Peter Stein
Address: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität
Theologische Fakultät
Fürstengraben 6
07743 Jena, Germany
http://www.theologie.uni-jena.de/Peter_Stein.html
Theologische Fakultät
Fürstengraben 6
07743 Jena, Germany
http://www.theologie.uni-jena.de/Peter_Stein.html
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Books by Peter Stein
Die Bücher erzählen beispielhaft vom Schicksal jüdischer Autoren und Verleger und zeugen vom regen geistigen Austausch zwischen Juden, Christen und Muslimen in einem grenzenlosen Europa von Gibraltar bis zum Bosporus, vom Hohen Mittelalter bis in die Zeit der Frühaufklärung. Zugleich geben die Bestände einen repräsentativen Einblick in die zentralen Schriften des Judentums wie TaNaKH, Mischna oder Talmud, aber auch weniger bekannte Gattungen wie die mittelalterliche jüdische Grammatik und Philosophie oder frühe Werke der jiddischen Literatur.
Papers by Peter Stein
Among these texts are, first of all, business accounts such as contracts and settlements, as well as letters on business and private matters, but also oracular decisions and other records of religious practice. Numerous writing exercises testify to a developed curriculum in school education. As it seems, the present hoard is the residue of a large public archive in the city of Naššān, a local center in the Wadi al-Ǧawf in northern Yemen, covering the entire history of that region from the early 1st millennium BCE up to the 6th century CE. Since their discovery in the 1970s, the sticks have been dispersed in several collections in Yemen and abroad, with about 400 of them housed by the Bavarian State Library in Munich and another 340 by the Oosters Instituut in Leiden.
Though examination of this type of document is still in its infancy, present research on this and other collections has already yielded rich and partly unexpected data about economic, social, and religious life in pre-Islamic Arabia. It testifies to a well-established tradition of manuscript writing that flourished in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula for more than 1,500 years—contemporary to the cuneiform culture of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as well as to the early Arabic tradition at the time of the Prophet of Islam.
Die Bücher erzählen beispielhaft vom Schicksal jüdischer Autoren und Verleger und zeugen vom regen geistigen Austausch zwischen Juden, Christen und Muslimen in einem grenzenlosen Europa von Gibraltar bis zum Bosporus, vom Hohen Mittelalter bis in die Zeit der Frühaufklärung. Zugleich geben die Bestände einen repräsentativen Einblick in die zentralen Schriften des Judentums wie TaNaKH, Mischna oder Talmud, aber auch weniger bekannte Gattungen wie die mittelalterliche jüdische Grammatik und Philosophie oder frühe Werke der jiddischen Literatur.
Among these texts are, first of all, business accounts such as contracts and settlements, as well as letters on business and private matters, but also oracular decisions and other records of religious practice. Numerous writing exercises testify to a developed curriculum in school education. As it seems, the present hoard is the residue of a large public archive in the city of Naššān, a local center in the Wadi al-Ǧawf in northern Yemen, covering the entire history of that region from the early 1st millennium BCE up to the 6th century CE. Since their discovery in the 1970s, the sticks have been dispersed in several collections in Yemen and abroad, with about 400 of them housed by the Bavarian State Library in Munich and another 340 by the Oosters Instituut in Leiden.
Though examination of this type of document is still in its infancy, present research on this and other collections has already yielded rich and partly unexpected data about economic, social, and religious life in pre-Islamic Arabia. It testifies to a well-established tradition of manuscript writing that flourished in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula for more than 1,500 years—contemporary to the cuneiform culture of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as well as to the early Arabic tradition at the time of the Prophet of Islam.
the historic importance of the site.
One answer to this question which is put forward in the present paper is that the main objective of the inscriptions was to give a good external impression, but not necessarily to have a well-composed and accurate text. In other words: the value of a good inscription was not so much seen in a stylistically and orthographically perfect text but rather in the visual aesthetics of a perfect script on an undamaged surface. For this reason, the scribes tended to leave errors in the text unchanged in order not to impair the representative character of the inscription. In consequence we must be aware that scribal errors may occur in any inscription – however perfect and professionally made it ever may appear to us.