This is somewhat off our Jewish built heritage focus, but exciting (and rather delightful) news that could interest our readers.
The British Library reports that more than 300 of its precious Hebrew manuscripts — dating back to the 9th century — have been digitized and are now online for public use.
This is part of a far-reaching 3-year project funded by the Polonsky Foundation aimed at digitizing 1250 Hebrew manuscripts held at the British Library, making them available to a global audience.
The first 45 manuscripts went online in April. They mainly included Hebrew Bibles, such as the highly significant London Codex dating from around the 9th century, and a richly illuminated 14th century Haggadah from Catalonia.
Our recent upload broadens the scope for discovery and research even further with over 300 Hebrew manuscripts now online. The manuscripts included in the latest ingest present a wider diversity of subjects, thus, apart from Bibles and biblical commentaries, one will find liturgies, manuscripts of the Talmud (large corpus of Jewish law and tradition; includes the Mishnah and the Gemara), Talmudic commentaries, midrash (rabbinic commentary on the Hebrew scriptural text) and halakhah (the legal component of Talmudic literature).
There is additionally a greater variation of languages. Though a fair number were written in Hebrew, languages such as Aramaic, Arabic and Judeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew characters) are well represented.
Take a look at this page from the Library’s blog to see more information about the manuscripts and some wonderful illustrations.
1 comment on “Digital Hebrew treasures from British Library online”
What a wonderful achievement. It will be valued by many people. I shall certainly consult this for my writing and research.