Books by Miriam Goldstein
A Judeo-Arabic Parody of the Life of Jesus: The Toledot Yeshu Helene Narrative, 2023
This book provides the first-ever examination of the Judeo-Arabic versions of Toledot Yeshu (TY),... more This book provides the first-ever examination of the Judeo-Arabic versions of Toledot Yeshu (TY), the notorious parody of the life of Jesus originating in Late Antiquity, as well as a full edition and translation of Judeo-Arabic TY texts from their earliest fragmentary witnesses through their early modern copies. The author illuminates the historical and literary development of the Judeo-Arabic TY texts, retelling the story of this long-lived polemical narrative with the critical inclusion of this significant Judeo-Arabic material. Goldstein considers the function of the narrative in the religiously diverse Arabic-speaking milieu and traces the existence of TY in a variety of languages in later Jewish Near Eastern story collections. In this study, the author transforms historical understandings of Toledot Yeshu and of the Near Eastern communities who read and transmitted the narrative.
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Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam , 2018
This edited volume treats the development of the concept of author, and authors' preservation of ... more This edited volume treats the development of the concept of author, and authors' preservation of their works, in Arabic and Persian literature. It is the result of a conference hosted at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2013.
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University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
Rather than simply borrowing or lending customs, goods, and notions to one another, the peoples o... more Rather than simply borrowing or lending customs, goods, and notions to one another, the peoples of the Mediterranean region interacted within a common culture. The medieval Islamic world comprised a wide variety of religions. While individuals and communities in this world identified themselves with particular faiths, boundaries between these groups were vague and in some cases nonexistent. Beyond Religious Borders presents sophisticated and often revolutionary studies of the ways Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers drew ideas and inspiration from outside the bounds of their own religious communities.
Each essay in this collection covers a key aspect of interreligious relationships in Mediterranean lands during the first six centuries of Islam. These studies focus on the cultural context of exchange, the impact of exchange, and the factors motivating exchange between adherents of different religions. Essays address the influence of the shared Arabic language on the transfer of knowledge, reconsider the restrictions imposed by Muslim rulers on Christian and Jewish subjects, and demonstrate the need to consider both Jewish and Muslim works in the study of Andalusian philosophy. Case studies on the impact of exchange examine specific literary, religious, and philosophical concepts that crossed religious borders. In each case, elements native to one religious group and originally foreign to another became fully at home in both. The volume concludes by considering why certain ideas crossed religious lines while others did not, and how specific figures involved in such processes understood their own roles in the transfer of ideas.
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Mohr Siebeck, 2011
The innovative Judeo-Arabic Bible exegesis of the Karaites of Jerusalem decisively shaped current... more The innovative Judeo-Arabic Bible exegesis of the Karaites of Jerusalem decisively shaped current and later trends in Jewish Bible exegesis. This book, on the basis of numerous manuscripts, reconstructs the exegetical work authored by two leaders of the community of Karaite scholars living in Jerusalem (10th/11th c. C.E.) and analyzes it as a product of contemporaneous Islamicate intellectual trends. Yūsuf ibn Nūh, a grammarian and revered teacher of this scholarly community, authored a lengthy commentary on the Pentateuch, which was revised and updated by his student Abu al-Faraj Harun. Goldstein examines the historical background of the composition and its reception, as well as major principles of its exegetical method, an amalgamation of traditional Jewish techniques with methods and concepts inspired by or absorbed from the Arabic-Islamic environment. The book includes extensive citation from the commentary in English translation and an appendix of all cited texts in the original Judeo-Arabic. Yet this book is more than a study of one specific composition. Goldstein’s analysis provides a basis for the recognition and understanding of the exegetical methods employed extensively, consistently and conservatively during two centuries of Karaite exegesis in Jerusalem. Furthermore, it serves as an introduction to a school of exegesis that was one of the crucial links between traditional rabbinic literature and the Jewish Bible commentaries composed in Europe. This book is intended for students of the Bible and biblical exegesis and of medieval Jewish and Middle Eastern history, as well as those simply curious to learn more about this vibrant period of creative composition in Judeo-Arabic.
