This book contains the edition of the texts on the Sefer Torah rediscovered in Bologna, the town where this scroll has been held for the past eight centuries.
This publication includes the contributions of the leading specialists in the complex and difficult field of history, structure and the different halakhot related to the copy of a Sefer Torah, changed over time, and particularly between the 1st and 2nd millennium CE. This highly specialised field is so far little known to both scholars and the broader public. Of incredible interest are the discoveries made in the history of this roll; considered the archetypal autograph of the authentic Torah written by his hand by the scribe Ezra, its fame weighted heavily in some sixteenth-century political-religious disputes. Further studies of codicology and palaeography deal with this ancient scroll, while it is believed that it, written in a northern place of the Iberian Peninsula, was used in Catalan Kabbalistic circles.
We leave the reader to take advantage and satisfaction in reading this book, also enriched by some comparative studies between the Roll of Bologna and other ancient Sifre Torah whose characteristic features include “crowns” (tagin) and curled letters similar to those contained in the Bologna Scroll. What appears clearly is that until at least the 12th century, the making of a Sefer Torah for liturgical use was totally different from the practices known today, which have been shaped since the first codification by the Maimonides in the 11th century and further by Joseph Caro in the 16th century. In the previous period, copying a Hebrew Pentateuch Scroll was not so different from copying a codex, except that the text in a scroll had to be exclusively consonantal and the open and closed sections indicated by blank spaces in the lines. However, as for the use of graphic fillers, deletions and rewritings of words or lines, catchwords at the end of the parchment sheets, and marginal signs, or even the colophon could be present in the Sifre Torah.
How the Bologna Scroll Was Rediscovered
What led to the re-discovery the ancient Sefer Torah of Bologna was my decision, some years ago, to write, a new catalogue of the small collection of 38 Hebrew manuscripts preserved at the Bologna University Library (Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, henceforth BUB), catalogue based on modern bibliographical criteria. Therefore, in 2012, together with Dr. Giacomo Corazzol, who had the larger share of the task, we started to examine the manuscripts. I was in charge of the description of the scrolls and of the codicological and paleographic characteristics of all the manuscripts of the collection. Our Nuovo catalogo dei manoscritti ebraici della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, appeared in the Bologna University Library’s Journal “inBUB, Ricerche e cataloghi sui Fondi della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna”, Minerva Edizioni, Argelato (Bologna), and was also printed separately. It is available online in my Academia.edu site.1
The Vicissitudes of the Bologna Torah Hyperbolically Attributed to Ezra the Scribe
This Hebrew manuscript collections in Bologna had been already catalogued by Leonello Modona, a Jew born in Cento, a town between Bologna and Ferrara, who worked as a librarian at the BUB, and in 1889 published in Florence the Catalogo dei codici ebraici della Biblioteca della R. Università di Bologna. The ancient Sefer Torah, with the reference Scroll 2, together with another Pentateuch scroll of a later date, which lacks almost entirely the first three books Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, labelled Scroll 1, was a part of the BUB Hebrew manuscripts collection. In his catalogue, Leonello Modona, dated the Scroll 2 to the 17th century adding a question mark (?), stating that its origin was unknown, and describing it with the following words: “Writing of Italian type rather clumsy, where some letters, in addition to the usual crowns or strokes (
The cataloguer made a momentous error: he did not notice that the two aforementioned Torah Scrolls had been confused in the second half of the 19th century, both being copied on gevil, namely a brown vellum different from the white parchment.
The ancient Pentateuch scroll, had been probably copied in northern Spain and was used in the Northern Catalonia, namely Provence. There, in Perpignan, according to an ancient witness, some Jews in 1302 donated it to the Friar Aimerico Giliani, on the occasion of his appointment as General Master of the Dominican Order. Aimerico brought it to Bologna to the Library of the Dominican convent of San Salvatore. The precious Sefer Torah remained in this library until 1802, when Napoleon extended his dominion over northern Italy, and brought it to Paris at the Bibliothèque Nationale.
The Fame of the Scroll from the 14th to the Beginning of the 19th Century
Before these vicissitudes, the Bologna Scroll, hyperbolically attributed to Ezra, the scribe, from at least as early as the 14th and 15th century until the beginning of the 19th century, was known and considered so precious that it was kept closed in a shrine with two keys, one held by the Dominicans, and the other by the Municipality of Bologna. Many great European biblical scholars and Hebraists such as Arias Montano, Benjamin Kennicot, Bernard de Montfaucon, Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi and Abraham Berliner knew it. The French learned ecclesiastic Bernard De Montfaucon saw it in Bologna in the library of the convent of San Domenico on April 17, 1700 during his trip in Italy, and reported many precious information and valuable data concerning the scroll in his Diarium Italicum published in Paris two year later, in 1702.
