Regensburg Pentateuch

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Regensburg Pentateuch

The Regensburg Pentateuch is an illuminated Hebrew Bible manuscript that is in the Israel Museum and has the signature MS Jerusalem IM 180-52 [# 34698] . The book is 24.5 cm high and 18.5 cm wide. The 245 sheets of parchment were written on in brown ink in Ashkenazi square script; the illustrations are made with tempera and gold leaf. Two scribes, David ben Schabbetai and Baruch, and four Masoretes wrote the codex around 1300 in Regensburg. Your client was probably Rabbi Gad ben Peter HaLevi from Regensburg, who was later named as the owner. The codex contains the Torah , the five megillots , the Haftarot , the book of Job and passages from the book of the prophet Jeremiah . Some peculiarities suggest that the Regensburg Pentateuch was a sample codex that served as a template for writing Torah scrolls.

Among the illustrations, a double-sided representation of the temple implements (fol. 155v – 156r) is particularly interesting, because this motif was mostly chosen in Sephardic codices, rarely in Ashkenazi. Also unusual is fol. 18v: above the scene of the circumcision of Isaac, below the binding of Isaac and next to it the temptation of Sarah, which, according to the Midrash Tanchuma, was lifted into the air by the devil to watch the sacrifice of her son.

literature

  • Hanna Liss : A Pentateuch like any other? The reading secrets of the Regensburg Pentateuch . In: Friedrich-Emanuel Focken, Michael Ott: Metatexte. Tales of written artefacts in Old Testament and medieval literature (= material text cultures . Volume 15) . Walter de Gruyter , Berlin / Boston 2016, pp. 299–334. ISBN 978-3-11-041794-4 ( PDF )

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