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Papers by Miriam Goldstein
Religious and Intellectual Diversity in the Islamicate World and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Sarah Stroumsa, 2024
In the view point of the 10th century Karaite Jewish scholar Ya'qub al-Qirqisani, Noah's Ark incl... more In the view point of the 10th century Karaite Jewish scholar Ya'qub al-Qirqisani, Noah's Ark included the latest in engineering design, as well as a healthy dose of divine miracles. But he will tell you which is which! Judeo-Arabic critical edition and English facing translation, a taste of al-Qirqisani's Genesis commentary composed in 'Abbasid Baghdad.
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Harvard Theological Review, 2020
This is a first-time presentation of the initial section of the Toledot Yeshu (TY) narrative desc... more This is a first-time presentation of the initial section of the Toledot Yeshu (TY) narrative describing the birth and early life of Jesus in Judeo-Arabic, a text with important implications for current research on TY. First, the origin of the birth narrative has been debated in recent scholarship on the Hebrew versions of TY. The existence of this lengthy Judeo-Arabic birth narrative, preserved in two manuscripts belonging to the Russian National Library, as well as the identification of other, earlier Judeo-Arabic manuscript fragments that include the TY birth narrative, demonstrates that the birth narrative formed part of TY significantly earlier than has been previously suggested. Second, the narrative preserved in the Russian manuscripts also demonstrates the relevance of the Judeo-Arabic versions of TY for the understanding of the development of this protean work. Examination of their textual tradition reveals interesting connections with particular Hebrew versions of TY from E...
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Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 2019
The parodical narrative Toledot Yeshu (TY) has been the object of burgeoning interest in the past... more The parodical narrative Toledot Yeshu (TY) has been the object of burgeoning interest in the past decade. It has recently become evident that this work was quite popular in Judeo-Arabic, and circulated continuously in Arabic-speaking Jewish communities from at least the eleventh century until nearly the present day. The following is a first foray into the Judeo-Arabic textual tradition of this narrative. From the sixteenth century and beyond, TY circulated in Arabic-speaking communities in collections of folk narrative. Close examination of the textual tradition of TY in Judeo-Arabic as preserved in four parallel manuscript fragments from the twelfth—fifteenth centuries provides further, more subtle evidence linking TY to this genre, and suggests that TY served primarily as literary entertainment in the Near East. I conclude with consideration of the codicological context of TY manuscripts preserved in Europe, and propose that this Near Eastern function contrasts to TY’s primarily p...
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Der Islam, 2013
Abstract: The medieval Karaite grammarian and exegete Abū l-Faraj Hārūn b. al-Faraj (Jerusalem, 5... more Abstract: The medieval Karaite grammarian and exegete Abū l-Faraj Hārūn b. al-Faraj (Jerusalem, 5th/11th century) was a broad reader of the literature available in Arabic, in a variety of genres. Earlier studies have demonstrated that in his grammatical works on the Hebrew language, Hārūn adapted discussions from well-known compositions focused on Arabic and the Qurʾān. The following examination of Hārūn’s treatment of the subject of biblical majāz, non-literal language, aims to show that in constructing his sophisticated and innovative discussion of the topic, the Karaite scholar read widely – and adapted creatively – incorporating the methods of a variety of genres in Arabic, including uṣūl al-naḥw, uṣūl al-fiqh and even iʿjāz al-Qurʾān and combining them together with earlier Jewish and Karaite scholarly tradition to produce what seems to be the first comprehensive discussion of non-literal language in Judeo-Arabic.
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Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World
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Segula History Magazine, 2022
A Hebrew article in the popular history magazine "Segula" describing the revolution that occurred... more A Hebrew article in the popular history magazine "Segula" describing the revolution that occurred with the Jewish adoption of Arabic as an everyday language as well as one in which they wrote about....everything, during Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period.
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Jewish Quarterly Review 111.1, 2021
This article discusses the origins of the long (“Helene”) version of the polemical anti-Christian... more This article discusses the origins of the long (“Helene”) version of the polemical anti-Christian narrative Toledot Yeshu, the earliest freestanding composition written by Jews against central tenets of Christianity.
Broadly speaking, the Toledot Yeshu narrative is a subversive rendering of central aspects of the life of Jesus and was composed at some point during Late Antiquity or the early Islamic period. This article discusses the origins of the long (“Helene”) version of this polemical parody, which was well known in most parts of the Jewish world, and argues that this expanded version of the narrative was a creation of the classical Islamic period, in Judeo-Arabic, likely around the ninth or tenth century. This argument is supported by manuscript evidence in Judeo-Arabic from a slightly later period. Furthermore, Jewish-Christian debate in a variety of Near Eastern languages was and remained active during the first few centuries of the Islamic period, and the tone and contents of TY are typical of the polemics composed during this time. A further backdrop for the creation of this Jewish polemical narrative was the existence of numerous accounts of Jesus’s birth and childhood in Arabic, among Muslims and Christians, which would have provided fertile ground for the creation of a Jewish account of Jesus’s birth and childhood, or “Jewish infancy gospel,” as found in TY.
