Editors: Menahem Ben-Sasson, Robert Brody, Amia Lieblich and Donna Shalev. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2010 (Hebrew).

The canon has been a central axis in numerous discussions and arguments throughout the world in the last several decades. However, in most cases in which we investigate the distant past, only a small and not necessarily representative part of the literature created at a given time has survived. In contrast, if we investigate current or recent developments, we often lack the historical perspective which could clarify what will become canonical or quasi-canonical. The genizot of Cairo are a rare resource of sources which as it were did not survive and offer us the opportunity to compare what survived and what was lost and to attempt to formulate “laws of survival” which might explain why certain compositions remained on the Jewish bookshelf and others were forgotten and disappeared.

The essays in this collection devoted to Canon and Genizah examine the means by which a composition survives and attains canonical status from various perspectives: rational principles, compositional methods, rhetoric, the standing and authority of earlier compositions, a sense of societal and Messianic mission, responses to non-Jewish spiritual movements, and conscious or unconscious openness to innovation. Approximately half the essays in this volume deal to one extent or another with finds from the genizot of Cairo and similar collections. Other essays treat fundamental aspects of the question of canonicity, with special reference to genizot; Christian libraries from the second to the fifth century CE in Egypt, land of the genizot, and relevant aspects of classical culture; and modern phenomena which may profitably be compared to the period of the genizot.