Samaritan Scribes and Manuscripts / Edition 1

by Alan D Crown

Overview

This book aims to provide the critical tools to help scholars in their use of Samaritan manuscripts. The basic codicological tools is a series of complementary data-bases compiled from typological studies of the physical properties of manuscripts. Each typology is in effect a diachronic profile created by painstaking comparison and analysis of the physical properties of manuscripts of known provenance and/or date. Using these typologies or diachronic profiles it is possible to evaluate the chronology of the physical characteristics of any manuscript - the quire or gathering structure, ink, ruling, spacing of the text on the folio, sewing of the sections ... Naturally, the more information available about the physical properties of any manuscript the better the chance of making correlations between the typologies of different properties. The basic rule in palaeography and codicology is that the researcher works on an inductive basis from as wide a sample as possible of dated manuscripts. It is hoped that in the studies in this volume, evidence has been provided which will serve as a guide both to the appearance and the nature of Samaritan manuscripts and to the evaluative process that one would employ in examining them for codicological purposes. The reader should be able to apply the criteria provided here to the evaluation of whatever data can be retrieved from any undated Samaritan manuscripts with which he is confronted. Alan D. Crown in the preface

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783161474903
Publisher:	Mohr Siebeck
Publication date:	12/31/2001
Series:	Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism , #80
Pages:	555
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Alan D. Crown, Born 1932; 1966 Ph D; since 1985 Head of the Department of Semitic Studies, University of Sydney; 1990-97 Professor (Personal Chair) at the University of Sydney; since 1997 Emeritus Professor of the University of Sydney; Honorary Life Member and founder member of the Societe d'Etudes Samaritaines; Senior Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies.

Table of Contents

Preface - Abbreviations and Symbols Samaritan Literature and its Manuscripts - The Codicology of Samaritan Manuscripts - Paper in Samaritan Manuscripts - Prices of Samaritan Manuscripts - Samaritan Majuscule Palaeography - Samaritan Minuscule Palaeography - Problems in Epigraphy and Palaeography - Samaritan manuscripts and Cast Type - Samaritan Bindings - An Index of Samaritan Scribes - The Rate of Writing of Samaritan Scribes . Columnar Writing and the Samaritan Masorah