Oxford Events, the new replacement for OxTalks, will launch on 16th March. From now until the launch of Oxford Events, new events cannot be published or edited on OxTalks while all existing records are migrated to the new platform. The existing OxTalks site will remain available to view during this period.
From 16th, Oxford Events will launch on a new website: events.ox.ac.uk, and event submissions will resume. You will need a Halo login to submit events. Full details are available on the Staff Gateway.
The Cathedral of Our Lady of Almudena, in Madrid, preserves the legacy of the priest and scholar José Fernández Montaña (1842-1936). Part of this legacy is a synagogue scroll, which only came to light in the spring of 2010. This is a scroll of the Book of Esther, written in Hebrew and beautifully illuminated, which could date from around the end of the 16th or the first half of the 17th centuries CE. A peculiarity of this scroll is the signs (like the circellus masoreticus followed by two dots in a horizontal line), unique in the whole manuscript, that are found over four consonants, located in four words in a row. These supralinear markings must be related to one of the characteristics of the Book of Esther itself which distinguishes it from the rest of the books of the Hebrew Bible: it does not contain the divine name. Some commentators, especially starting in the Middle Ages, looked for hidden references to the divine name in this book. That tradition has been preserved in the Megillat Esther of Madrid Cathedral.
