities,” their sexual acts, or other behaviors? (Foucault, The History of Sexuality, argued that the notion of sexual “identity” did not emerge until the modern era and that pre-modern societies thought only in terms of sexual acts. I largely agree with this evaluation though I will maintain that the categorization in the narrative under discussion distinguished between individuals who desired males and females versus those who desired males only.) In order to unravel this complicated narrative, we must delve deeply into the construction of sexuality within medieval Hebrew literature and more broadly within medieval Jewish culture—so enmeshed within its Islamic and Christian environments. I will argue that the identification of Birsha as a “sodomite” resided in his obsessive, mendacious, and violent qualities and not in his choice of love object, much less his sexual “identity.” Before presenting the narrative and my reading, I review some of the history of scholarship on homoeroticism in medieval Hebrew literature in order to provide a counterpoint to the methodological underpinnings of the present study. Throughout the study, I engage a variety of source types—Arabic homoerotic poems and narratives, Andalusi Hebrew poems, Christian reports of Muslim sexuality, exegetic and legal sources—in order to convey the highly specific and culturally circumscribed forms of homoeroticism assumed in Ben El‘azar's story.

The Story of „Johanan and the Scorpion“. A Thirteenth-Century Hebrew Romance

The present article analyzes the Hebrew story of Johanan and the Scorpion, found in a thirteenth-century manuscript from Northem France (Ms. Oxford [Bodl. Or. 135]), which represents an unusual phenomenon in Jewish literary tradition. Although it appears in a manuscript considered an important milestone in the history of medieval Hebrew literature, and despite the Jewish cultural norm of rewriting literary works again and again, it is the only existing Hebrew version of this theme. The reason it was never revised or copied may be the portrayal of the main character as a Jewish knight who leaves his community and surrenders to the element of ‘the other’, thereby losing his original identity. The assumption is made that these problematic ideas and poetic materials, together with historical circumstances, created the non-acceptance of this story.

A Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Tale in Hebrew: A Unique Literary Exchange

AbstractA single fragment of a thirteenth-century Hebrew translation of an Arthurian romance is testimony to the familiarity of Jews in Italy with the popular tales of King Arthur. The translator is a learned jew, well-versed in Hebrew, scripture and exegesis, and yet his translation is a classic example of a chivalric romance set in a culture far removed from that of its translator and its possible readers.

Why is the Sea Salty? The Discussion of Salinity in Hebrew texts of the Thirteenth Century

The thirteenth-century Hebrew texts that discuss salinity all ultimately go back to Aristotle's treatment of the subject in theMeteorology. However, in these Hebrew texts the question of what exactly makes the sea salty is answered in diverging ways. The oldest of them, theOtot ha-Shamayim(1210), being the Hebrew translation of the Arabic paraphrase of theMeteorology, proposes various causes of the sea's salinity, to wit, the dry exhalation, the action of heat, and the admixture of an earthy substance. This is due partly to Aristotle's own ambiguity, and partly to the fact that his Greek commentators interpreted his words in different ways. Two later encyclopedias, theMidrash ha-Hokhma(c. 1245) and theDe'ot ha-Philosofim(c. 1275?) base their expositions of salinity on Ibn Rushd, whose two commentaries on theMeteorologycontain various theories. The first encyclopedia opts for the action of heat as the major cause in producing saltiness, whereas the second attempts to explain in which way the various causes are interrelated by advisedly combining Ibn Rushd's accounts.

Some Remarks on the Evasion of the Usury Laws in the Middle Ages

The device of using a Christian straw man as an intermediary, for the purpose of evading the usury laws, which is mentioned in the three thirteenth century Hebrew documents quoted in Heichelheim's article, also appears in a case decided by the Court of The Exchequer of The Jews in 1272. In this case a Jew borrowed money from another Jew at interest, using the above device, and gave the creditor a mortgage on a certain house as security for the debt. The debtor then sold the mortgaged house to a Christian. Upon default by the debtor the creditor sought to recover the debt from the mortgaged property which was then in the hands of the Christian purchaser. The case is interesting because the court refused to be misled by the evasive practice and adjudged the transaction usurious, and also because of the insight it affords into the working of the medieval mind with regard to the question of usury. An English court, consisting of Christian judges, apparently held that although it was permissible for a Jew to take usury from a Christian, it was unlawful for him to take usury from another Jew.