*Link to the article appears below. If you do not have an institutional subscription to Muse and would like a copy, please contact me.
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Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures, 2021
The well-known legend of the finding of the "true cross," (inventio crucis) appears in parodical ... more The well-known legend of the finding of the "true cross," (inventio crucis) appears in parodical form in Eškol ha-Kofer, an encyclopedic work penned by the Byzantine Karaite Judah Hadassi in the mid-twelfth-century. This rendition demonstrates striking parallels with the parody on the “true cross” narrative as found in a particular Hebrew version (Italian A) of the highly popular anti-Christian narrative Toledot Yešu. I suggest that TY was the source of Hadassi’s account, indicating that the parodical narrative was in circulation in Byzantium as early as his time.
This is an important piece of evidence in light of the fact that this particular TY version has already been shown to demonstrate striking parallels with renditions in Judeo-Arabic that circulated widely in the Near East from a much earlier period – but until now the means of transmission between Europe and the Near East have been unclear. Circulation in Byzantium, a zone of contact between the Near East and Europe, could provide one answer to this question of transmission as well as suggesting a possible gateway to circulation further west in European Jewish communities.
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Harvard Theological Review , 2020
A first-time presentation of the initial section of the Toledot Yeshu (TY) narrative describing t... more A first-time presentation of the initial section of the Toledot Yeshu (TY) narrative describing the birth and early life of Jesus in Judeo-Arabic. The dating and origin of the birth narrative in TY has been debated in recent scholarship on the Hebrew versions of TY, and the identification of this lengthy Judeo-Arabic birth narrative as well as a number of earlier Judeo-Arabic manuscript fragments demonstrates that the birth narrative formed part of TY significantly earlier than previously thought. Furthermore, examination of this early Judeo-Arabic textual tradition reveals interesting connections with particular Hebrew versions of TY from Europe and can shed light on the question of how the work moved between East and West. Finally, this Judeo-Arabic version of TY demonstrates a clever literary adaptation to its Arabic-Islamic linguistic and cultural surroundings.
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Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 2019
Written works created during the third Islamic century provide evidence of wide-ranging literary ... more Written works created during the third Islamic century provide evidence of wide-ranging literary developments and innovations: a transition from a tradition of compilation and transmission to an era of independent and creative authorship; from an environment of anonymity or dependence on the great names of the past to one in which the current, the named, and the new gained significant value; and from a tradition of largely oral transmission of learning and aural instruction to one in which written transmission became increasingly valued. This transition took centuries to occur, and while it began in the third/ninth century or even slightly earlier, only many years later were the permanent results of the process apparent.
In this article I evaluate the role played by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim b. Qutayba (213-76/828-89) in this period of transition, on the basis of the analysis of some dozen prefaces with which this scholar-judge-litterateur introduced his works. Numerous characteristics of Ibn Qutayba’s prefaces demonstrate his comparative lack of concern with asserting his own “possession” of his works as their author, as well as that the preface form apparent in them is a developing and somewhat inconsistent one, not yet the form of the classic book preface that would come into being in generations following him. While Ibn Qutayba’s prefaces are innovative examples of composition and of presentation of material in the third/ninth century, examination of their content and form reveals that they represent a transitional stage in the creation of the authored book.
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Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 2019
The parodical narrative Toledot Yeshu (TY) was quite popular
in Judeo-Arabic, and circulated cont... more The parodical narrative Toledot Yeshu (TY) was quite popular
in Judeo-Arabic, and circulated continuously in Arabic-speaking Jewish communities from at least the eleventh century until nearly the present day. The following is a first foray into the Judeo-Arabic textual tradition of this narrative. From the sixteenth century and beyond, TY circulated in Arabic-speaking communities in collections of folk narrative. Close examination of the textual tradition of TY in Judeo-Arabic as preserved
in four parallel manuscript fragments from the twelfth—fifteenth centuries provides further, more subtle evidence linking TY to this genre, and suggests that TY served primarily as literary entertainment in the Near East. I conclude with consideration of the codicological context of TY manuscripts preserved in Europe, and propose that this Near Eastern function contrasts to TY’s primarily polemical function in Europe.
