The Convergence of the Transmission of Jewish and Muslim Sacred Scriptures Reflected by the Medieval Karaite Transcriptions of the Hebrew Bible

In the High Middle Ages (10th–12th centuries) Karaite Jews frequently used Arabic script in their writings not only for books and documents in the Arabic language but also for writing Hebrew Bible manuscripts. The Hebrew Bible manuscripts in Arabic script are transcriptions of the oral reading tradition, in most cases the Tiberian reading tradition. Many of them contain Hebrew vocalisation and accent signs. These Karaite transcriptions are modelled on Arabic Qurʾān manuscripts. As in Qurʾān manuscripts, the Arabic script of the Karaite transcriptions provides a written skeleton of the text (rasm) that is compatible with the oral reading tradition reflected by the vocalisation signs. This is unlike the traditional orthography of the Hebrew Bible, which does not conform in many places with the oral reading tradition—a feature that some medieval Karaite scholars found problematic. Furthermore, the manuscripts of the Karaite transcriptions exhibit many parallels with contemporary Qurʾān manuscripts in their codicological form and in sigla and decorative elements to mark section divisions. Some transcriptions represent the Hebrew Tetragrammaton by the letters of the Arabic name of God الله. This corpus of Karaite manuscripts represent a remarkable convergence of the written form of Jewish Scripture with that of Muslim Scripture in the Middle Ages.