Beta ʾƎsrāʾel manuscript tradition
22 September 2020
The Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies at Universität Hamburg cordially invites you to a Zoom talk on
Beta ʾƎsrāʾel manuscript tradition
by Sophia Dege-Müller (Ruhr-University Bochum)
on 22 September 2020 at 5 pm CET.
Should you wish to receive a Zoom invitation please register by writing to aethiopistik"AT"uni-hamburg.de with your name and affiliation by 21 September at 12:00 CET.
Abstract
Among the many groups of the Horn of Africa, the Beta ʾƎsrāʾel – the Jews of Ethiopia – have their own very unusual history. Since their emergence as a unified group around the 14th cent. they have lived in close contact with their direct neighbours, mainly in the present-day regions of Amhara and Təgray. Their co-habitation was not always peaceful however, and during certain times in their history the Beta ʾƎsrāʾel lived as secluded from their neighbours as possible – due to both political upheavals and their strict purity laws. By the 1990s, most of the community had migrated to Israel, creating a peculiar case of a lost culture, that only few manage to keep alive in the group’s new home.
In many ways the Beta ʾƎsrāʾel traditions resemble that of their Christian neighbours, this is especially true for their manuscript tradition. However, through adaptation, modification and alteration the group created their own traditions, with unique scribal features that will be presented in this lecture.
The study of Beta ʾƎsrāʾel manuscripts is a new discipline and has not seen a lot of attention yet. The lecture will therefore cover several unknown scribal features, while also treating some over-all Beta ʾƎsrāʾel history.