*Copyright rules prohibit placing a full PDF of the article on this site, but I will gladly provide one upon request.
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Journal of Jewish Studies, 2016
Abraham b. Ezra vaunted his knowledge of Arabic before the non-Arabic-speaking Jews of Europe, an... more Abraham b. Ezra vaunted his knowledge of Arabic before the non-Arabic-speaking Jews of Europe, and this is evident in the vexed and mysterious references to Arabic in his Bible commentaries. The exegete’s use of the phrase "peh rafah bi-leshon yishma'el" (‘spirantised peh in the Arabic language’) in which he parallels the function of the biblical Hebrew vav with that of the Arabic fā’ has long been viewed as perplexing: often the proposed syntactic function does not accord with the usage of the classical Arabic conjunction fa–. Ibn Ezra had Judeo-Arabic usage in mind, where fā’ takes on numerous functions beyond the strict boundaries of classical Arabic – and his keen discovery has only recently been independently ‘re–discovered’ in modern scholarship. In instances where Judeo-Arabic usage cannot provide a basis for Ibn Ezra’s assertion, we argue that the exegete’s polemical motives regarding specific instances of the biblical vav led him to expand the use of the Arabic particle even beyond what was permissible in Judeo-Arabic, making manipulative use of his own superiority in Arabic and his readers’, Jews in Christian Europe, ignorance of it.
**I will be glad to provide a PDF of this article upon request by email. JJS copyright prohibits my placing the PDF here.
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Ginzei Qedem, 2016
Fourteenth-century Karaite works in Arabic reveal the extent to which scholars of the period were... more Fourteenth-century Karaite works in Arabic reveal the extent to which scholars of the period were forging a new path for their movement, and were diverging from narratives found in earlier Karaite sources. This article is one of the first to begin to examine this understudied period in Judeo-Arabic literature. Yefet b. Saghir’s Book of Commandments is well-attested in manuscript collections in Russia, and is also found in collections in Western Europe and the United States. The book contained ten treatises (maqālāt), the first of which was entitled ‘On required principles and on circumcision, since it is the first of the commandments’. The first five chapters of Yefet ibn Saghir’s Book of Commandments establish a succinct quasi-historical and utterly polemical narrative regarding Karaite Judaism, its origins and its relationship to its Rabbanite rivals as well as to neighboring religions.
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Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (ZDMG) , 2014
The eleventh-century exegete and linguist Abu al-Faraj Harun was well-read in contemporaneous Ara... more The eleventh-century exegete and linguist Abu al-Faraj Harun was well-read in contemporaneous Arabic composition of a wide variety. It is little wonder that he included an epilogue to his popular Judeo-Arabic biblical glossary, of the form customary in Arabic literature in general, but with particular interest to the Judeo-Arabic and Jewish sphere.
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Der Islam, 2013
The 11th century Karaite Abu al-Faraj Harun reveals his broad reading practices via the way he e... more The 11th century Karaite Abu al-Faraj Harun reveals his broad reading practices via the way he employs the Arabic term majaz, "non-literal usage." In this paper I examine his uses and applications of the term in his biblical exegesis and demonstrate their ties to a broad variety of genres of Arabic literature. Eleventh-century Karaites like Abu al-Faraj Harun had gone well beyond the circumscribed literary world of tenth-century Karaite scholars, and
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Books by Miriam Goldstein
Each essay in this collection covers a key aspect of interreligious relationships in Mediterranean lands during the first six centuries of Islam. These studies focus on the cultural context of exchange, the impact of exchange, and the factors motivating exchange between adherents of different religions. Essays address the influence of the shared Arabic language on the transfer of knowledge, reconsider the restrictions imposed by Muslim rulers on Christian and Jewish subjects, and demonstrate the need to consider both Jewish and Muslim works in the study of Andalusian philosophy. Case studies on the impact of exchange examine specific literary, religious, and philosophical concepts that crossed religious borders. In each case, elements native to one religious group and originally foreign to another became fully at home in both. The volume concludes by considering why certain ideas crossed religious lines while others did not, and how specific figures involved in such processes understood their own roles in the transfer of ideas.
