This book discusses the decoration types of Sephardic illuminated Bibles. Unlike illuminated Passover manuscripts from the same period with their rich figurative and narrative picture cycles, Bibles are almost exclusively aniconic. Whereas the former borrow heavily from Christian art, the Bibles are entirely indebted to Islamic culture. The volume elaborates in particular on the cultural history of the decorative motifs and types of ornamentation in an era of cultural transition in Iberia and culture struggle within Spanish Jewry. The first two chapters describe the cultural, social and...

The nineteen essays assembled in this Festschrift represent the multiplicity of interests evident in Elisabeth (Elisheva) Revel-Neher's work. They cover a variety of subjects dealing with pictorial messages encrypted in various artistic media, and address a broad array of topics: Jewish identity in the late antique period; patronage in late antique Jewish and Christian religious architecture; Jewish-Christian polemics and the representation of the "Other"; the question of Jewish or Christian illuminators of Hebrew books; the cultural background of illustrations in Hebrew manuscripts;...