The Crimean Karaim Bible

The Bible was the most important canonical book of the Karaites, but only short fragments or individual books have been published. The present two-volume publication is a critical edition of approximately a half of Crimean Karaim Bible. Volume I contains the transcription of sixteen biblical books, the Pentateuch, i.e., Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; the Five Scrolls, i.e., the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes; as well as six books of the Writings, i.e., the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Volume II contains the English translation of all biblical books provided in volume I. The transcription is based on the most complete manuscript from Cambridge and a few other manuscripts, including the earliest ones. Therefore, this is the first publication that makes large portions of the Bible accessible to the reader. Although the oldest known datable manuscripts go back to the seventeenth century, the language of Karaim translation is more archaic. This edition is an important source for the study of Middle Karaim and Middle Turkic languages. The edited text is provided with numerous comments and the introduction traces the history of research. All this is important for the study on the Crimean Karaim Bible since Ebenezer Henderson’s seminal study of 1828.