JTS MS 10705

  • Nevi'im
  • Former Prophets
  • Fragment

Five parchment leaves from 1 and 2 Kings in early Italian square Hebrew hand, dating to the 11th–12th century — among the oldest surviving Italian Bible manuscripts. Written in three columns of thirty lines, frame-ruled in hard point, with masoretic notes in the margins. The vocalization deviates from standard Tiberian convention in distinctive archaic ways — dagesh rafeh in aleph, dagesh lene and rafeh in non-begedkefet consonants, the shin/sin dot inside the letter rather than on top — features documented by Pilocane (2002) as characteristic of pre-standardized Italian biblical orthography. Recovered from binding waste in the Modenese archives.

Place of origin
Italy (Modena)
Provenance
Modenese archives → Avraham Yanni, Jerusalem → JTS (2003)
Holding institution
The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary
Image attribution
Image courtesy of The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary (MS 10705). Digitization funded by the Dr. Georgette Bennett and Dr. Leonard Polonsky Digitization Project.