Understanding Hebrew Alphabets in Early Medieval Manuscripts

FAIN: FT-229929-15

Damian Fleming
Indiana University, Purdue University at Fort Wayne (Fort Wayne, IN 46805-1445)

Summer research and writing on Classical Languages and Medieval Studies.

I plan to spend my research grant period analyzing Hebrew alphabets within early medieval Christian manuscripts. My research findings will contribute to a growing body of evidence which contradicts the received scholarly narrative that Christians of western Europe first became interested in the study of biblical Hebrew in the thirteenth century and only in earnest at the time of the Reformation. This grant period will afford me the opportunity to write an article introducing these materials to a wide interdisciplinary humanities audience. This project thus fits particularly well with the NEH's Bridging Cultures initiative, as it seeks to uncover new evidence of the earliest cultural exchanges between Christians and Jews in northwestern Europe.