Adolf Neubauer

Adolf Neubauer (11 March 1831 in Bittse (a.k.a. Nagybiccse, German: Bitsch, Slovak: Bytča), Upper Hungary, Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire – 6 April 1907, London) was sublibrarian at the Bodleian Library and reader in Rabbinic Hebrew at Oxford University.

Born in Bittse, Hungary, he received a thorough education in rabbinical literature.

In 1850 he obtained a position at the Austrian Consulate in Jerusalem. At this time he published articles about the situation of the city's Jewish population, which aroused the anger of some leaders of that community, with whom he became involved in a prolonged controversy.

In 1857 he moved to Paris where he continued his studies of Judaism and started producing scientific publications. His earliest contributions were made to the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums and the Journal Asiatique (Dec., 1861).

In 1865 he published a volume entitled Meleket ha-Shir, a collection of extracts from manuscripts relating to the principles of Hebrew versification. In 1864 Neubauer was entrusted with a mission to Saint Petersburg to examine the numerous, hitherto unpublished Karaite manuscripts preserved there. As a result of this investigation he published a report in French, and subsequently Aus der Petersburger Bibliothek (1866).

The work which established his reputation, however, was La Géographie du Talmud (1868), an account of the geographical data scattered throughout the Talmud and early Jewish writings and relating to places in the Land of Israel.

Starting in 1865 he lived in England and in 1868 his services were secured by the University of Oxford for the task of cataloging the Hebrew manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. The catalog appeared in 1886 after 18 years of preparation. The volume includes more than 2,500 entries, and is accompanied by a portfolio with forty facsimiles.

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