Palimpsest. Upper text: piyyuṭim by Yannai, qeduštaʾot for the reading of two sedarim in the Palestinian triennial cycle, Leviticus 16:1 and 16:25, part of a maḥzor of Yannai’s poetry. Under text: Origen’s Hexapla on Psalms 22 (21 in the Greek tradition), written in majuscule and preserving columns 2 (Hebrew transliterated into Greek; only a few letters remain); 3 (Aquila); 4 (Symmachus); and 5 (Septuagint). Nothing of column 6 (Theodotion) survives. The under-text is among the earliest manuscripts in the Genizah and is probably to be dated to the 7th century CE. The upper-text is ca. 10th century. This fragment of Yannai’s works, can be joined with other leaves in the Genizah Collection to make a complete quire. Although each sheet of vellum used in the quire is a palimpsest, they are not from the same original manuscript.Condition: holesLayout: various lines
Palimpsest with Aquila’s Greek translation of II Kings 23:11–27 (dating to the 6th century), overwritten with piyyuṭim of the liturgical poet Yannai. The upper script may be 9th–11th century CE. The Greek text uses paleo-Hebrew characters for the tetragrammaton. The pronunciation of this word was evidently kurios, ‘lord’ (like Hebrew adonay), for when the scribe ran out of room to write the tetragrammaton at the end of 2 Kings 23:24 (folio 2b, col. a, line 15), he simply wrote κυ, as an abbreviation of κύριος. The poems of Yannai contain Qerovot poems on four sedarim in Leviticus (13:29; 14:1; 21:1; 22:13), which can be joined with other leaves in the Genizah to make a complete quire.Condition: Torn, holes, stainedLayout: various lines
Seven pieces of a palimpsest containing the Pesiqta de-Rav Kahana (corresponding to the Mandelbaum (1962) edition, pp. 127, 130-133, 135-144 and 177) written over a New Testament lectionary (the gospels; Matthew 10:2-15; John 20:11-15). The upper script is Hebrew with sparse Palestinian vocalisation, and has been dated to the 8th or 9th century by Allony and Diez-Macho (1958-1959: 58). The under script is a Greek biblical majuscule that has been dated to between the 6th and 9th centuries. Tchernetska (2002: 248-249) believes that the 6th-century date is more likely.Condition: Badly torn, holes, rubbedLayout: 13-20 lines
