Bible, Amos, in Hebrew, manuscript on vellum [Oriental (Near East), tenth or eleventh century]

a single leaf, 385mm. by 345mm., three columns, 22 lines, in large square script with nikkud, small Masorah inserted between the columns, strip of paper perhaps from an early spine strengthener pasted to inner edge, small stains and tears to edges, else excellent and presentable condition

provenance

Most probably from the Cairo Genizah (see previous lot); acquired from Quaritch in November 1992: Schøyen MS 1630.

text

Amos 7:11-9:8. This leaf, like the previous lot, is another relic of a remarkably early monumental Hebrew Bible, dating to the tenth or eleventh century. The late Professor Chimen Abramsky assigned it securely to the scribe of the tenth-century British Library, Or.4445. That manuscript's lack of a eulogistic acronym for the Masoretic scholar, Aaron Ben-Asher (d. c.960, see previous lot) has been taken as an indication that he was alive at the time it was written. Paul E. Kahle has suggested that that manuscript was the work of Ben-Asher himself in the early period of his work on the text; the St. Petersburg codex being a copy of his definitive final text (The Cairo Genizah, 1959, pp.117-18). If correct, the present leaf would also be an important relic of the work of Ben-Asher and one of the formative stages of the Hebrew bible.