Illustrating the Hebrew Bible

The Kennicott Bible
London: Facsimile Editions, 1985

A full-color facsimile of a manuscript Hebrew Bible written in Spain in 1476 and illustrated by Joseph Ibn Hayyim, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England. For more information about the facsimie visit this website: http://www.facsimile-editions.com/en/kb/

The manuscript was commissioned by Isaac, son of Don Solomon de Braga almost twenty years before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. It was designed and hand-written by a famous scribe, Moses Ibn Zabara, and lavishly illuminated by Joseph Ibn Hayyim in an abstract style influenced by Muslim artistic tradition. The manuscript contains the entire Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, together with Sefer Mikhlol, a grammatical treatise on the Tanakh, by Rabbi David Kimchi (Radak).