Animal Affinities: Monsters and Marvels in the Ambrosian Tanakh

Bestiary Imagery in Hebrew Manuscripts of the Thirteenth Century

“…Katrin Kogman-Appel (2000; Sarit Shalev-Eyni (2005; and Sara Offenberg (2015Offenberg ( , 2021b, have made significant contributions to our understanding of the role that visual imagery played in the multifaceted ways medieval Ashkenazi Jews responded to, rejected, incorporated, and transformed Christian imagery in their own books. Marc Epstein, in particular, has long been at the forefront of investigating the contours of animal lore in Jewish art (Epstein 1997(Epstein , 2019, a subject recently taken up by Elina Gertsman (2022Gertsman ( , 2023. Two decades ago, Epstein began to overturn the notion that the appearance of such motifs as the elephant in Hebrew manuscripts was the result of the desire for "mere decoration" or "borrowing" from the majority Christian culture (Epstein 1994).…”