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Summaries 35*

housed in the JTS library in New York, dates back to the fourteenth century
and is believed to have been written somewhere in the Mediterranean region.

The purpose of this paper is to survey the textual witnesses of Midrash
Chadash and to identify new fragments of the text. The findings of this effort
will enable us to reconstruct missing sections and to correct mistaken readings
in the central textual witness. The paper will pay special attention to three
such additional fragments, none previously identified as belonging to Midrash
Chadash, and establish their place in this work.

The Commentary of the Karaite Japheth
ben Eli on the Book of Obadiah
An Annotated Scientific Edition

Yair Zoran

This article presents the great Karaite exegete Japheth ben Eli ha-Levi’s
commentary on the book of Obadiah. Research on Karaite literature in
general and on Japheth’s writings in particular has gained great momentum
in the last few decades, and this article examines some relations between
Japheth’s commentary on the book of Obadiah and those of others, as well as
between this commentary and additional commentaries of his on other books
of the Bible.

Japheth is the first exegete to have written a commentary on the entire Bible.
His commentary on the Minor Prophets is the first conclusive commentary
on these books (the only exegete to precede him was Daniel ben Moshe
al-Kumisi, whose commentary on the Minor Prophets, Pitron Shneim-Asar,
is extremely succinct and somewhat fragmentary). Japheth’s commentary