Religious documents written more than 500 years ago can soon be found in an MSU digital archive.
MSU’s Writing in Digital Environments, or WIDE, research center will use a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to digitize 20 pages from two of the three MSU-owned Israelites Samaritan Pentateuchs, which were written in Egypt and Syria.
These books are part of MSU’s Chamberlain Warren Collection in the MSU Libraries Special Collections. The collection is considered the largest of Samaritan material in the Western Hemisphere.
Pentateuch is another word for the Torah, or first three sections of the Hebrew Bible for Jews and the first five books of the Old Testament for Christians.
Two of the three Israelite Samaritan Pentateuchs will be placed in the archive. The online archive prototype is expected to be completed by May.
If this pilot is a success and additional funds are received, WIDE would like to fully digitally archive all three Pentateuchs.
The goal of the project is to provide an online location for scholars and members of the Samaritan community to access and use the documents, WIDE co-director William Hart-Davidson said in a statement.
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