1000-year-old biblical manuscript recovered in Egypt

MANUSCRIPT: Lost 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible found on dusty Cairo synagogue shelf. While attempting to document Egyptian synagogues, an Israeli historian stumbles upon a massive, well-preserved 616-page codex that was written in 1028 (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel).

In July 2017, Israeli historian Yoram Meital stumbled upon a handwritten 1028 CE biblical codex that was lying abandoned on a dusty shelf in a Cairo synagogue. Wrapped in simple white paper of the sort one finds on tables in cheap eateries, at 616 pages, the Zechariah Ben ‘Anan Manuscript is one of the era’s most complete and preserved examples of the “Writings,” the third and concluding section of the Hebrew Bible. It had been lost to scholars for almost 40 years.

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This article also links to the recent Jewish Quarterly Review article that announces the find formally. Happily, the full text is available for free: A Thousand-Year-Old Biblical Manuscript Rediscovered in Cairo: The Future of the Egyptian Jewish Past (Yoram Meital; JQR 110.1 [2020]: 194-219).

Cross-file under Karaite Watch.

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