The "Sarajevo Haggadah": The Concept of Creatio ex nihilo and the Hermeneutical School behind It

• Autores: Katrin Kogman Appel, Shulamit Laderman
• Localización: Studies in iconography, ISSN 0148-1029, Nº. 25, 2004, págs. 89-127
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The writers examine the series of detailed images of the Hexaemeron in the Sarajevo Haggadah, a mid-14th-century illuminated copy of the Passover Haggadah in the Bosnian National Museum in Sarajevo. This creation cycle, presented in eight individually outlined compartments, is unique in Jewish art and in its relation to Christian parallels, standing out as a daring enterprise in view of the deliberate avoidance of the creation theme in the Jewish visual arts before the 14th century. It appears as a visual statement of a particular doctrine of creation linked with the exegetical school of the Catalan scholar Nachmanides (R. Moses b. Nachman) and his followers in late-13th- and 14th-century Spain. Such visual narration could have been a powerful tool for the communication of rabbinic teaching and exegesis relevant to a certain background in an overall atmosphere of cultural transition and of scholarly controversy over the creation.