Research
Dr Outhwaite’s research interests revolve around Hebrew and the Middle Ages: the vocalisation traditions of Biblical and (post-biblical) Hebrew, the Medieval Hebrew language (particularly its use as a medium of communication throughout the early Middle Ages) and the documentary history of the communities who deposited manuscripts into the Cairo Genizah.
He is currently preparing his PhD thesis (2000) for publication (a linguistic study of the Hebrew idiom employed by letter-writers in the Cairo Genizah) and is co-editing an edition of a unique esoteric text with Siam Bhayro of Exeter University for a book to be published by Brill.
The Genizah Research Unit is engaged in several projects. These include: a major project to produce an innovative search interface for an electronic database of historical documents from the Taylor-Schechter Collection, funded by a grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation; a study of late Judaeo-Arabic business documents; the ongoing collation of bibliographic data on Genizah scholarship; and an AHRC-funded project to describe the ‘Old Series’ manuscripts in the T-S Collection.
Publications
- ‘Karaite epistolary Hebrew: the letters of Ṭoviyyah ben Moshe’, in Geoffrey Khan (ed.), Exegesis and Grammar in Medieval Karaite Texts, Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 13 (OUP, 2001), 195–234
- Hebrew Bible manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections. Volume 3: Taylor- Schechter Additional Series 1–31 (with M.C. Davis), Cambridge University Library Genizah Series 2 (CUP, 2003), 500 pp.
- Hebrew Bible manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections. Volume 4: Taylor- Schechter Additional Series 32–225 (with M.C. Davis), Cambridge University Library Genizah Series 2 (CUP, 2003), 553 pp.
- ‘“In the language of the Hagri”: the Judaeo-Arabic letters of Solomon ben Judah’ in Shulie Reif (ed.), The Written Word Remains: the Archive and the Achievement. Articles in honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif (Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library, 2004), 52–69
- ‘A newly-discovered autograph fragment of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed from the Cairo Genizah’ (with F. Niessen), Journal of Jewish Studies 57.2 (2006), 287–297
- ‘Byzantium and Byzantines in the Cairo Genizah: new and old sources’ in Nicholas de Lange, Julia Krivoruchko and Cameron Boyd-Taylor (eds), Proceedings of the International Colloquium on the Greek Bible in Byzantine Judaism (Tübingen, 2009), 182–220
- B. M. Outhwaite and S. Bhayro (eds), ‘From a sacred source’: Genizah studies in honour of Professor Stefan C. Reif (Cambridge Genizah Studies 1; Brill, Leiden 2010), 419 pp.
- With Esther-Miriam Wagner, ‘“These two lines...”: Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic letter-writing in the Classical Genizah Period’, in J. Cromwell and E. Grossman (eds), Beyond Free Variation: Scribal Repertoires from the Old Kingdom to Early Islamic Egypt (Oxford, forthcoming)
- With Shmuel Glick et al, Seride Teshuvot: a descriptive catalogue of responsa fragments from the Jacques Mosseri Collection, Cambridge University Library (Brill, Leiden, 2012), 490 pp.
- ‘Clothed in Glory and Decked in Splendour’: Medieval Hebrew since the discovery of the Cairo Genizah, British Association for Jewish Studies Bulletin 2012, 3–8.
- With Esther-Miriam Wagner and Bettina Beinhoff (eds), Scribes as agents of language change (De Gruyter, Berlin, forthcoming), 350 pp.
- ‘Lines of communication: Medieval Hebrew letters of the 11th century’, in E-M. Wagner, B. Outhwaite and B. Beinhoff (eds), Scribes as agents of language change (De Gruyter, Berlin, forthcoming)
- ‘The Hebrew manuscript collection of Cambridge University Library’, European Judaism 41.2 (2008), 37–38
- ‘Taylor, Schechter and Jacques Mosseri’ in Stefan Reif (ed.), Charles Taylor and the Genizah Collection (St John’s College, Cambridge, 2009), 75–80
