Bible glossaries as hidden cultural carriers. judeo-French cultural exchange in the High Middle Ages

Funding by and establishment at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities / Academies' Program

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Bible glossaries as hidden carriers of culture | Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities

The project focuses on Hebrew-French glossaries, which are being edited (for the most part for the first time) and historically and philologically processed and contextualized because they are exceptional witnesses to a simultaneously developing (Jewish and Christian) French (Bible) reading culture in Western Europe between the 12th and 14th centuries. The glossaries form basic texts for research into the interrelations between Jewish intellectual history and the non-Jewish environment as well as the lexical interferences between Jewish and Christian vernacular cultures. The French glosses are written in Hebrew throughout and comprise about 1/4 of the Old French vocabulary known today.

From the outset, the philological work will be integrated into a digital working environment that uses the BIMA 2.0 database, which has been in productive use in the Corpus Masoreticum project since 2018 and is continuously being further developed. BIMA 2.0 ensures the editorial indexing and long-term archiving of all Hebrew-French material and provides tools that guarantee the sustainable management, processing, presentation and visualization of the project results. A data export interface via RDF/OntoLex ensures that the interoperability of the lexicographically relevant edition data is guaranteed as 'linked open data' with the resources of DEAFél(Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français électronique), which are still available, and that DEAFél is therefore also used for further research. The field of Digital Humanities also makes an independent research contribution to the differentiation of a digital corpus linguistics of Judeo-French text cultures of the Middle Ages. The digital results will be supplemented by online and print publications that will provide new transdisciplinary academic impetus for Jewish studies, Romance studies, Jewish and Christian theology and medieval (knowledge) history as a whole.

Paris BNF hébr. 302 Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 — Paris BNF hébr. 302 Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0

Paris BNF hébr. 302 edit Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 — Paris BNF hébr. 302 edit Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0

Events

All Events

HfJS Heidelberg

LectureGerman / English

8 December 2025 - 2 February 2026 09:30 - 19:00 UTC+01:00

It starts on December 8

Täubler Vorlesung und Ehrensenatorwürde-Verleihung

HfJS Heidelberg

Colorful EventOn-siteGerman

17 December 2025 18:15 - 21:30 UTC+01:00

Prof. Kai Trampedach holds this year's Täubler Lecture, while Prof. Salomon Korn is awarded the title of Honorary Senator.

HfJS Heidelberg

Kabbalat ShabbatOn-siteGerman / English

9 January 2026 18:00 - 21:00 UTC+01:00

Invitation to the monthly Shabbat celebration

Past events

Second restitution to the rabbinical seminary in Budapest

16 December 2025 News Press

On November 12, 2025, Philipp Zschommler visited the Országos Rabbiképző - Zsidó Egyetem (OR-ZSE) in Budapest. During this visit, he presented the university library with further books that had been looted from the library of the rabbinical seminary by the National Socialists in 1944. Library director Tamási Balázs accepted the volumes

Background to the research

For many years, Philipp Zschommler has been researching the origin and provenance of books that were confiscated from Jewish private individuals and institutions during the Nazi era. On this basis, it has already been possible to identify volumes in the university library that originated from the library of the Budapest Rabbinical Seminary.

earlier returns

Several rare prints from the 16th century had already been recognized as looted property and returned to the OR-ZSE. The ceremonial restitution of these four Hebrew book rarities took place on April 26, 2023.

the three volumes now returned

The three volumes now returned to Budapest are specialized works from various fields of Jewish studies published in the 19th century. They were printed in Paris, Munich and Izmir and reflect different regional and scientific traditions of Jewish scholarship.

1. Version arabe d'Isaïe de R. Saadia ben Josef al-Fayyûmî
This volume contains the Arabic translation of Isaiah by Saadiah Gaon with Hebrew annotations and a French translation, compiled by Joseph and Hartwig Derenbourg. The third volume of this classic edition of French Oriental studies was published in 1896 by Ernest Leroux in Paris; in the foreword, Hartwig Derenbourg thanks Rabbi and Orientalist Vilmos Bacher, the former rector of the Rabbinical Seminary, for his support.

2. Raphael Rabbinovicz: Variae Lectiones in Mischnam et in Talmud Babylonicum (Berakhot)
This work was published in 1867 in Munich by the royal printing house H. Rösl. It is part of a monumental multi-volume project that collects and scientifically annotates text variants of the manuscripts and early prints of the Babylonian Talmud and is one of the fundamental sources of Talmudic textual criticism and manuscript research.

3. Rabbi Eliyahu Hacohen ha-Itamari: Sefer Ene ha-Edah
The author, a rabbi in Izmir (1640-1729), was a staunch opponent of the false messiah Sabbatai Zvi. The work was first published in Izmir in 1863 and contains drashot on Bereshit, Shemot and the Book of Esther.

(original source)