Papers by Miriam Goldstein
Broadly speaking, the Toledot Yeshu narrative is a subversive rendering of central aspects of the life of Jesus and was composed at some point during Late Antiquity or the early Islamic period. This article discusses the origins of the long (“Helene”) version of this polemical parody, which was well known in most parts of the Jewish world, and argues that this expanded version of the narrative was a creation of the classical Islamic period, in Judeo-Arabic, likely around the ninth or tenth century. This argument is supported by manuscript evidence in Judeo-Arabic from a slightly later period. Furthermore, Jewish-Christian debate in a variety of Near Eastern languages was and remained active during the first few centuries of the Islamic period, and the tone and contents of TY are typical of the polemics composed during this time. A further backdrop for the creation of this Jewish polemical narrative was the existence of numerous accounts of Jesus’s birth and childhood in Arabic, among Muslims and Christians, which would have provided fertile ground for the creation of a Jewish account of Jesus’s birth and childhood, or “Jewish infancy gospel,” as found in TY.
*Link to the article appears below. If you do not have an institutional subscription to Muse and would like a copy, please contact me.
This is an important piece of evidence in light of the fact that this particular TY version has already been shown to demonstrate striking parallels with renditions in Judeo-Arabic that circulated widely in the Near East from a much earlier period – but until now the means of transmission between Europe and the Near East have been unclear. Circulation in Byzantium, a zone of contact between the Near East and Europe, could provide one answer to this question of transmission as well as suggesting a possible gateway to circulation further west in European Jewish communities.
In this article I evaluate the role played by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim b. Qutayba (213-76/828-89) in this period of transition, on the basis of the analysis of some dozen prefaces with which this scholar-judge-litterateur introduced his works. Numerous characteristics of Ibn Qutayba’s prefaces demonstrate his comparative lack of concern with asserting his own “possession” of his works as their author, as well as that the preface form apparent in them is a developing and somewhat inconsistent one, not yet the form of the classic book preface that would come into being in generations following him. While Ibn Qutayba’s prefaces are innovative examples of composition and of presentation of material in the third/ninth century, examination of their content and form reveals that they represent a transitional stage in the creation of the authored book.
in Judeo-Arabic, and circulated continuously in Arabic-speaking Jewish communities from at least the eleventh century until nearly the present day. The following is a first foray into the Judeo-Arabic textual tradition of this narrative. From the sixteenth century and beyond, TY circulated in Arabic-speaking communities in collections of folk narrative. Close examination of the textual tradition of TY in Judeo-Arabic as preserved
in four parallel manuscript fragments from the twelfth—fifteenth centuries provides further, more subtle evidence linking TY to this genre, and suggests that TY served primarily as literary entertainment in the Near East. I conclude with consideration of the codicological context of TY manuscripts preserved in Europe, and propose that this Near Eastern function contrasts to TY’s primarily polemical function in Europe.
*Copyright rules prohibit placing a full PDF of the article on this site, but I will gladly provide one upon request.
**I will be glad to provide a PDF of this article upon request by email. JJS copyright prohibits my placing the PDF here.
Each essay in this collection covers a key aspect of interreligious relationships in Mediterranean lands during the first six centuries of Islam. These studies focus on the cultural context of exchange, the impact of exchange, and the factors motivating exchange between adherents of different religions. Essays address the influence of the shared Arabic language on the transfer of knowledge, reconsider the restrictions imposed by Muslim rulers on Christian and Jewish subjects, and demonstrate the need to consider both Jewish and Muslim works in the study of Andalusian philosophy. Case studies on the impact of exchange examine specific literary, religious, and philosophical concepts that crossed religious borders. In each case, elements native to one religious group and originally foreign to another became fully at home in both. The volume concludes by considering why certain ideas crossed religious lines while others did not, and how specific figures involved in such processes understood their own roles in the transfer of ideas.
Broadly speaking, the Toledot Yeshu narrative is a subversive rendering of central aspects of the life of Jesus and was composed at some point during Late Antiquity or the early Islamic period. This article discusses the origins of the long (“Helene”) version of this polemical parody, which was well known in most parts of the Jewish world, and argues that this expanded version of the narrative was a creation of the classical Islamic period, in Judeo-Arabic, likely around the ninth or tenth century. This argument is supported by manuscript evidence in Judeo-Arabic from a slightly later period. Furthermore, Jewish-Christian debate in a variety of Near Eastern languages was and remained active during the first few centuries of the Islamic period, and the tone and contents of TY are typical of the polemics composed during this time. A further backdrop for the creation of this Jewish polemical narrative was the existence of numerous accounts of Jesus’s birth and childhood in Arabic, among Muslims and Christians, which would have provided fertile ground for the creation of a Jewish account of Jesus’s birth and childhood, or “Jewish infancy gospel,” as found in TY.
