Old English Hexateuch Old English Hexateuch The Old English Hexateuch is the collaborative project of the late Anglo-Saxon period that translated the six books of the Hexateuch into Old English, presumably under the editorship of Ælfric of Eynsham. It is the first vernacular translation of the first six books of the Old Testament, i.e. the five books of the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) and Joshua. The translation is retained in seven manuscripts, most of which are fragmentary. The best-known of those is a richly illuminated manuscript kept in London: British Library, Cotton MS Claudius B.iv. Another copy of the text,
Leviticus Rabbah composed largely of older works. Its redactor made use of Genesis Rabbah, Pesikta de-Rav Kahana, and the Jerusalem Talmud, in addition to other ancient sources. The redactor appears to have referred also to the Babylonian Talmud, using several expressions in the sense in which only that work employs them. Leviticus Rabbah is not a continuous, explanatory interpretation to Leviticus, but a collection of exclusive sermons or lectures on the themes or texts of that book. It consists altogether of 37 such homilies, each of which constitutes a separate chapter. Leviticus Rabbah often refers to Scriptural passages on which the homilies