Cambridge, University Library, T-S C6.133 (part)
Origins
Probably Byzantine, 11-12 c.
Provenance
Ben Ezra Synagogue, Fostat, Egypt. Taken to Cambridge by S. Schechter, 1896–97
Contents
Scholia on Genesis and Joshua, extremely fragmentary in parts. Mainly brief notes, but including a more detailed commentary on the division of the land in Joshua chapter 13, which bears the heading, 'The Chapter of the Allocation of the Territories' (פרק נחלות).
Codicology
Two leaves of parchment, conjoined. Badly mutilated and stained, resulting in the loss of much of the text. Overal dimension of surviving parchment: height 13 cm., width of better preserved leaf 12 cm.; written space: 11.2 cm. x 9.8 cm. (between bounding lines). Pricked in the outer margin and ruled with a hard point across the entire sheet.
Palaeography
Brown ink. Rather untidy hand. On 2v the writing is smaller and the written lines are closer together, ignoring the rulings. Deletion is marked by crossing out (2v 15); missing letters are inserted above the line (2v 4, 12). Pointing is used rarely and inconsistently, for Greek and Hebrew words. Punctuation is light; it is marked by a colon (in Genesis), colon + oblique (in Joshua). New sections are indicated by a blank space, either at the beginning of a line or within the line. Abbreviations are maked by a dot over the last letter; ligatures are conventional and relatively scarce. Divine name: for biblical tetragram, three yods arranged as a triangle; the author himself uses the title Shaddai (2r 8, 2v 25). There is some attempt at achieving a justified left margin by the use of stretched letters, but the results are uneven and words are often allowed to overrun. At one point a line may be filled with the beginning of the next word (1v 11).
Bibliography
de Lange, Nicholas, Greek Jewish texts from the Cairo Geniza, Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 1996.