Course

The Materiality of Jewish and Christian Books

H 220

This course will study the material text from its earliest stages in papyrus scrolls and codices through hand-written medieval manuscripts of many types, and printed books from the 1450s to the nineteenth century.

  • Instructor(s)
    Peter Stallybrass, David Stern
  • Location
    Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
  • Date
    14–19 June 2026
  • Length
    30 hours
  • Fee
    $1,495
  • Course ID
    H-220
  • Application Deadline
    Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until course fills. Read more about the application process.

Course Description

Books studied in class will include papyrus fragments of Homer and the Bible; Hebrew Esther scrolls; early Qur’an leaves; Greek and Latin codices; Books of Hours and many other illuminated and decorated medieval manuscripts; the Gutenberg Bible; Luther; herbals; and censored books. The specific focus of the course will be on examining comparatively the different and common ways that materiality figures in defining the identity of Jewish and Christian books.

Drawing on a wide range of material texts from multiple libraries at Harvard University, the class will be addressing four topics, with four sessions devoted to each topic: scroll, roll, and codex; authorship and the naming and representation of God in Genesis and John; Christians and anti-Judaism (including censorship) from the Magna Carta to the Reformation; Genesis, the Song of Songs and the meaning of plants. Four sessions will be devoted to each topic, including a session each afternoon (from Monday to Thursday) in which students in groups of three or four will examine selected books in the Houghton Library Reading Room; that evening each group will prepare a Powerpoint presentation on their books to present the following morning in the first session.

We will be exploring how “the bible” was constituted through a variety of material forms (tablets, phylacteries, scrolls, rolls and codices), a range of material practices (reading aloud, chanting, singing) and in diverse places (yeshivas, synagogues, monasteries, churches, schools and universities, private households). One question will be to what extent “the bible” was a post-Reformation invention that erases the variety of forms in which Jews and Christians had previously studied the Scriptures. The class will focus particularly on Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, the Song of Songs, and St. John from the Middle Ages onwards. No knowledge of any foreign language will be required and all the readings for the course will be in English.

Faculty

Peter Stallybrass

Peter Stallybrass is Annenberg Professor in the Humanities Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and directed the History of Material Texts seminar for 26 years. Peter has …

Headshot of a man with glasses standing in front of a shelf of books. He is wearing a blue collared shirt with a black blazer over it.

David Stern

David Stern is Harry Starr Professor of Classical and Modern Hebrew and Jewish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where he teaches ancient and medieval Jewish literature …

Advance Reading List

Suggested Readings

We suggest reading the following passages from the Bible (in whatever edition/translation you like) and the attached essays prior to the course. If you want a general overview, we’d recommend Christopher de Hamel’s The Book: A History of the Bible, which is widely available both new and second-hand.

From the Bible

  • Genesis 1-3: Name of God; Creation; Garden of Eden; Expulsion
  • Genesis 22: Abraham and Isaac
  • Exodus 10:1-17: Ten Commandments
  • Deuteronomy 5:6-21: Ten Commandments
  • Numbers 22: Baalam’s Ass
  • Song of Songs: Plants and Metaphors
  • Isaiah 1; 7:13 to 9:7; 40: Judaism and Christian Prophecy
  • Matthew 1-2: Nativity, Prophecy, Typology
  • Luke 1-2: Nativity, Prophecy, Typology
  • Luke 4:17-21: Scroll and Codex
  • Ezekiel 3:1-6 and Revelation 10:1-11: Eating the Book

Book History Essays

The following essays will be available on the course Google Drive.

  • Stern, David. The Jewish Bible: A Material History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. Chapters 1 and 2.
  • Resnick, Irven M. “The Codex in Early Jewish and Christian Communities.” The Journal of Religious History 17, no. 1, 1992.
  • Chartier, Roger and Peter Stallybrass. “What Is a Book?” The Cambridge Companion to Textual Scholarship, edited by Neil Fraistat and Julia Flanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013: 188–204.
  • Stallybrass, Peter. “Books and Scrolls: Navigating the Bible.” Books and Readers in Early Modern England, edited by Jennifer Anderson and Elizabeth Sauer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002: 42–79.
  • de Hamel, Christopher. The Book: A History of the Bible (skim)

Course History

  • 2026–

    Peter Stallybrass & David Stern co-teach this course.