*Link to the article appears below. If you do not have an institutional subscription to Muse and would like a copy, please contact me.
This is an important piece of evidence in light of the fact that this particular TY version has already been shown to demonstrate striking parallels with renditions in Judeo-Arabic that circulated widely in the Near East from a much earlier period – but until now the means of transmission between Europe and the Near East have been unclear. Circulation in Byzantium, a zone of contact between the Near East and Europe, could provide one answer to this question of transmission as well as suggesting a possible gateway to circulation further west in European Jewish communities.
In this article I evaluate the role played by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim b. Qutayba (213-76/828-89) in this period of transition, on the basis of the analysis of some dozen prefaces with which this scholar-judge-litterateur introduced his works. Numerous characteristics of Ibn Qutayba’s prefaces demonstrate his comparative lack of concern with asserting his own “possession” of his works as their author, as well as that the preface form apparent in them is a developing and somewhat inconsistent one, not yet the form of the classic book preface that would come into being in generations following him. While Ibn Qutayba’s prefaces are innovative examples of composition and of presentation of material in the third/ninth century, examination of their content and form reveals that they represent a transitional stage in the creation of the authored book.
in Judeo-Arabic, and circulated continuously in Arabic-speaking Jewish communities from at least the eleventh century until nearly the present day. The following is a first foray into the Judeo-Arabic textual tradition of this narrative. From the sixteenth century and beyond, TY circulated in Arabic-speaking communities in collections of folk narrative. Close examination of the textual tradition of TY in Judeo-Arabic as preserved
in four parallel manuscript fragments from the twelfth—fifteenth centuries provides further, more subtle evidence linking TY to this genre, and suggests that TY served primarily as literary entertainment in the Near East. I conclude with consideration of the codicological context of TY manuscripts preserved in Europe, and propose that this Near Eastern function contrasts to TY’s primarily polemical function in Europe.
*Copyright rules prohibit placing a full PDF of the article on this site, but I will gladly provide one upon request.
**I will be glad to provide a PDF of this article upon request by email. JJS copyright prohibits my placing the PDF here.
Our main objectives will be (1) to continue the identification and cataloguing of manuscripts related to Bible exegesis and translation in the Firkovitch collection series RNL Yevr.-Arab. I, (2) to make the metadata accessible for further research, so as to enable the integration of the findings into related fields, including Judaic studies, Islamic and Arabic studies, and the study of Eastern Christianity.
The project will focus on cataloguing the biblical exegesis and translation manuscripts in the RNL Yevr.-Arab. I series. This series contains approximately 2,700 manuscripts of Bible commentaries and translations, 889 of which have already been catalogued. Building in the existing tools and identifications, the project will catalogue the remaining 1,811 manuscripts.
The manuscripts of the Firkovitch collections, some eighteen thousand items (in which one item can include hundreds of folios) gathered by the Karaite community leader and explorer Abraham Firkovitch in the latter part of the nineteenth century, provide an extraordinary window into the intellectual and religious life of the medieval Jewish communities in Arabic lands during their “Golden Age” between the 9th and 13th centuries. These centuries were a period of flourishing scholarship and creativity in Arabic by Jews, Christians and Muslims, initially fueled by an influx of translated texts from Greek, Syriac and Pahlavi. Scholars of all religions took up new genres, and scholarly interactions, both face-to-face as well as in written form, led to far-reaching changes and innovations in each religious tradition. During these centuries of literary creativity in Judaeo-Arabic amidst a thriving multicultural and multireligious environment, Jewish scholarship underwent a revolution which shaped the tradition as we know it today – that is, even after Judaeo-Arabic had given way to Hebrew and the scholarly centers of Judaism were no longer in the Near East but rather in Europe.
