Ancient Jewish manuscripts reveal a forgotten history

Past Horizons ^ | Saturday, January 1, 2011 | unattributed

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The study by Cambridge University researchers suggests that, contrary to long-accepted views, Jews continued to use a Greek version of the Bible in synagogues for centuries longer than previously thought. In some places, the practice continued almost until living memory.

The Cairo Genizah was not an archive designed to preserve documents. It was a "receptacle," a final resting place or cache of "trashed" documents written in Hebrew or transliterated into Hebrew text, Arabic and other languages during the Middle Ages. The Ben-Ezra Synagogue in Cairo systematically disposed of deceased persons' documents in a special vaulted room in the attic of the synagogue, accessible through a hole in the wall. Some of the Geniza's contents had already gone to private collections or libraries -- mostly via scholarly visitors or Middle Eastern antiquity markets. Luckily, Cairo's dry climate prevented complete deterioration of the remaining writings even though they were damaged due to the ageing process.

In 1896, the importance of the Cairo Genizah came to the attention of Cambridge University scholar Prof. Solomon Schechter who transferred the remains -- some 130,000 fragments -- to Cambridge.

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As I said, he’s a nutjob. Reminds me a little of the total goof-bag who claimed that the entire Bible was hoaxed by the Piso family; there was also, for a time, a claim (I think by the same joker) that the Roman Empire was hoaxed in order to justify the Venetian empire. If so, the Venetian empire went to more work building the hoax than it did actually building the Venetian empire. :’)