Some of the specific questions to be addressed by the AHRC project are:

  • To what extent do the remains of Greek Bible versions from the Middle Ages preserved in Hebrew characters point to the existence of one or more Jewish Greek translations of entire biblical books or of the entire Hebrew Bible?
  • If such translations existed, who produced them, who used them, and for what purposes?
  • How widespread was their use at different times?
  • To what extent was this an oral, as opposed to a written, tradition?
  • What is the relationship between these translations and the various translations known from antiquity, including those that now survive only in fragments?
  • What is their relationship to certain medieval Christian manuscripts with which they show affinities?
  • What is their relationship to the Pentateuch printed in Greek in Hebrew characters by Eliezer Soncino at Constantinople in 1547, as well as other later Jewish translations?
  • What do the surviving materials contribute to our knowledge of medieval vernacular Greek, in its various dialects, and what light does this study shed in its turn on the history and geographical dissemination of the Jewish translations?
  • What impact has this Greek tradition had on the extensive Rabbinic literature preserved in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic?