A Hebrew–Old French Biblical Glossary from the Cairo Genizah: Manuscript, Text, and Old French le‘azim

In the Cairo Genizah, twelve folios of a Biblical glossary have been discovered, under three different shelf marks. They cover Joshua 10, 10 to Judges 9, 24 and provide explanations for selected Hebrew words that were deemed difficult. The explanations include commentaries and paraphrases in post-Biblical Hebrew, the Aramaic translations of these words in the Targumim, quotations of other Biblical verses containing the same Hebrew words and, importantly, Old French translations in Hebrew script. The present study offers an introduction, a codicological and palaeographical analysis of the Genizah manuscript, including a tentative dating to the second quarter of the 13th century, an edition of the text, and an English translation. Special attention is paid to the Old French glosses and to the comparison of the Genizah glossary with previously published medieval Hebrew glossaries containing Old French.