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The Tiberian Tradition in Common Bibles from the Cairo Genizah Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures Hornkohl and Khan (eds.) Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Studies in Semitic Vocalisation Reading Traditions and Reading Traditions Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan (eds.) EDITED BY AARON D. HORNKOHL AND GEOFFREY KHAN This volume brings together papers rela� ng to the pronuncia� on of Semi� c languages and the representa� on of their pronuncia� on in wri� en form. The papers focus on sources representa� ve of a period that stretches from late an� quity un� l the Middle Ages. A large propor� on of them concern reading tradi� ons of Biblical Hebrew, especially the vocalisa� on nota� on systems used to represent them. Also discussed are orthography and the wri� en representa� on of prosody. Beyond Biblical Hebrew, there are studies concerning Punic, Biblical Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic, as well as post-biblical tradi� ons of Hebrew such as piyyuṭ and medieval Hebrew poetry. There were many parallels and interac� ons between these various language Studies in Semitic Vocalisation tradi� ons and the volume demonstrates that important insights can be gained from such a wide range of perspec� ves across diff erent historical periods. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found here: www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: Detail from a bilingual La� n-Punic inscrip� on at the theatre at Lepcis Magna, IRT 321 (accessed from h� ps://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inscrip� on_Theatre_Lep� s_Magna_Libya.JPG). Leaf of a Syriac prayer book with Western vocalisa� on signs (source: Wikimedia Commons). Leaf of an Abbasid-era Qurʾān (vv. 64.11–12) with red, yellow, and green vocalisa� on dots (source: Wikimedia Commons). Genizah fragment of the Hebrew Bible (Gen. 11–12, Cambridge University Library T-S A1.56; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Genizah fragment of a Karaite transcrip� on of the Hebrew Bible in Arabic script (Num. 14.22–24, 40–42, Cambridge University Library T-S Ar. 52.242; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Greek transcrip� on of the Hebrew for Ps. 22.2a in Ma� . 27.46 as found in Codex Bezae (fol. 99v; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Cover design: Anna Ga� book 3 ebooke and OA edi� ons also available OPEN ACCESS OBP https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2020 Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapters’ authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan (eds.), Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0207 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit, https:// doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0207#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at, https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0207#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. Semitic Languages and Cultures 3. ISSN (print): 2632-6906 ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-935-5 ISSN (digital): 2632-6914 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-936-2 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-937-9 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0207 Cover image: Detail from a bilingual Latin-Punic inscription at the theatre at Lepcis Magna, IRT 321 (accessed from https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inscription_Theatre_ Leptis_Magna_Libya.JPG). Leaf of a Syriac prayer book with Western vocalisation signs (source: Wikimedia Commons). Leaf of an Abbasid-era Qurʾān (vv. 64.11–12) with red, yellow, and green vocalisation dots (source: Wikimedia Commons). Genizah fragment of the Hebrew Bible (Gen. 11–12, Cambridge University Library T-S A1.56; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Genizah fragment of a Karaite transcription of the Hebrew Bible in Arabic script (Num. 14.22–24, 40–42, Cambridge University Library T-S Ar. 52.242; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Greek transcription of the Hebrew for Ps. 22.2a in Matt. 27.46 as found in Codex Bezae (fol. 99v; courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library). Cover design: Anna Gatti THE TIBERIAN TRADITION IN COMMON BIBLES FROM THE CAIRO GENIZAH Benjamin Outhwaite ———————————————————————————— 1.0. INTRODUCTION This study takes a close look at five fragments of ‘Common Bibles’ from the Cairo Genizah, a category of biblical text that encom- passes probably the majority of Hebrew Bible fragments found there. The texts are analysed on a textual and linguistic basis to see what they reveal about the phonetics of the Tiberian reading tradition in the Classical Genizah Period (the end of the tenth to the mid-thirteenth centuries CE) and the fidelity with which they follow that tradition. Common Bibles, I argue, provide a further glimpse into the phonetics of Tiberian Hebrew in this period, as their producers did not always adhere to the strict letter of the written Tiberian tradition, either through choice or ignorance, and the results reveal more about how the users of the text were pronouncing their Hebrew than the correct application of Tibe- rian graphemes would ordinarily allow. For instance, the substi- tution of vocalic shewa by a different vowel sign will reveal how the shewa was being pronounced, something normally hidden be- hind the inscrutable two dots of the sign itself. © Benjamin Outhwaite, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0207.11 406 Benjamin Outhwaite 2.0. THE CORPUS ‘Common Bible’ is the term proposed by Colette Sirat in her He- brew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages (2002) as one category of a fourfold division of the extant Hebrew Bible manuscript codices from the Muslim lands of the Middle Ages (Sirat 2002, 42–50). The full list is as follows: (a) Great Bibles, fully vocalised and cantillated, with Masoretic notes; (b) Common Bibles, ‘more modest’, usually without masora magna, but “they always have the vowel and cantillation signs”; (c) Bibles with translations; (d) the Bible with Arabic translation and translator’s commentary (e.g., Saʿadya’s Tafsīr or, for Karaites, the commentary by Yefet ben ʿEli). The recent book by David Stern, The Jewish Bible: A Material History (2017), talks about three “distinct generic types of Hebrew Bible” in the Middle Ages, “the Masoretic Bible, the liturgical Pentateuch, and the study Bible,” which categories overlap, but not in contradictory fashion, with Sirat’s (Stern 2017, 88–90). Of relevance too is an earlier study by Goshen- Gottstein (1962) of the range of extant Hebrew Bibles found in the United States, one of the first to attempt to classify the types of biblical manuscript in the Genizah. He distinguishes ‘study co- dices’ from ‘listener’s codices’ (Goshen-Gottstein 1962, 36–44). His former category is differentiated from Great (Masoretic) Co- dices by an absence of Masoretic notes, indicating they are “not meant for ‘professional’ usage or to serve as an exact model,” while his latter, the ‘listener’s codices’ (which he estimates form about a half of the Elkan Nathan Adler Collection at the Jewish Theological Seminary, on which he bases his analysis) were meant for “everyday use” and were “not written in order to The Tiberian Tradition in Common Bibles from the Genizah 407 please future hunters of variant readings and do not represent in any way… any hidden stream of tradition” (Goshen-Gottstein 1962, 38–40). He chose the term ‘listener’s codex’, because these texts in his view supported the congregation in its listening, not its reading, and were “little more than ‘hearing aids’” (Goshen- Gottstein 1962, 40–41). Despite having been written more than half a century ago, Goshen-Gottstein’s assertive impressions are still some of the more insightful on the subject, and the whole article, despite its parochial-sounding title (‘Biblical Manuscripts in the United States’), is a useful one. In his survey, Stern (2017, 88) asserts that “the surviving codices are only a fraction of the Hebrew Bibles that once existed, and we do not know how representative they truly are.” While this is arguably true when looking at the Jewish world at large and over time, such is the scale of the biblical manuscript inven- tory in the Genizah Collection (more than twenty-five thousand pieces in the Taylor-Schechter and Lewis-Gibson Collections in Cambridge alone) that we can be quite confident we have a sense of the biblical landscape at least as it relates to the Eastern Med- iterranean in the High Middle Ages (equivalent to the Classical Genizah Period). Given all this, particularly that we can see the extent of the inventory and how the different types of biblical manuscript sit in it, I see no harm in adapting these categories to suit the differ- ing kinds of analysis that should be done on them. For my current purposes, I am most interested in fragments with Tiberian vowels that are prone to deviation from the standard orthography and vocalisation of the text.
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