Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture

Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture presents an overview of the digital turn in Ancient Jewish and Christian manuscripts visualisation, data mining and communication, edited by David Hamidović, Claire Clivaz and Sarah Bowen Savant. Readership: Scholars and PhD and master students in Biblical studies, Early Jewish and Christian studies

Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture: Visualisation, Data Mining, Communication

Publication in open access thanks to the support of the SNSF Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture presents an overview of the digital turn in Ancient Jewish and Christian manuscripts visualisation, data mining and communication. Edited by David Hamidović, Claire Clivaz and Sarah Bowen Savant, it gathers together the contributions of seventeen scholars involved in Biblical, Early Jewish and Christian studies. The volume attests to the spreading of digital humanities in these fields and presents fundamental analysis of the rise of visual culture as well as specific test-cases concerning ancient manuscripts. Sophisticated visualisation tools, stylometric analysis, teaching and visual data, epigraphy and visualisation belong notably to the varied overview presented in the volume

The use of monotheism in the shaping of Christian identities vis-à-vis Judaism in the second century

This thesis argues that early Christians actively engaged rhetoric and symbols of monotheism in diverse literary strategies as an ideological tool for resisting, repositioning, and rereading Judaism in order to shape their own collective identity from 100 to 200 CE (ch. 1). Belief and confession of one God provides an important basis for social comparison between Jews and Christians because it represents a fundamental Jewish identity marker also shared by Christians (ch. 2). A survey of divine unity and uniqueness rhetoric in early Christian literature revealed three broad trajectories in which monotheistic motifs assumed significance in shaping Christian literature and thereby the production of "Christianness" itself. This thesis examines specific moments in each trajectory that highlight particularly well the functionality of monotheism in the process of forming Christianness relative to Judaism.Ignatius of Antioch provides the first example (ch. 3). The literary shaping of Philadelphians and Magnesians reveals that for Ignatius what fundamentally distinguished "Judaism" and "Christianism" was not monotheism but their respective response to the revelation of God through Jesus in the gospel. Monotheism was not a tool for classifying difference but a powerful weapon for resisting threatening Jewish influence within the Christian church. Only as an element of resistance brought to bear on an already established "Judaism"-"Christianism" divide did monotheism represent, reflexively and secondarily, a means of shaping Christian identity.Another trajectory overtly utilised "knowledge" of the one God as primary criterion for indexing sameness and difference between Christianity, Judaism, and other groups (ch. 4). Kerygma Petrou and Aristides' Apology employ such monotheistic classification strategies to situate Christianity in a global framework alongside other religious and/or ethnic collectivities. Both texts locate the "newness" of Christianity alongside the more well-known status of Jews. In so doing, they effectively reposition Judaism within the global framework of religious and ethnic groups to clarify and legitimate the meaning of belonging to Christian identity.Some Christians employed "two powers" hermeneutic strategies to reinterpret Jewish scriptural traditions of exclusivist monotheism by insinuating into scripture a second figure, Jesus, alongside the one God (ch. 5). Aristo's Disputation of Jason and Papiscus and Justin's Dialogue demonstrate awareness that the scriptures are shared intellectual property and the proper locus for Christian-Jewish debate. "Two powers" interpretations thus reflect conscious attempts to reread Jewish monotheistic textual traditions in a new way. Through them an entire reconstruction of the symbolic universe of monotheism can take place in explicitly Christian terms.These diverse strategies reveal a complex network of early Christian literary production that used monotheistic symbols and rhetoric as an implement to resist, reposition, and reread Judaism, thereby producing distinctly Christian identities (ch. 6)

Diversity and Rabbinization

"This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period. Drawing on available textual and material evidence, the fourteen essays presented here, written by leading experts in their fields, span a significant chronological and geographical range and cover material that has not yet received sufficient attention in scholarship. The volume is divided into four parts. The first focuses on the vantage point of the synagogue; the second and third on non-rabbinic Judaism in, respectively, the Near East and Europe; the final part turns from diversity within Judaism to the process of ""rabbinization"" as represented in some unusual rabbinic texts. Diversity and Rabbinization is a welcome contribution to the historical study of Judaism in all its complexity. It presents fresh perspectives on critical questions and allows us to rethink the tension between multiplicity and unity in Judaism during the first millennium CE. L’École Pratique des Hautes Études has kindly contributed to the publication of this volume.

