The First Jewish Books and the Early History of Jewish Reading

Abstract

Among the earliest surviving dated Jewish codices are a group of Bibles that were produced in the Near East—Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, and Iraq—between the early tenth and mid-eleventh century. Known as Masoretic codices—because they also are the first Bibles to contain the marginal annotations known as the Masorah—these books have long attracted scholarly attention for multiple reasons— for their biblical texts and Masoretic annotations, for their codicological significance, and for their decoration and art. This article seeks to show that they also represent a watershed moment in the early history of Jewish reading. The first half of the article describes these codices and their contents, the Masorah in particular. The second half of the article argues that these codices are our earliest evidence for a professional class of Jewish readers, namely, the Masoretes, who are the first figures known in Jewish history to have acquired actual knowledge of the Bible from the visual experience of reading its text on a written surface. In the earlier classical rabbinic period, knowledge of the Bible was primarily acquired through the auditory experience of hearing the Bible read aloud. The final part of the article attempts to contextualize this signal moment in the history of Jewish reading practice within a number of other contemporary and early medieval developments, including the rise of Karaism and the growth of new types of biblical interpretations, peshat in particular.

How to Read This Book: Jewish Lights Publishing and the Pragmatics of Spiritual Reading

“…The Masoretes, who scribed the earliest codices in Jewish culture in the eighth century, included diacritical notes both above and below the Biblical text. 14 These notes signaled proper cantillation, as well as pointing to disjunctions between ketiv, orthography, and keri, pronunciation. Thus, from the time of the earliest Jewish books, there was the text as it was written, which formed the main body of the codex, and the text as it was read, both pronounced and understood according to the Masoretic instructions.…”

Introduction

“…In contrast to the tannaitic and amoraic emphasis on oral instruction and transmission of rabbinic knowledge, at some stage at the end of the amoraic period or shortly afterwards scholars who identified with the authorities of the past decided to preserve their teaching in written form to enable future generations to access, study, apply, and further develop it. Once the large rabbinic compilations existed, Judaism --or at least that form of Judaism represented by male scholastic circles --became a "book religion", focused on studying the Talmud in academies and yeshivot of medieval times (Stern 2008).…”

Linguistics, Philology and the Biblical Text

“…8 Early on in the Islamic movement, the Qur'an was laid out in a codex, and the fact that the medieval Hebrew term for "codex" ‫מצחף(‬ miṣḥaf) is a loanword from the Arabic term (muṣḥaf) suggests this line of influence (Khan 2013, 6-7). See also Stern (2008). See Drory (2000) for a full account of literary contacts between Muslims and Jews.…”