English, Recent Publications, Reviews

Quotations of ARNB from an Oxford MS

The most recent Jewish Studies Quarterly contains an article by Christoph Berner, “Quotations from Avot de Rabbi Nathan B in MS Oxford (Bodleiana) Heb. c. 24,” JSQ 18 (2011): 217-265.  This takes us back to the good old days of publishing whole portions of rabbinic manuscripts in academic journals. This of course is still quite common in Israel, but less so in the US and Europe.
By the way, the word “quotations” in the article’s title should not be taken as an indication of size.  As Berner writes:

This manuscript is the autograph of the Magen Avot, a commentary on Avot de Rabbi Nathan A composed by Yom Tov ben Moshe Sahalon. As already noted by Schechter in his edition of Avot de Rabbi Nathan, MS Heb. c. 24 does not only contain the entire text of version A, but also vast passages of version B, which are quoted in the commentary. Although the significance of these passages for the study of version B can hardly be overestimated, it was beyond the scope of the editorial project situated in Gottingen to systematically search the voluminous manuscript (341 folios) for B traditions. In consequence, the synoptic edition of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan published in 2006 includes MS Heb. c. 24 as a textual witness of version A only,10 a fact that calls for a separate publication of the B material…

In other publication news, Seth Schwartz’ relatively new book was just reviewed by Eric Stewart at the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. For the most part, Stewart seems to like it.

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