The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

REIF The Cairo Genizah and its Treasures 33
were damaged or worn, as well as other Hebrew texts, including tracts
regarded as heretical, that contained biblical verses or references to
God. The rationale for such behaviour lay in an interpretation of the
third commandment that proscribed the obliteration of the name of
God but the principle appears to have been extended by many Jewish
communities to the protection of a variety of Hebrew and Jewish literature,
all of which might lay some claim to a degree of sacredness. 9
If it is true, as has been claimed by the writer, that the adoption of the
codex by the Jews in about the eighth century led to an explosion of
Jewish literary activity, the problem of the disposal of obsolete items
must soon have become a pressing one and the use of a genizah a more
frequent and standard occurrence. 10
If such an extensive application of the law was indeed a feature of
oriental Jewish communities of the post-talmudic and early medieval
periods, it is only to be expected that genizoth, or what would be for
modern scholarship precious archival collections, were amassed in
many areas of Jewish settlement. There is indeed evidence that where
some communities 'made assurance double sure' by burying the
unwanted texts in the ground to await the natural process of disintegration,
there were others that removed them to caves or tombs,
sometimes storing them first in suitable vessels. 11 It is not outside the
realms of the plausible that the Qumran Scrolls represent just such
a genizah although there is clearly room for dispute about the
9. P. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (Oxford, 2nd edn, 1959), pp. 3-13 has useful
data but sometimes has to be corrected on the basis of the updated information contained
in Goitein (n. 4 above), N. Golb in EncJud XVI, cols. 1333-42, R. Brody's
essay in Richler (ed.), Hebrew Manuscripts, pp. 112-37, and Reif (n. 14 below).
10. S.C. Reif, 'Aspects of Mediaeval Jewish Literacy', in The Uses of Literacy
in Early Mediaeval Europe (ed. R. McKitterick; Cambridge, 1990), pp. 134-55.
11. N. Allony, 'Genizah and Hebrew Manuscripts in Cambridge Libraries',
Areshet 3 (1961), pp. 395-425; idem, 'Genizah Practices among the Jews', Sinai 79
(1976), pp. 193-201; A.M. Habermann, The Cairo Genizah and other Genizoth:
Their Character, Contents and Development (Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1971);
S.D. Goitein (ed.), Religion in a Religious Age: Proceedings of Regional
Conferences (of the Association for Jewish Studies) held at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and Brandeis University in April, 1973 (Cambridge, MA,
1974), pp. 139-51; M.R. Cohen, 'The Cairo Geniza and the Custom of Genizah
among Oriental Jewry: An Historical and Ethnographical Study', Pe'amim 24
(1985), pp. 3-35; and J. Sadan, 'Genizah and Genizah-like Practices in Islamic and
Jewish Traditions', BO 43 (1986), pp. 36-58.