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Articles
A Karaite tool-kit for teaching Hebrew grammar
10.18647/3117/JJS-2013
Medieval Karaites advocated independent interpretation of the Scripture and considered grammatical knowledge indispensable for understanding the true meaning of the Bible. A distinctive stage in the development of the Karaite grammatical tradition is constituted by pedagogical grammars of Biblical Hebrew intended for beginning students. These grammars concentrate on verbal morphology and employ numerous didactic strategies designed to facilitate learning and equip students with tools for the independent investigation of the biblical text. The present article describes the Karaite framework of presenting the verbal morphology of Biblical Hebrew and studies didactic tools developed in Karaite pedagogical grammars, including lucid sample paradigms, the gradual character of presentation, rules of derivational relations, systems of mnemonics, algorithms of parsing verbal forms, and model analyses of biblical passages.
Middle Ages | Karaites | Bible | Biblical Hebrew | Hebrew grammar | education
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Calendar tables in manuscript and printed Arba̔ah Ṭurim: Ṭur Oraḥ Ḥayyim, chapter 428
10.18647/3351/jjs-2018
This article is a case study in the creation, transmission and evolution of calendar tables in medieval and early modern Jewish sources. It looks at calendar tables in Arba̔ah Ṭurim by Jacob ben Asher (early fourteenth century), one of the most influential rabbinic codes of law. Calendar tables in printed editions of Arba̔ah Ṭurim (Ṭur Oraḥ Ḥayyim, chapter 428) deviate from the normative rabbinic calendar and can lead to celebrating religious holidays at the wrong times. The inclusion of non-standard tables in an authoritative code of law has long raised questions about their authenticity. This article examines the history of calendar tables in Ṭur Oraḥ Ḥayyim by investigating all extant manuscripts and fifteenth- to sixteenth-century printed editions of the code. The article highlights the unstable connection of calendar tables with authorial compositions and the lack of calendar expertise among copyists and users of calendar tables.
Middle Ages | Early Modern period | Jewish calendar | Jacob ben Asher (Baal HaTurim) | Arba̔ah Turim | manuscripts | printing
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Aviv barley and calendar diversity among Jews in eleventh-century Palestine
10.18647/3504/jjs-2021
One of the most salient medieval Qaraite practices was setting the calendar by observation of natural phenomena. While the Rabbanites followed arithmetical schemes, Qaraites set months by sighting the new moon and intercalated years on the basis of the state of ripeness of barley crops (aviv). Multiple Qaraite treatises on the aviv are preserved, but documentary evidence of empirical intercalation is scarce, making it difficult to learn how it was performed in practice. This article examines two Qaraite calendar chronicles that document barley observations and decisions regarding intercalation in a range of years in the eleventh century. They shed important light on how the Qaraite calendar operated over periods of time and attest to frequent calendar difference within the Qaraite movement and between Qaraites and Rabbanites. The chronicles make it clear that the Qaraite calendar of the period was not a monolithic system counterposed to that of the Rabbanites.
Middle Ages | Cairo Genizah | Karaites | manuscripts | calendar | Palestine | agriculture | intercalation
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Reviews
A Medieval Karaite Pedagogical Grammar of Hebrew: A Critical Edition and English translation of Kitāb al-̔Uqūd fī Taṣārīf al-Luġa al-̔Ibrāniyya
Reviewed by Daniel J. Lasker
Reviewed by Daniel J. Lasker
10.18647/3202/JJS-2014
Brill | 2013 | Études sur le judaïsme médiéval 62, Cambridge Genizah Studies Series 6 | xx, 427 | ISBN 978-90-04-26291-1
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