Crossing Borders

KENNICOTT BIBLE

matt — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:11:59 +0000

The Kennicott Bible is the most lavishly illuminated Hebrew Bible to survive from medieval Spain and combines Islamic, Christian, and popular motifs. It has an inscription identifying the artist, rare in Hebrew manuscripts. The book is open to “Sefer Mikhlol,” a grammatical treatise by the twelfth-century ProvenÃ§al rabbi David Kihmhi. It is set within Islamic-style horseshoe arches, surrounded by animal vignettes. The Bible owes its name to the English Hebraist Benjamin Kennicott (1718â€“83), who acquired it while Librarian of the Radcliffe Library, Oxford. The history of the manuscript between the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and the eighteenth century remains a mystery.

View all the pages.

PORTOLAN MAP OF THE MEDITERRANEAN AND BLACK SEAS

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 22:05:31 +0000

This map features the main regions of medieval Hebrew manuscript production. These were Italy, Ashkenaz (today’s Germany, parts of France, and England), and Sepharad (Spain and Portugal) in Europe, and areas of the Orient and Byzantium. At lower right, the Red Sea is appropriately colored, with a band of dry land for the biblical parting of the waters. Portolan maps mark coastlines and ports, with distances indicatedâ€“an important tool of sea trade. Most Majorca cartographers were either Jewish or “conversos,” converts to Christianity.

MICHAEL MAHZOR

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:39:25 +0000

The Michael Mahzor is the earliest known dated and illustrated “mahzor,” a prayer book for Jewish festivals. It is so-named after the nineteenth-century bibliophile Heimann Joseph Michael who once owned it. Its Hebrew square script and the veiling of human faces are typical of medieval Ashkenaz. The upside-down hunting scene may have been a mistake by a Christian artist unfamiliar with Hebrew. Or it may be a reference to the story that in ancient Persia the Jews were saved from destructionâ€”their fate was reversedâ€”in the month of Adar, when this hymn is recited.

PSEUDO-LEONARDUS BRUNUS ARETINUS, AQUILA VOLANTE

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:48:16 +0000

This work in Italian is a synthesis of world history viewed as if by an “aquila volante,” an eagle in flight. It is full of quotations from Danteâ€™s “Divine Comedy,” fabulous and fantastic stories, medieval legends, and prophecies. The printer of the Holkham Hebrew Bible used the woodcut border seen here for his own title page, but reversed it to accommodate the right-to-left direction of Hebrew.

GERSONIDES, MILHAMOT HA-SHEM (WARS OF THE LORD)

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:31:25 +0000

The French biblical commentator, philosopher, and astronomer Gersonides (Levi ben Gershon, 1288â€“1344) wrote the treatise “Milhamot ha-Shem” to build upon the work of Aristotle, Maimonides, and other predecessors. The text explores the nature of human and divine knowledge. This copy is open to the beginning of the first book, a discussion of the immortality of the soul. By 1514 the manuscript was in Ottoman Turkey, as indicated by an inscription documenting its sale to a physician in the city of Adrianople (modern Edirne). The manuscript later belonged to Edward Pococke (1604â€“91), England’s leading Orientalist in the seventeenth century, Regius Professor of Hebrew, the first Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford, and ex officio curator of the Bodleian. The magnificent collection of manuscripts he amassed, mostly while serving as a chalpain in Syria, was purchased by the Bodleian in 1692. It comprised more than four hundred volumes, largely in Arabic but including some one hundred Hebrew manuscripts.

RASHI, ON THE PENTATEUCH

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:06:15 +0000

The acquisition in 1817 of the collection of Matteo Luigi Canonici (1727â€“c. 1805) represented the largest single purchase of manuscripts ever made by the Bodleian: more than 3,500 books, some 110 in Hebrew. Among these was this fine Italian manuscript, which bears the coat of arms of its commissioner, Daniel ben Samuel the physician. The adoption of a family emblem was widespread among wealthy Italian Jews, in imitation of the practices of the local nobility.

FRAGMENT OF EARLY CODEX IN GREEK: BOOK 4(6) EZRA

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:01:25 +0000

The Book of Ezra is a Jewish apocalyptic text from the late first century CE. It survived through Christian transmission, translated into Greek from a lost Hebrew original. Erroneously attributed to Ezra the Scribe (fifth century BCE), it is composed of seven visions and deals with the theological implications of the destruction of the Temple. In the third century a Christian introduction and appendix were added to the book. This leaf fragment is the oldest surviving copy of this text in Greek and the oldest fragment of a parchment codex in the Bodleian collection.

HOLKHAM HEBREW BIBLE

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:49:23 +0000

The invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century caused a revolution in the accessibility of texts and the spread of knowledge. Early printers often made their books look like manuscripts. In this luxurious printed Hebrew Bible the decoration has been painted by hand. The same border appears in reverse in “Aquila Volante,” an Italian book. Jewish printers often borrowed woodcut borders from Christian printers.

PART OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN ARABIC

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:46:09 +0000

Islamic decorative patterns were also used by Christians who lived under Muslim rule. This Arabic translation of the New Testament was copied by a Christian scribe in Damascus for a Christian patron. It is written in beautiful Thuluth script, a large and elegant cursive popular during the Mamluk period (1250â€“1517). The right-hand page shows the end of the Letter of Jude, followed by a colophon which states that the manuscript was commissioned by the merchant Sir George Aumada and was copied by Thuma ibn al-Safi ibn Yuhanna in 1342. On the left is the title-page for Acts of the Apostles.

HEBREW PSALTER

matt — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:42:45 +0000

Micrography, the use of minute script to create designs, is a type of decoration often found in Hebrew manuscripts. Here the final verses of Psalm 149 and part of Psalm 150 are framed by interlaced bands of tiny text. The braided pattern of words, hardly discernible without a magnifying glass, comprises the “masorah” (critical notes on the biblical text). The overall effect is similar to that of richly ornamented Islamic carpet pages.