Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures Online

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Being an encyclopedia on book cultures rather than book contents, this work places textuality and materiality of the book in the center of its investigation. The singularity of the Jewish book can only be understood in full if it is studied in its broader cultural and intercultural context. This encyclopedia does that by focusing on the paleographic features, intended function, cultural significance, readership, acceptance, and design of particular books and genres, as well as the producer-consumer relations involved in the making and circulating of books. It covers more than 2000 years of Jewish book cultures from all corners of the earth.

The Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures Online will appear before the print edition and features full-text searchable, richly illustrated articles. The print edition will be released after all online content is complete and will include one introductory volume, dealing with the fundamental research questions in the wide field of Jewish Book History, followed by three alphabetically organized volumes, offering a classic entry-by-entry encyclopedia, with articles of greatly varying length. The online work reflects this framework and presents the introductory essays as a separate, but strongly intertwined, section.

More information Brill.com

Sarajevo Haggadah

(623 words)

Author(s): Kogman-Appel, Katrin
The Sarajevo Haggadah held today by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina surfaced in 1894 and immediately raised scholarly attention inciting, thus, a relatively broad academic interest in Jewish book art. A typical representative of a group of 14th-century haggadot from northern Iberia, it displays a detailed narrative picture cycle of biblical history from the Creation to Moses on Mount Nebo.⸙The Sarajevo Haggadah (Sarajevo, National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina) surfaced in 1894 when a Jewish family in Sarajevo turned to the National Museu…
Source: Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures Online
Date: 2023-11-20

Science

(3,214 words)

Author(s): Garshtein, Niran
1. Medieval 1.1. Astrology Forthcoming 1.2. Astronomy Medieval Jews displayed a vivid interest in the study of astronomy. They contributed to the field in various languages and played an active role in transmitting astronomical knowledge to Latin Europe. Their works cover diverse astronomical topics: the structure of the heavens and earth, planetary motion, lunar and solar ecl…
Source: Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures Online
Date: 2023-01-31

Scribes

(2,712 words)

Author(s): Tov, Emanuel | Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith | Teplitsky, Joshua | Schrijver, Emile
1. Dead Sea ScrollsThe term "scribes of the Dead Sea Scrolls" is as problematic as the term Dead Sea Scrolls itself because of the diversity of the scrolls and their scribes, but there is no better term. Some 2,000 fragmentary scrolls, mainly in Hebrew but also in Aramaic and Greek, on leather and papyrus, were found not only at the shores of the Dead Sea, but also inlands, in the Judean Desert. The most well-known among them are some 950 texts found in caves at Qumran. The texts were writte…
Source: Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures Online
Date: 2023-11-20

Septuagint / Hellenistic Jewish Books

(2,056 words)

Author(s): De Troyer, Kristin | Candido, Dionisio
The Septuagint is a collection of Greek biblical books, some of which were translated from a Hebrew biblical text and others composed in Greek. These Greek texts underwent different revisions which left traces in the textual history. Whereas the reconstruction of the Old Greek text as it left the hands of the translators, is a goal of critical editions, the presentation of its textual development as it becomes visible in many witnesses is also interesting as it sheds light on different contexts of the Jewish (and later Christian) communities.⸙The strange thing about the (Greek) Bib…
Source: Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures Online
Date: 2023-11-20

Sfardata

(1,223 words)

Author(s): Olszowy-Schlanger, Judith
Sfardata is the name of a database created by the Israeli branch of the Hebrew Paleography Project (HPP), a project created to inventory and study all medieval Hebrew codices prior to 1540, which contain an explicit mention of their date of copy in a scribal colophon, or at least mention the scribe's name. ⸙Sfardata is the name of a database created by the Israeli branch of the Hebrew Paleography Project (HPP), under the direction of Malachi Beit-Arié. The Hebrew Palaeography Project was established in 1965 as a collaboration between the Institut …
Source: Encyclopedia of Jewish Book Cultures Online
Date: 2023-01-31