Lecture: “The Making and Using of The Kennicott Bible: One of Oxford’s Great Treasures”
Adam Cohen (University of Toronto)
Considered “one of the finest Hebrew manuscripts in existence,” the Bodleian Library’s Kennicott Bible has been admired and studied for generations. In this talk, I offer some new thoughts about the structure and decoration of this Tanakh and the implications for how the reader-viewer was meant to experience the book. In particular I re-examine the tantalizing suggestion that at an early stage the bible was owned and re-organized by a Christian owner.
The lecture will take place at Slager Jewish Student Centre, 61 George St, Oxford, OX1 2BQ
Tues, 30 Aug, 8pm (UK time; 3pm EST)
Buffet dinner 7pm; RSVP for buffet: info@oxfordchabad.org
The lecture will take place in person and will also be viewable via Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81459568861?pwd=aURnVWpldWlRZ2gvNU9vNGxZNDg1UT09
Meeting ID: 814 5956 8861
Passcode: 163197
Dr. Adam S. Cohen is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University and is a specialist in the history of European illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages. He has written and edited numerous books and articles on Christian and Hebrew subjects. For the general public, he has written Signs and Wonders: 100 Haggadah Masterpieces (Jerusalem: Toby Press, 2018), a history of the illustrated haggadah from the Middle Ages to the present. With Jill Caskey and Linda Safran, he is the author of Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World, forthcoming later this year from Cornell University Press. Adam lives in Toronto and is the president of the historic Kiever Synagogue in Kensington Market.