From Author To Copyist

Zipi Talshir’s work on the evolution, formation, and transmission of the Hebrew Bible throughout her academic career, her remarkable ability to integrate the Septuagint into this research, and her profound understanding of the late books of the Hebrew Bible and the process of canonization are well known and appreciated. In this volume, 21 of Talshir’s colleagues and students contribute essays in her honor on these topics that are so close to her heart. A bibliography of her publications and a short biography open and complete this compelling volume presented by renowned authors in the field from all over Europe, Israel, and the U.S.

This study is a concise history of the book in all its forms, starting from the very beginning with the invention of writing and concluding at the present time with the electronic revolution and what it may hold for the future.

The author explores what is known about the medieval publishing process by close study of the work of John Capgrave (1393-1464), a prolific author and one of the most learned Englishmen of his day. In the Middle Ages, before the age of printing, the author was often his own scribe and almost invariably his own editor and publisher. Lucas shows how works newly composed by an author were prepared. Capgrave's linguistic and scribal usages are set in the socio-historical context of the 15th century.

The first half of the book of Daniel contains world-famous stories like the Writing on the Wall. These stories have mostly been transmitted in Aramaic, not Hebrew, as has the influential apocalypse of Daniel 7. This Aramaic corpus shows clear signs of multiple authorship. Which different textual layers can we tease apart, and what do they tell us about the changing function of the Danielic material during the Second Temple Period? This monograph compares the Masoretic Text of Daniel to ancient manuscripts and translations preserving textual variants. By highlighting tensions in the reconstructed archetype underlying all these texts, it then probes the tales’ prehistory even further, showing how Daniel underwent many transformations to yield the book we know today.

This book, emphasizing Genesis 14 and Psalm 110, contributes to the history of composition of the patriarchal narratives in the book of Genesis and to the history of theology of the Second Temple period. Genesis 14 was added on a late stage and in two steps: first, Genesis 14* and later, the so-called Melchizedek episode (ME, vv. 18-20). Genesis 14 is the result of inner-biblical exegesis: both Genesis 14* and the later ME originated from scribal activity in which several earlier biblical texts have served as templates/literary building blocks. As for Genesis 14*, in particular three text groups were important: the Table of Nations, the wilderness wandering narratives and annals from the Deuteronomistic History. As for the ME, it is an example of haggadic exegesis presupposing and without any prehistory independent of its narrative framework. ME is the result of an assimilation between two texts, Genesis 14* and Psalm 110, which assumedly at one point were read as a narrative and a poetic version respectively of Abraham’s war with the kings. Genesis 14 has no value as a source to the history of the patriarchal era and to the religion of pre-Israelite Jerusalem. In contrast, it shows how post-exilic scribes’ painstaking study of biblical texts resulted in the creation of new biblical texts.

This volume is the first to attempt a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary analysis of the manuscript cultures implementing the pothi manuscript form (a loosely bound stack of oblong folios). It is the indigenous form by which manuscripts have been crafted in South Asia and the cultural areas most influenced by it, that is to say Central and South East Asia. The volume focuses particularly on the colophons featured in such manuscripts presenting a series of essays enabling the reader to engage in a historical and comparative investigation of the links connecting the several manuscript cultures examined here. Colophons as paratexts are situated at the intersection between texts and the artefacts that contain them and offer a unique vantage point to attain global appreciation of their manuscript cultures and literary traditions. Colophons are also the product of scribal activities that have moved across regions and epochs alongside the pothi form, providing a common thread binding together the many millions of pothis still today found in libraries in Asia and the world over. These contributions provide a systematic approach to the internal structure of colophons, i.e. their ‘syntax’, and facilitate a vital, comparative approach.