The Art of Three Faiths: Torah, Bible, Qur'an

The Torah is the central sacred text of Judaism. In the strictest sense, the word refers to the Pentateuch (“five books” in Greek), which contains the books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Illuminated copies of the Hebrew Bible in codex form (rather than Torah scrolls) began to appear in the mid-thirteenth century.

In northern Europe, these manuscripts served the needs of members of the Ashkenazi Jewish community who had settled in the areas along the Rhine River (now western Germany and northern France). Lavishly illustrated Hebrew manuscripts are exceedingly rare, since Jewish artisans were forbidden by law to join painting guilds. Hebrew manuscripts were often written by itinerant Jewish scribes and illuminated by local (sometimes Christian) artists.

Illumination of the Hebrew Bible centers on the calligraphic forms of Hebrew letters, such as initials, word panels, or decorative frames around blocks of text.

Throughout its more than one thousand pages, the Rothschild Pentateuch features a variety of illuminated motifs that range from the imposing to the whimsical.

Ornamental Hebrew initials and words, gilded or in brilliant colors, dominate the pages, enhanced by a vast array of vibrant figures in the margins.

A commanding, shimmering menorah introduces the book of Leviticus. This book documents the proper care of the implements used in the Tabernacle (the earthly dwelling place of God), including the pure gold menorah.

The towers that surmount the illumination evoke the setting of the Tabernacle, where the menorah served as the only source of light.

The manuscript takes its name from the Rothschild family, famed collectors who owned it in the early twentieth century. The family donated it to the university library in Frankfurt, Germany, sometime before 1920, where it remained throughout World War II. In 1950, the manuscript was part of an exchange between the German government and a Jewish family for land in Frankfurt that had been seized during the war.

The Getty acquired the manuscript from this family in 2018, the result of a thirty-five-year search to extend the breadth of the collection and to share a distinguished example of medieval Hebrew manuscript illumination.

Each page of the manuscript is divided into portions reserved for different aspects of its reading and comprehension. All of the texts are read from right to left.

At the center is the text of the Torah itself, written in a formal, square Hebrew script. It is accompanied by two sets of markings, one indicating the vowels ("nikkud") and the other specifying the way the text is to be chanted in ritual contexts ("te’amin," cantillation symbols).

The upper and lower margins contain the "masorah magna," a commentary devoted to textual details such as the number of occurrences of individual words, which was intended to preserve the accuracy of the text of the Torah over time.

This commentary written in micrography takes the shape of a fantastic beast.

In the outer margin is commentary by Rashi, an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki (1040–1105). His commentary on the Torah as recorded in the Rothschild Pentateuch is one of the earliest dated copies of this text to survive.

The inner margin (the text on the far left in this view) is occupied by Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic translation of the Torah, with additional interpretation. In a tradition dating to the second century, when Aramaic was commonly spoken, the Torah was read aloud in both Hebrew and Aramaic.

At the bottom left is a catchword, a guide to assembling the parts of a manuscript (or book) in the correct order. Catchwords, which appear at the end of a group of pages, give the first word of the next group.

Illuminated Bibles—handwritten and printed alike—are among the most enduring forms of Christian book art produced during the Middle Ages. Produced at a time when Johannes Gutenberg (about 1390–1468) began printing the first books in Europe with movable type, this handwritten Bible observes centuries-old hallmarks of manuscript production, including:

carefully ruled lines (visible in the margins) arranged in two columns . . .

embellished with decorated letters . . .

and pen flourishes.

On these pages, within the larger initial the artist depicted the Apostle Paul gesturing toward the words attributed to him.

Alternating blue and red letters at the top indicate the book of the Bible—the Letter to the Romans and to the Corinthians.

Phrases written in red indicate the beginning or ending of a book.

This lavish copy of the Christian Bible was made for the cathedral of Cologne, Germany.

The words that the angel Jibril (Gabriel) recited to the prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah (about 560–632) formed the sacred text of the Qur’an, which Muslims believe to be the words of God. The opening line, “In the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful," a central tenet of Islam that expresses submission to the will of Allah (God), is repeated in almost every "surah" (chapter). 

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Islamic world spanned a vast territory, from the Iberian Peninsula to northern and coastal Africa, across the Mediterranean basin, and as far as Central and Eastern Asia. Muslims transmitted scripture through oral tradition and in written form for the first few centuries, and later recorded it through beautiful and ornate calligraphy. Artists incorporated Quranic verses into books, textiles, coins, ceramics, and architecture, demonstrating reverence for the written word.

The scribe of this Qur’an began by tracing the shapes of the Arabic letters on a ground layer, and then adroitly adhered sheets of gold leaf, reserved in Islamic art for the word of Allah (God).

Next, the letterforms were outlined in brown ink.

And finally, vowel sounds were indicated by short slashes or colored dots in red, blue, and green.

Ornamental rosettes ("shamsa") mark the end of a "surah" (verse) or contain the number of the surah.

And this intricately ornamented facing page of alternating gold and blue text includes word counts.

The text would have been recited aloud in a mosque, perhaps at the Great Mosque in Kairouan, Tunisia, where the manuscript may have been produced in the ninth century, or the second century AH ("Anno Hegirae"), according to the Islamic lunar calendar.