The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
A targum was an originally spoken translation of the Hebrew Bible that a professional translator would give in the common language of the listeners when that was not Biblical Hebrew. This had become necessary near the end of the first century BCE, as the common language was Aramaic and Hebrew was used for little more than schooling and worship. The translator frequently expanded his translation with paraphrases, explanations and examples, so it became a kind of sermon.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period. They were discovered over a period of 10 years, between 1946 and 1956, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, including deuterocanonical manuscripts from late Second Temple Judaism and extrabiblical books. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum located in Jerusalem. The Israeli government's custody of the Dead Sea Scrolls is disputed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on territorial, legal, and humanitarian grounds—they were mostly discovered following the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and were acquired by Israel after Jordan lost the 1967 Arab–Israeli War—whilst Israel's claims are primarily based on historical and religious grounds, given their significance in Jewish history and in the heritage of Judaism.
A genizah is a storage area in a Jewish synagogue or cemetery designated for the temporary storage of worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics prior to proper cemetery burial.
The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled the Cairo Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt. These manuscripts span the entire period of Middle-Eastern, North African, and Andalusian Jewish history between the 6th and 19th centuries CE, and comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.
The Aleppo Codex is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The codex was written in the city of Tiberias in the tenth century CE under the rule of the Abbasid Caliphate, and was endorsed for its accuracy by Maimonides. Together with the Leningrad Codex, it contains the Aaron ben Moses ben Asher Masoretic Text tradition.
Aaron ben Moses ben Asher was a sofer who lived in Tiberias. He perfected the Tiberian system of writing vowel sounds in Hebrew. The system is still in use today, serving as the basis for grammatical analysis.
Shelomo Dov Goitein was a German-Jewish ethnographer, historian and Arabist known for his research on Jewish life in the Islamic Middle Ages, and particularly on the Cairo Geniza.
The Codex Cairensis is a Hebrew manuscript containing the complete text of the Hebrew Bible's Nevi'im (Prophets). It has traditionally been described as "the oldest dated Hebrew Codex of the Bible which has come down to us", but modern research seems to indicate an 11th-century date rather than the 895 CE date written into its colophon. It contains the books of the Former Prophets and Latter Prophets. It comprises 575 pages including 13 carpet pages.
The Ben Ezra Synagogue, sometimes referred to as the El-Geniza Synagogue or the Synagogue of the Levantines (al-Shamiyin), is a former Jewish congregation and synagogue, located in the Fustat part of Old Cairo, Egypt. According to local folklore, it is located on the site where baby Moses was found.
The Tetragrammaton is the four-letter Hebrew theonym יהוה, the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left, are yodh, he, waw, and he. The name may be derived from a verb that means "to be", "to exist", "to cause to become", or "to come to pass". While there is no consensus about the structure and etymology of the name, the form Yahweh is now accepted almost universally among Biblical and Semitic linguistics scholars, though the vocalization Jehovah continues to have wide usage.
Dalton is a moshav near Safed in northern Israel under the jurisdiction of Merom HaGalil Regional Council. It was founded by immigrants from Tripoli in Libya in 1950 under the leadership of Hapoel HaMizrachi.
Evelyn M. Cohen is an American art historian.
4Q41 or 4QDeuteronomyn, also known as the All Souls Deuteronomy, is a Hebrew Bible manuscript from the first century BC containing two passages from the Book of Deuteronomy. Discovered in 1952 in a cave at Qumran, near the Dead Sea, it preserves the oldest existing copy of the Ten Commandments.
The Afghan Geniza is a collection of hundreds of Jewish manuscript fragments found in a genizah in the caves of Afghanistan. The manuscripts include writings in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian, some of which are 1,000 years old. They specifically date from the early 11th through to the early 13th century. Their existence first became known when local Afghan antiquities dealers began offering them to Israeli institutions in the early 2010s.
The AqBurkitt are fragments of a palimpsest containing a portion of the Books of Kings from Aquila's translation of the Hebrew bible from the 6th century, overwritten by some liturgical poems of Yannai dating from the 9–11th century. This Aquila translation was performed approximately in the early or mid-second century C.E. The manuscript is variously dated to the 6th-century CE, or 5th-6th century CE.
The siglum AqTaylor are fragments of a palimpsest containing a portion of the Palestinian Talmud in upper script, and part of the Book of Psalms of Aquila's Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible in lower script. This latter is a Greek biblical manuscript written in codex form. This manuscript has been dated after the middle of the fifth century C.E., but not later than the beginning of the sixth century C.E.
1 Chronicles 24 is the twenty-fourth chapter of the Books of Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible or the First Book of Chronicles in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The book is compiled from older sources by an unknown person or group, designated by modern scholars as "the Chronicler", and had the final shape established in late fifth or fourth century BCE. This chapter records the organization and departments of priests and a list of non-priestly Levites. The whole chapter belongs to the section focusing on the kingship of David, which from chapter 22 to the end does not have any parallel in 2 Samuel.
Rabbi Meshullam ben Kalonymus, was born in Lucca, Italy, or in Mainz, Germany. He was a posek of the Gaonic period, a commentator on the Mishnah and a Paytan.
