Hebrew CodicologyLong-awaited book by Malachi Beit-Arié now available in Hebrew

9 November 2021

Photo: The National Library of Israel

Malachi Beit-Arié’s new book is the result of 60 years of research. Now the opus magnum 'Hebrew Codicology' has been published digitally.

Good things take time. In this case, they took several decades. Malachi Beit-Arié, who has recently (re)joined the CSMC as a Petra Kappert Fellow for the fourth time in his career, considers his new book nothing less than ‘the product of my sixty-year long fascination with the study of Hebrew manuscripts.’ The work, the full title of which is Hebrew Codicology: Historical and Comparative Typology of Medieval Hebrew Codices based on the Documentation of the Extant Dated Manuscripts until 1540 using a Quantitative Approach, is ‘both an introduction to medieval Hebrew manuscripts and a typological guide to their characteristics, based on the exhaustive examination of almost all the extant Medieval manuscripts dated up to 1540’, he writes in the Preface. 

Beit-Arié’s academic career began as a graduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Gershom Scholem, who supported his research ideas from the earliest stages. Scholem, ‘at the time of the project’s creation and until his passing, enthusiastically supported the ambitious project to document all the dated Hebrew manuscripts in order to establish a codicological and palaeographic typology, as presented to him by two young scholars just embarking on their research careers, namely Colette Sirat, who first conceived the idea of documentation, and myself.’ It was Sirat who then encouraged Beit-Arié to publish his Hebrew Codicology: Tentative Typology of Technical Practices Employed in Hebrew Dated Medieval Manuscripts in 1981. Eventually, this work established his reputation as a leading scholar. By the late 80’s, Emile Schrijver called him ‘the world’s greatest expert in the field of medieval Hebrew codicology’.

In the years following the publication of the Tentative Typology, Beit-Arie launched and directed the Hebrew Palaeography Project, which documented almost all accessible dated extant manuscripts worldwide. It resulted in the electronic database Sfar Data, which allows for a sophisticated search of almost one thousand codicological features. The database received a major upgrade in late 2020, which was supported by the CSMC.   

The new book, which Beit Arié had been working on since 2003, has now been published digitally – in Hebrew – and is available as open access in the CSMC’s online repository. An English translation is currently under preparation. Meanwhile, readers can access a preliminary English edition of the book whose most important aim, in Beit-Arié's words, is ‘to demonstrate the need to regard handwritten books not only as receptacles of texts, but also as cultural artefacts replete with information without which Jewish Medieval history would remain impoverished.’