Diversity and Rabbinization

"This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period. Drawing on available textual and material evidence, the fourteen essays presented here, written by leading experts in their fields, span a significant chronological and geographical range and cover material that has not yet received sufficient attention in scholarship. The volume is divided into four parts. The first focuses on the vantage point of the synagogue; the second and third on non-rabbinic Judaism in, respectively, the Near East and Europe; the final part turns from diversity within Judaism to the process of ""rabbinization"" as represented in some unusual rabbinic texts. Diversity and Rabbinization is a welcome contribution to the historical study of Judaism in all its complexity. It presents fresh perspectives on critical questions and allows us to rethink the tension between multiplicity and unity in Judaism during the first millennium CE. L’École Pratique des Hautes Études has kindly contributed to the publication of this volume.

Crossing Experiences in Digital Epigraphy: From Practice to Discipline

Although a relevant number of projects digitizing inscriptions are under development or have been recently accomplished, Digital Epigraphy is not yet considered to be a proper discipline and there are still no regular occasions to meet and discuss. By collecting contributions on nineteen projects – very diversified for geographic and chronological context, for script and language, and for typology of digital output – this volume intends to point out the methodological issues which are specific to the application of information technologies to epigraphy. The first part of the volume is focused on data modelling and encoding, which are conditioned by the specific features of different scripts and languages, and deeply influence the possibility to perform searches on texts and the approach to the lexicographic study of such under-resourced languages. The second part of the volume is dedicated to the initiatives aimed at fostering aggregation, dissemination and the reuse of epigraphic materials, and to discuss issues of interoperability. The common theme of the volume is the relationship between the compliance with the theoretic tools and the methodologies developed by each different tradition of studies, and, on the other side, the necessity of adopting a common framework in order to produce commensurable and shareable results. The final question is whether the computational approach is changing the way epigraphy is studied, to the extent of renovating the discipline on the basis of new, unexplored questions

Some Scribal Techniques in Ancient Israel With Other Semitic Parallels.

This thesis examines selected ancient Semitic scribal techniques. The main source document is the Hebrew Old Testament, with illumination also found in extra-biblical texts (at times autographs rather than later copies, as is the Masoretic text). The first discussion concerns text descriptions. A study of subscripts, especially colophons, results in the refutation of Gevaryahu's claims that some biblical headings were originally colophons. A synthetic study of headings, both specific titles and more general descriptions, follows with special emphasis on incipits, several of which are now identified in the Old Testament. Some types of description are shown to be secondary, scribal additions, while others could be original. Textual divisions are studied under two categories: those which can be studied situ in autograph texts, and those which are determined internally due to the lack of autographs. This includes the Masoretic text, using Genesis, Leviticus 1-7 and Amos here as case studies. These are found to correspond to divisions externally determined in extra-biblical texts, thus providing some control in the division of the biblical text. A study of glosses and notes critiques the methodology of G.R. Driver and others in determining the presence of these, and analyses them from the more objective evidence provided by explicit temporal notes, the waw explicativum, and circumstantial clauses. Finally, there is a study of abbreviations, a number of which have been proposed for the Old Testament by G.R. Driver and others. Based on the analysis of objective abbreviations in other Semitic languages, their existance in the Old Testament is called into question, at least in the scale previously proposed. Scribes are thus shown to effect various aspects of the text, espcially its structure and description. Even the internal content can show evidence of scribal practice

‘Many Other Things Worthy of Knowledge and Memory’: The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and its Annotators, 1499-1700

Due to its elaborate woodcuts and artificial language, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1499, hereafter ‘HP’) has traditionally been presented as a fringe anomaly within the histories of the book and of Italian philology. Other studies have examined the influence of the HP in art and literature, but there has been little study of the role of readers in mediating that influence. This framing of the HP as unreadable visual marvel has impeded consideration of Aldus’ creation as a used text within the wider fabric of humanism. Liane Lefaivre’s conceptualisation of the HP as a creative dream-space for idea generation was a significant step towards foregrounding the text’s readers. This thesis set to testing this hypothesis against the experiences of actual readers as recorded in their marginalia. A world census of annotated copies of the HP located a number of examples of prolific annotation, showing readers making use of the HP for a variety of purposes. Benedetto and Paolo Giovio applied a Plinian model of extractive reading to two copies at Como and Modena, reading the HP in a manner analogous to the Natural History. Ben Jonson read his copy of the 1545 HP as a source for visual elements of stage design. An anonymous second hand in Jonson’s copy read the text as an alchemical allegory, as did the hands in a copy at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. Pope Alexander VII (Fabio Chigi) combed the text for examples of verbal wit, or acutezze, while comparing Poliphilo’s journeys through an architectural dream with his own passages through Rome. Informed by analogy with modern educational media, I have reframed the HP as a ‘humanistic activity book’, in which readers cultivated their faculty of ingegno through ludic engagement with the text