He was responsible for the acquisition of the collection from the London bookseller George Thomason in 1648. Notable collectors from early times include the Arabist, Abraham Whelock (who was the first Professor of Arabic before his appointment as University Librarian in 1629) whose efforts brought about significant additions to both the Arabic and Hebrew collections, including the transfer to Cambridge of the Dutch orientalist Thomas van Erpe’s (Erpenius) collection, which contained thirteen Hebrew manuscripts and one written in Judaeo-Arabic.Ī second important collection was that of Isaac Faraji (Pragi) whose collection of ten Hebrew manuscripts was purchased by John Selden, the jurist and scholar and a name more often associated with the Bodleian. A sounder basis for Hebrew study grew in the University from the 16th century, after the Regius Professorship in Hebrew was founded in 1540, and many significant manuscript collections came from Cambridge scholars who collected texts for their own use. The first Hebrew manuscripts were probably acquired from local pre-expulsion Jewish communities later, Christian clerics gave an impetus to the study of Hebrew for scholarly purposes. Chief among the treasures are the famous Nash Papyrus, one of the earliest known manuscripts containing the words of the Hebrew Bible and an artefact that continues to excite debate more than a hundred years after its discovery, and the Cambridge Mishnah, one of only three complete manuscript codices of this central text of Jewish law. The University Library holds significant numbers of Bibles and biblical and talmudic commentaries, along with important halakhic, liturgical, poetic, philosophical, kabbalistic and scientific manuscripts. For over five hundred years Cambridge University has been building up one of the world’s most important collections of Hebrew manuscripts.
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