Copyright

Estara Arrant;

Published On

2025-03-07

Page Range

pp. 217–256

Language

  • English

Print Length

40 pages

An Exploration of Geniza Targum Fragments as Objects of Personal Study and Everyday Use

  • Estara J. Arrant (author)
Chapter of: Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 2: The Medieval World, Judaeo-Arabic, and Neo-Aramaic (pp. 217–256)

This article examines a corpus of Geniza fragments containing Targumic texts that appear to have been used for personal study or synagogue preparation rather than as formal, carefully produced manuscripts. These fragments, sourced from the Taylor-Schechter Genizah collections, display informal characteristics, such as unruled paper, hurried scripts, inconsistent formatting, and frequent reuse of materials. The study highlights their codicological and palaeographic features, their role in liturgical practice, and the presence of a personalised reshut—a poetic introduction to Targum reading. The analysis suggests that while the Targum had become fossilised within Jewish tradition, it was still actively engaged with in a practical, everyday context. The textual and paratextual elements of these fragments contribute to a broader understanding of how Targumic texts were studied, written, and recited in medieval Jewish communities of the Middle East.

Contributors

Estara J. Arrant

(author)
Linguist, Scholar, and Software Developer at University of Cambridge

Estara Arrant (PhD, University of Cambridge) is a linguist of Semitic languages, a scholar of medieval Jewish and Islamic textual history and culture, and a data and computer scientist and software developer. She was a postdoctoral research associate at the Genizah Research Unit on the ERC-funded project TEXTEVOLVE: A New Approach to the Evolution of Texts Based on the Manuscripts of the Targums. Her role in this project was to adapt bioinformatics algorithms used in evolutionary biology to analyse the textual evolution of medieval Targum manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as to create new digital tools to assist in the analysis of large, complex textual data from the Targum text traditions.  She is currently the University Library’s inaugural Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow (January 2025–December 2027). Dr Arrant’s main research interest lies in creating innovative data/computer science and applied mathematical approaches to help address longstanding questions in our knowledge of Jewish and Islamic languages and cultures. She works also on the linguistics, philology, and codicology of everyday engagement with scriptures in the Geniza, and has an active interest in the evolution of the Hebrew Bible, Qurʾān, Arabic and Aramaic Bible translations, Tafsīr and Midrash. Recent publications include ‘An Exploratory Typology of Near-Model and Non-Standard Tiberian Torah Manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah’, in Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions (University of Cambridge Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Open Book Publishers, 2020), and ‘A Further Analysis of the “Byzantine (Italian-Levantine) Triad” of Features in Common Torah Codices’, in Studies in the Masoretic Tradition of the Hebrew Bible (University of Cambridge Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Open Book Publishers, 2022).