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September 7, 2022

How the Advent of the Printing Press Changed the Jewish Idea of the Sacred Book

The Jerusalem Talmud by pen and press.

Compiled around 400 CE in the Galilee, the Jerusalem Talmud was for the most part superseded by its Babylonian counterpart, compiled about a century later. Since it was less studied and less copied, there is much more uncertainty about the text itself—a problem that still dogs scholars today. These problems weighed on the mind of the scribe Rabbi Yeḥiel ben Yekutiel when he completed a manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud in 1289, as he makes clear in the colophon, or scribe’s note. Yakov Meir observes:

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