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4. Textualization of Northern European Rabbinic Culture: The Changing Role of Talmud

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Becoming the People of the Talmud
This chapter is in the book Becoming the People of the Talmud
4Textualization of Northern EuropeanRabbinic Culture: The ChangingRole of TalmudEuropean Jewry’s shift from an ‘‘oral’’ culture to a ‘‘written’’ one in theMiddle Ages has not gone unnoticed.1Observing that Jewish works com-posed in late antiquity became available at this time ‘‘with disconcertingsuddenness—on this side, as it were, of a great manuscript divide,’’2histori-ans of Hebrew codicology noted that more Hebrew manuscripts are extantfrom the eleventh century than from any previous century,3and that a fargreater number of manuscripts have been preserved from the twelfth cen-tury.4How is this data to be explained? One (now discredited) hypothesissuggested that the trauma of the First Crusade led northern European Jewsto commit orally transmitted traditions to writing,5but, in fact, inscriptionand related activities of textualization were underway in northern EuropeanJewish communities well before1096.6A different line of reasoning wouldexplain the unprecedented quantity and variety of Hebrew texts in the twelfthcentury as a function of the new conditions of stability that prevailed in thisregion, following centuries of invasions. This theory presupposes that earliergenerations of Jews who were forced to flee from danger abandoned theirmaterial property, books included.7Yet another theory would link the greateravailability of Hebrew manuscripts in northern Europe to a shift inmentalite ́,that is, to the growing sense among local Jews that inscribed texts were bear-ers of cultural authority. According to this last hypothesis, the earliest medie-val citation of an older Jewish source would not be construed as evidence thatthe quoted work had just become available in the region; it might just as

4Textualization of Northern EuropeanRabbinic Culture: The ChangingRole of TalmudEuropean Jewry’s shift from an ‘‘oral’’ culture to a ‘‘written’’ one in theMiddle Ages has not gone unnoticed.1Observing that Jewish works com-posed in late antiquity became available at this time ‘‘with disconcertingsuddenness—on this side, as it were, of a great manuscript divide,’’2histori-ans of Hebrew codicology noted that more Hebrew manuscripts are extantfrom the eleventh century than from any previous century,3and that a fargreater number of manuscripts have been preserved from the twelfth cen-tury.4How is this data to be explained? One (now discredited) hypothesissuggested that the trauma of the First Crusade led northern European Jewsto commit orally transmitted traditions to writing,5but, in fact, inscriptionand related activities of textualization were underway in northern EuropeanJewish communities well before1096.6A different line of reasoning wouldexplain the unprecedented quantity and variety of Hebrew texts in the twelfthcentury as a function of the new conditions of stability that prevailed in thisregion, following centuries of invasions. This theory presupposes that earliergenerations of Jews who were forced to flee from danger abandoned theirmaterial property, books included.7Yet another theory would link the greateravailability of Hebrew manuscripts in northern Europe to a shift inmentalite ́,that is, to the growing sense among local Jews that inscribed texts were bear-ers of cultural authority. According to this last hypothesis, the earliest medie-val citation of an older Jewish source would not be construed as evidence thatthe quoted work had just become available in the region; it might just as
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