The Sirach Manuscripts from Cairo and the Context of ms. F

Abstract

The Hebrew Sirach fragments from the Ben Ezra Geniza in Cairo / Fustat have been assigned in recent years by comparison with manuscripts by the same scribes or similar production to the rabbanite mainstream of Judaism and therefore the older hypothesis of a “sectarian” tradition of the Sirach texts e.g. in Karaite circles has been rejected. In this article the Hebrew Sirach fragment F identified in 1982 in Cambridge under the shelfmark T-S AS 213.17 has been examined for references to other manuscripts and claims the environment represented in a Machsor partly preserved in Geniza fragments in Cambridge who has the same script characteristics and, in the opinion of the author, comes from the same scribe. Paleographic evidence and the chronological classification of the poems from Andalusia and North Africa used in this Machsor indicate that Ms. F was created in the middle of the 12th century.