Recent Identifications among the Palimpsests from the Cairo Geniza: A Comprehensive List of Christian Palestinian Aramaic Texts A Comprehensive List of Christian Palestinian Aramaic Texts

Resumen

The Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo preserved plenty of text material, which would otherwise have proven a loss for many areas in Jewish studies as well as Bible, linguistic, lexicographic, or patristic research. Of particular interest are the finds of palimpsests with various scripts and languages underneath. The ones with Christian Palestinian Aramaic among them form the majority. It has been one hundred thirty years since the first five palimpsest fragments saw the light of publication. Most of them could be identified and often attributed to unique textual transmissions. For a number of isolated fragments, it was recently possible to identify specific texts under various Hebrew hands on badly preserved parchment leaves, among them Biblical texts previously unattested in Christian Palestinian Aramaic. This provided the impetus to prepare an updated list of all palimpsests known to date in this Western Aramaic dialect, which is presented here in an overview.