Previous projects have catalogued the Arabic sections of the Firkovitch collection, but more than two thirds of its treasures remain uncatalogued and even unidentified. The situation contrasts greatly to that of the Cairo Genizah collections. The value of this collection is increased multifold by the fact that many of these manuscripts are unica, containing texts not found elsewhere. They also contain a significant number of Muslim works, some of which are not known from other sources. Together with the Jewish works, these manuscripts provide an essential source for a more detailed understanding of the interactions of Jewish and Muslim thought, the wide-reaching innovations in Judaism and Islam during this period, and for the cultural dynamics of the Middle East during the medieval period as a whole.
The project will provide an edition and translation of Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī’s commentary on the books of Genesis and Exodus from his Kitāb al-Riyāḍ wal-Ḥadāʾiq. In order to provide a contrastive perspective, the second major textual focus of the project will be the Pentateuch commentary by the Jerusalem Karaite Sahl ben Maṣliaḥ, from which we will also edit and translate the commentaries on Genesis and Exodus. Sahl ben Maṣliaḥ was one of the most important figures of the Jerusalem school, however his commentary differs greatly in content and style from the commentaries of Yefet and Salmon. An edition of Sahl’s commentary will thus broaden our knowledge and appreciation of the exegesis of the Jerusalem school and its internal dynamics. The new editions and translations will also allow us to contrast the two schools of Karaite exegesis, in Iraq and Jerusalem, and better understand the development of Karaite exegesis as a whole.
The second major objective of the project is to carry out a comparative analysis. That analysis will involve examining points such as the nature of the exegetical issues that concern each author, their various techniques for resolving these exegetical questions, the technical and conceptual vocabulary that they employ, and how each of them views the nature of the biblical text (for example, whether they concentrate on the individual verse or look instead at the larger context). We will consider the organizing principles of each author in his writing, as well as each author’s writing style. Furthermore, we will investigate how each author deals with the theological issues that arise from the biblical text and how these ideas are incorporated into the exegesis. This analytic comparison is an approach that has not yet been attempted in this field of research, and working on the basis of our edited texts, the analysis will add a new and important dimension to the study of Karaite exegesis. In addition, it will provide a deeper understanding of the two schools of Karaite exegesis, in Iraq and in Jerusalem, and, in turn, a fuller understanding of the overall development of Karaite exegesis.
There are two main objectives of this project: 1) to make a substantive contribution to the textual basis for the study of tenth-century Jewish biblical exegesis and 2) to pursue an examination of the internal dynamics of this exegesis, its methodology and its relationship with other exegetical traditions, Jewish and non-Jewish - Syriac exegesis in particular. The focus of the project will be on the reconstruction of several Rabbanite commentaries from Genizah fragments and preparing critical editions with closely annotated translations and introductions. The works to be edited include 1) Saadya Gaon’s commentary on Leviticus; 2) Samuel b. Ḥofni Gaon’s commentaries on Numbers and Deuteronomy; 3) an anonymous Rabbanite commentary on Jeremiah.
There will also be a second part to the textual work of the project. Rabbanite commentaries of this period are best studied together with Karaite commentaries due to the “conversation” between them. Many of the surviving manuscripts of the relevant Karaite commentaries are large and in fairly good condition. For the purpose of comparative study, it will be sufficient to transcribe these manuscripts to create “working editions” of a number of Karaite texts. Due to the fact that most researchers do not have access to these texts, the project will place these “working editions” on an internet site so that they can be easily consulted. The commentaries to be transcribed include: 1) al-Qirqisānī’s Kitāb al-Riyāḍ wal-Ḥadā’iq; 2) Yefet b. ῾Eli’s commentary on the Pentateuch; 3) Abū Naṣr ibn Barhun’s commentary on the Pentateuch; 4) David b. Boaz’ commentary on Leviticus.
The detailed annotation of the edited texts will provide the basis for their analytic study. The results of this study will be published either as lengthy introductions to the editions or as separate articles.
This project is funded by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant no. 1522/15); total 1.2 million NIS.
We often imagine the Jewish family of past generations to have been a bastion of stability and affection in uncertain times. However, at least in eleventh and twelfth century Egypt, the Jewish family was fluid and unstable. Women occasionally married several times during their lives, husbands were often away for long periods of time, and polygamy was not uncommon. The documents of the Cairo Geniza, a rich trove of documents discovered in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, reveal how women, with their limited resources, maneuvered in such unstable conditions. Of special interest are the more than 200 women's letters in the Geniza, giving us practically the only extended example of writing by Jewish women from the Middle Ages. How these letters were written? Do they reflect women's authentic voices? What did these women write about? Come and hear!