Scribal Traditions and the Haftarot in Mediaeval Ashkenazic Bibles : Preliminary Observations

International audienceAshkenaz is one of the most important Jewish geo-cultural areas in the Middle Ages, and one of the most complex in terms of scribal traditions. In the last decade, palaeographers have attempted at distinguishing better scribal traditions and palaeographical features within the Ashkenazic area, considering Ashkenaz not as a whole but as a puzzle formed by different regional subcultural areas such as Ile de France (Tsarfat), the Anglo-Normand region (Normandy), Lorraine (Lothar), the Rhine Valley (the ShuM region), and Northern Italy. However, such regions are difficult to characterize in terms of palaeographical data only, especially in the 13th century, when the script is only starting to acquire more specific regional shapes. To overcome this difficulty, the MBH Project (Manuscripta Bibliae Hebraicae, Aix-Marseille University) has started to study Ashkenazic Hebrew Bibles produced before 1300, with the main goal of studying the expression of the scribal traditions of these different regions. However, in doing so we also face some difficulties, e.g. many of the manuscripts are undated and unlocalized, and it is therefore difficult to ascribe their characteristics to a particular region, unless we have other clues pointing towards it. For this reason, we have started to focus on Liturgical Bibles, which besides the Pentateuch and the Megillot, also include the prophetic readings, or Haftaroth. These are overall the same in the whole of Ashkenaz, yet there are significant differences in three specific Haftaroth from one Ashkenazic region to the other, and these differences could be interpreted as local customs. This paper seeks therefore to correlate the variations of these haftaroth with palaeographic features of Ashkenazic script, for this could increase our certainty in the ascription of palaeographical features to a concrete region in a particular manuscript. The first step in this research would be exploring Ashkenazic dated and localized manuscripts, where the mentioned correlation would be geographically and chronologically framed, only to continue afterwards with undated and unlocalized manuscripts