An illustrated introduction to Hebrew manuscript culture from the tenth to fifteenth centuries.

Colette Sirat is Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Department of History and Philology, and head of the Hebrew Department, Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.

Introduction; Part I. Texts: 1. Before the Middle Ages; 2. The Middle Ages; Part II. Books: 3. Codicology; 4. Writing: calligraphic and personal subjects; 5. The scribe; Appendix. Abbreviations, acrostics and the meaning of the Hebrew letters; Part III. The History of Books and Texts: 6. The life and death of manuscripts; 7. Libraries; 8. Questions of method: codicology and palaeography; 9. Texts, copies and text-editions; 10. Judgement on readings and the edition of texts; Part IV. Some Manuscripts: 11. Ten manuscripts: pictures and detailed descriptions.