The Exchange of Scrolls at Mid-19th Century
For five centuries, from the 14th to the 18th, the scroll had been very famous, known to most of the biblical scholars of the time, was examined, studied, and revered. For this reason, the expert bibliophiles of Napoleon took it to Paris, where it remained for thirteen years, until 1815 when, with the anti-Napoleonic restoration, the Pope obtained that the Scroll be returned to Bologna. After its restitution, it was kept until 1826–1827, in the University Library of Bologna, then in 1828, it was again hosted in the Library of the Dominicans. In 1866, with the second suppression of religious congregations, the manuscripts kept by the Dominicans were confiscated for the second time and brought to the University Library. At that time, the librarians and cataloguers were not able to correctly describe the oriental manuscripts, including those in Hebrew, and exchanged our Scroll with the other mutilated Torah Scroll.
Re-identifying the Ancient Scroll Identity
Thanks to a more careful examination of the scroll and a comparison with Leonello Modona’s catalogue description, I immediately realized that the dating and description attributed by him to the Sefer Torah 2 should be attributed to the Scroll 1, and vice versa. In fact, the scroll’s writing appeared to me to be an early Oriental or Spanish square Hebrew writing, to be dated back to the first two or three centuries of the second millennium CE. I immediately consulted my colleagues, experts in this field, namely Judith Olszowy-Schlanger of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, Jordan Penkower, of Bar-Ilan University, a leading expert in the textual and graphical characters of the Torah Scroll, and in Jerusalem, Angelo Piattelli, expert in early Hebrew scrolls and in Judaica antiquities. Most of us agreed to date the scroll to a chronological range between the late 11th and 13th centuries, with Judith Schlanger insisting on the later part of this time span.
Features of the Old Bologna Scroll
The scroll of Bologna follows for eighty percent the Masoretic treatise on Sefer tagin, marking tagin on various letters, as well as writing unusual ‘winding’ letters, as peh and ṭet lefufot, but does not follow the custom of marking three tagin on the seven letters
As Jordan Penkower pointed out, several practices that are known only from codices are found in this scroll. These include the addition of a final nun in the margins, attested in Bologna Scroll 60 times, to mark differences with the Babylonian scribal tradition as to the sections divisions. Corrections are added in the margins and not in the text or between the lines. The practice of marking the place in the text, e.g. with two dots above the line where the marginal correction should be added and erasing a word in the text and leaving the tops of the letters in order to identify the erased text. Adding graphic fillers at the end of a line to fill the empty space, e.g. in the shape of a reversed dalet, or with lines variously shaped, as it is normal in the codices. At least in two cases, adding a catchword, in Bologna scroll written in cursive writing, at the end of a section, in the inferior margin on the left, to anticipate the first word of the following section. The omission of minuscule letters as in Gen. 2, 4 and Lev. 1, 1, found in early Masoretic lists and in later medieval codices and Torah scrolls, but not written in early Eastern Masoretic codices.
Finally yet importantly, why to publish these studies on the ancient Roll of the Hebrew Pentateuch in the series ‘European Genizah’: Texts and Studies, dedicated in particular to the discovery of thousands of sheets dismembered by medieval Hebrew manuscripts in parchment and reused as bookbinding? We know that the term “Genizah” here is used only in an analogical sense, because it is not a true Genizah. However, as happen in a true Genizah, the result is the same: i.e. the discovery of new Hebrew manuscripts, both complete codices and scroll and fragments. So, with full reason the present studies on this precious Sefer Torah can be accepted in this series published by Brill.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank all those who made the publication of this book possible. In addition to the authors, all the leading experts in different fields who gave us valuable suggestions on the importance and uniqueness of the Bologna roll. First of all, my thanks to my colleagues and good friends Judith Schlanger, Colette Sirat, Jordan Penkower and Angelo Piattelli, with whom I shared the long inquiry on the codicological and palaeographic study of the scroll. My thanks also to Giacomo Corazzol who prompted me to undertake the compilation of a new catalog of the Hebrew manuscripts collection of Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna (BUB), to which he has made a significant contribution. I am grateful to the directors of the BUB for their collaboration, at the time of the discovery in 2013, Biancastella Antonino, and later Giacomo Nerozzi. My thanks also to Andreas Lehnardt and Giuseppe Veltri for agreeing to publish the volume in this prestigious series. Finally, my acknowledgment to the publisher Brill, for the publication of the present volume. In particular, my gratitude to Katelyn Chin (Editor), Erika Mandarino (Assistant Editor) and Christina Sargent (Production Editor), Ancient Near East and Jewish Studies. I worked closely with them to produce a beautiful and important book that opens up new horizons and sheds new light on our knowledge of the Sefer Torah and its history in the 1st and 2nd millennium CE, certainly involving interesting surprises and new data.