Tag Archives: Cambridge

Blogging/Tweeting SOTS Winter 2013 Meeting at Cambridge

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sotsA quick note- I have every intention of blogging/tweeting SOTS 2013 next week in Cambridge and I’ll be using the hashtag #sots2013.  All of this is, of course, contingent on whether or not Fitzwilliam has wifi and I can manage to use it properly.  A couple of fairly large contingencies really.  At Durham a couple of years ago (oh Durham, you did try my soul) internet access was absolutely impossible.  D.V., Cambridge will be better.

So, if you don’t hear from me, blame the interweb.  If you do, blame yourself (I, as always, shall remain blameless and perfect, upright and eschewing evil).

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Scholars of The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Question

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411729_458884864147416_1680053989_oToday the Genizah Unit at Cambridge writes on their facebook page-

The recent upload of Mosseri Genizah material on the Cambridge Digital Library includes Mos.I.40, a manuscript that N. Wieder believed showed a clear link between Karaism and the Dead Sea sect, through its use of the term עדת בני צדוק.

This has piqued my interest and I’m wondering 1) what the DSS experts think of Wieder’s suggestion and 2) what, if he’s right, that implies for Scrolls research.

Alban Books at SOTS Winter Meeting

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From Elaine Reid-

Alban Books will have a book display at the forthcoming SOTS Winter Meeting in Cambridge this January. If there are any of our books, which you can view at our new website www.albanbooks.com, that you would like us to bring with us please just let me know and I’ll add them to my list.

Many thanks,

Elaine Reid
Alban Books

elaine.reid@albanbooks.com

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A Workshop on Codicology

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The Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge announces-

A workshop on codicology next July in Berlin. To be taught by leading experts Profs Judith Olszowy-Schlanger and Malachi Beit-Arié. For those who would like to attend note this important (and, for me, welcome) fact: ‘Der Workshop findet in englischer Sprache statt.’ For more information, see the website: http://www.ihiw.de/w/scriptorium/hebrew-manuscripts-studies-an-introduction/

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Society for Old Testament Study Winter Meeting Registration Now Open, And the Program

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SOTS Winter 2013 Meeting

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
2-4 January, 2013
under the presidency of Dr Eryl W. Davies

Printable version of the SOTS programme
The booking form for the SOTS Winter meeting
Location and Directions to Fitzwilliam College

The venue for all sessions is Fitzwilliam College, Storeys Way, Cambridge, CB3 0DG.  Publishers are invited to display books for sale during the Meeting.  Members who have had books published recently are also invited to display copies.

WEDNESDAY 2nd JANUARY

(2.00 p.m.) [Committee Meeting]
4.30 p.m. Registration
6.00 p.m. Reception 6.45 p.m. Dinner
8.15 p.m. Presidential Address: Dr Eryl W. Davies (Bangor) “Ideology and Constructions of the ‘History of Israel’”

THURSDAY 3rd JANUARY

8.00 a.m. Breakfast
9.15 a.m. Dr Janet Tollington (Cambridge) “Reading Ruth in Dialogue with Torah”
10.00 a.m. Dr Jenni Williams (Oxford) “Childlessness in the Hebrew Bible”
10.45 a.m. Coffee
11.15 a.m. Dr David Tollerton (Bangor) “Job the Irrelevant? Responding to Rejections of Job’s Usefulness for Post-Holocaust Thought”
12.00 noon Dr Helen Leneman (Bethesda) “Musical Paths to Experiencing Job”
12.45 p.m. Lunch
2.30 p.m. Seminars: EITHER “Creating dynamic Powerpoint presentations” (Ms Elizabeth Harper, Cambridge) OR “Accessing and using downloadable resources” (Dr David Instone-Brewer, Cambridge)
3.30 p.m. SOTS Wiki seminar (Dr James Aitken, Cambridge, and Dr Stuart Weeks, Durham)
4.30 p.m. Tea
5.00 p.m. Professor John Healey (Manchester) “Aspects of Late Aramaic Epigraphy and Law”
6.00 p.m. Reception, sponsored by Koninklijke Brill NV, Publishers
6.45 p.m. Dinner
8.15 p.m. Professor John Barton (Oxford) “Ethical Digests”

FRIDAY 4th JANUARY

8.00 a.m. Breakfast
9.15 a.m. Dr Katharine Dell (Cambridge) “Reject or retrieve? Feminist Readings of Ecclesiastes 7:23-9”
10.00 a.m. Dr Mary Mills (Liverpool) “City-space and Cosmic Determinism in texts from the Minor Prophets”
10.45 a.m. Coffee
11.15 a.m. Professor Ronald Clements (Cambridge) “Solomon and the Regulation of Kingship in Deut.17.14-19”
12.00 noon Business Meeting (Members only)
1.00 p.m. Lunch, followed by departure

Congrats to Our Friends at Oxford and Cambridge, Imperial and UCL

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Those four British schools took four of the 6 top places in worldwide University rankings in a study just released and reported by the BBC-

Cambridge – top last year – was second in the QS World University Rankings, which are based on a number of areas.  UCL, Oxford and Imperial took fourth, fifth and sixth places respectively, with the US’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology top and Harvard third.

Really, congratulations to all.  That’s really quite an impressive achievement.

A Tantalizing Tease: The Cambridge Mishnah

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The Genizah Unit remarks, in a toss off aside, this tantalizing tidbit:

Further to the forthcoming Digital Library update, a sneak preview of the Cambridge Mishnah.

What’s that mean?  Are they publishing a new edition of the Mishnah based on manuscripts in their possession?  What’s going on?  I’m intrigued.  Someone tell us what’s going on at Cambridge!

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The Latest ‘Genizah Fragments’

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The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge publishes a newsletter titled ‘Genizah Fragments’, the most recent edition, which arrived in the mail yesterday, features a description of the restoration of a fragment of Leviticus 9:4-6 (photo below) by the inestimably bright Ben Outhwaite.

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You can receive the Newsletter simply by requesting a copy from its editor, Dr. Outhwaite, at

Dr Ben Outhwaite
Head of the Genizah Research Unit
Cambridge University Library
West Road, Cambridge
CB3 9DR, United Kingdom

[NB- The road was not, in fact, named after me- just so that's clear].

Furthermore, should you ever have a chance to visit the library, do so!  Here are some photos I snapped when SOTS met at Cambridge in 2009 and we were treated to a private lecture at the Unit as well as a tour of many of the manuscripts which had been laid out for us:

(photos were taken without flash)

(I’m no rule breaker!)

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Goitein and girlish prose: T-S 13J24.22

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The field of Genizah Studies was revolutionised by the outstanding work of Shelomo Dov Goitein, who laid the modern foundations for the work on the ‘documentary Genizah’. But there are disadvantages, too, of having such an eminent founding father: awed by the prolific and brilliant Goitein, subsequent scholarship has sometimes relied too unquestioningly on his work, with the result that misapprehensions have become fixed within the scholarly canon of the Genizah.

An example of just such a misapprehension concerns T-S 13J24.22. It is a family letter in which a father is asked by his daughter to come home quickly as the mother is about to give birth, and to bring with him various garments and sweets. The letter has elicited interest thanks to Goitein’s analysis that it was written by a girl, who was originally a Spanish speaker, and that the addressee, her father, was in Mocha, Yemen. Obviously, this is an exciting interpretation as it would be an example of complex trade relations in the 16th century, and for the schooling of a foreign woman in writing Arabic. In the course of cataloguing this fragment, however, I felt that a linguistic re-examination casts doubt on Goitein’s earlier assumptions.

From our friends at Cambridge.  There’s lot’s more.