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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2021
Our article in this issue, “The ‘oldest dated document of the Cairo Genizah’ (Halper 331): The Seleucid era and sectarian Jewish calendars,” examines a fragment of parchment bearing a short text dated to the year 870/1 ce. One of the article's arguments concerns the protective formulas that appear in this fragment—“With a good sign for us and for all Israel, at a good hour, with an upright horn, (under) a high constellation, (so) may it be for us and for all Israel!” Similar formulas appear at the start of later Jewish marriage contracts (ketubbot) preserved in the Genizah (and later, elsewhere). But we suggest that in the ninth century, such formulas were not necessarily distinctive to ketubbot, and that Halper 331 may contain the text of some other type of legal document. In support of this suggestion, we noted two other non-ketubbah texts from the tenth century that feature similar formulas, including an inscription within a lectionary containing readings from the Prophets (haftarot) that was written in 924.
1 T-S A 42.2, discussed in our article at ns. 44-47.
2 Brepols, 1997.
3 We are grateful to Dr Ben Outhwaite for confirming that this is the case. However, note Susan Lynn Schmidt's recent PhD dissertation on the illuminations of the Leningrad Codex: “The Carpet Illuminations of Codex Leningrad: National Library of Russia Ms. Evr. I B 19a” (PhD thesis, University of the Holy Land, 2019).
4 Besides T-S A 42.2 (part of Beit Arié, Sirat and Glatzer, Codices Hebraicis, vol. 1, no. 4) and EBP.I B3 (ibid., no. 3), discussed here, related formulas appear in EBP II B 17 (ibid., no. 5), EBP II B 280 (ibid., no. 8), EBP II B 281 (ibid., no. 10), and EBP II B 282 (ibid., no. 11). Such formulas continue to appear in later biblical codex colophons after the tenth century as well.