Ricerc@Sapienza

The aim of this project is the building of an open-access digital edition of the Old Testament book Song of Songs. The text is trilingual and contains the Song of Songs, an Aramaic translation, and a Judeo-Arabic (the Arabic variant written by Jews in Hebrew script) translation and commentary. The text is part of a 15th-century Yemenite manuscript, a miscellaneous containing several biblical books ad commentaries. It is unpublished so far, and we aim at releasing an electronic, queryable, interactive version of it. We will avail of the Edition Visualization Technology, a software that allows the users to visualize, explore, and study digital editions through a user-friendly interface. Although the text is intended to be published in its entirety, special attention will be focused on the Judeo-Arabic portion of the text. In particular, we will investigate the foreign (non-Arabic) occurrences (mostly lexical elements and biblical quotations) incorporated within the text. This analysis will be conducted in conjunction with (and in the light of) a study of the references regarding this literary phenomenon (the so-called Parabiblical or "Rewritten Bible" literature). Relevant linguistic information will be provided and made available in the digital edition alongside a transcription of the text in Arabic script with the aim of making the text more accessible to Arabic readers. Indeed, we believe that making this resource accessible is important for contributing to the field of Parabiblical literary studies as well as shedding light on Judeo-Arabic religiolect, especially when used in translations of and commentaries on sacred texts