In Cambridge, in 1896, twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson showed several Hebrew manuscript pages they had acquired to Dr. Solomon Schechter, then the Reader in Talmudic and Rabbinic literature at the University of Cambridge, and later the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Recognizing the value of the materials Lewis and Gibson had found, Schechter, together with Dr. Charles Taylor, Master of St. John’s College, journeyed to Old Cairo where he secured the contents of the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue so that they could be transported to England for scholarly examination.

From the Ben Ezra Synagogue Genizah, came thirty-two of the thirty-four palimpsest fragments that make up the material of this book. Originally published in 1900, Gorgias Press is pleased to present this reprint edition of Lewis and Gibson’s Palestinian Syriac Texts From Palimpsest Fragments in the Taylor-Schechter Collection.