French Bibles of Thirteenth-Century North of France

We will look at five Bibles:

A and B. Two Vatican Library Mss ebreo 468 and 482. written by the same scribe, in La Rochelle in 1125.

C. 1280, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms hébreu 33, copied about 1280.

D. From about 1280, the British Library, Add. 11639, called “The North French Hebrew Miscellany”.

E. Paris, BNF, Ms hébreu 44, copied in the outskirts of Paris in 1303.

In France, these kinds of Bibles (A. B. E.) were also copied during the13^th century. However, there were also Bible copies which show that the Biblical text was in concurrence with other non-biblical texts and even full- page images:

1.The biblical with the prayers, as in Paris, MS C, or with a great number of other texts, as in MS D.

2. It may be copied on a very thin parchment and in very small letters, as were the Latin Bibles in Thirteenth century France: as we see in manuscripts C and D.

3. In the Miscellany, Psalms, Proverbs, the later prophets etc, are copied in the margins of other texts: prayers, Mishnah…

4. Full-page colored illuminations (executed by Christian artists) attract the eyes much more than the biblical text.

Thus, for a part of French Jewry, the fact that the format of the French fashionable books had changed changed their intellectual and artistic world, thus detracting from the status of the Bible as the only “ written Law”.