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53-665: Some have proposed that the Leningrad Codex was corrected against the Aleppo Codex , a slightly earlier manuscript that was partially lost in the 20th century. However, Paul E. Kahle argues that the Leningrad manuscript was more likely based on other, lost manuscripts by the ben Asher family . The Aleppo Codex is several decades older, but parts of it have been missing since the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo , making

106-452: A standard printed Hebrew Bible and take notes on the differences was Umberto Cassuto , who examined it in 1943. This secrecy made it impossible to confirm the authenticity of the Codex, and indeed Cassuto doubted that it was Maimonides' codex, though he agreed that it was tenth century. During the 1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo , the community's ancient synagogue was burned. Later, while

159-536: A text trusted by all Jewish scholars. It is rumoured that in 1375 one of Maimonides' descendants brought it to Aleppo , Syria , leading to its present name. The Codex remained in Syria for nearly six hundred years. In 1947, rioters enraged by the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine burned down the synagogue where it was kept. The Codex disappeared, then reemerged in 1958, when it

212-736: Is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible . The codex was written in the city of Tiberias in the tenth century CE (circa 920) under the rule of the Abbasid Caliphate , and was endorsed for its accuracy by Maimonides . Together with the Leningrad Codex , it contains the Aaron ben Moses ben Asher Masoretic Text tradition. The codex was kept for five centuries in the Central Synagogue of Aleppo , until

265-614: Is a modern version of the Tanakh based on the Aleppo Codex and the work of Breuer: It uses a newly designed typeface based on the calligraphy of the Codex and is based on its page layout. Among the Jewish community of Aleppo and their descendants in the post-1947 diaspora, the belief always was that the Codex holds great magical power and that the smallest piece of it can ensure the good health and well-being of its owner. Historically it

318-837: Is a verified version of the Michigan-Claremont text, transcribed from BHS at the University of Michigan in 1981–1982 under the direction of H. Van Dyke Parunak (of the University of Michigan) and Richard E. Whitaker (of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont Graduate University) with funding from the Packard Foundation and the University of Michigan, with further proofreading and corrections. The version includes transcription notes and tools for analyzing syntax. The Leningrad Codex also served as

371-434: Is being used for Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ). As an original work by Tiberian masoretes, the Leningrad Codex was older by several centuries than the other Hebrew manuscripts which had been used for all previous editions of printed Hebrew bibles until Biblia Hebraica . The Westminster Leningrad Codex is a digital version of the Leningrad Codex maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research. This

424-595: Is no evidence that ben Asher ever saw it. Unusually for a masoretic codex, the same man (Samuel ben Jacob) wrote the consonants, the vowels and the Masoretic notes. In its vocalization system (vowel points and cantillation ) it is considered by scholars to be the most faithful representative of ben Asher's tradition apart from the Aleppo Codex (edited by ben Asher himself). Its letter-text is not perfect, however, and contradicts its own masoretic apparatus in hundreds of places. There are numerous alterations and erasures, and it

477-557: Is parchment, 33 cm high by 26.5 cm wide (13 inches × 10.43 inches). In particular, only the last few pages of the Torah are extant. The ink was made of three types of gall , ground and mixed with black soot and iron sulfate . The manuscript has been restored by specialists of the Israel Museum, whose director declared that, given the Codex's history, it is "in remarkably excellent condition". The purple markings on

530-676: Is the codex known in Egypt , which includes 24 books, which was in Jerusalem ," he wrote. David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra testifies to this being the same codex that was later transferred to Aleppo. The Codex, as it presents itself now in the Israel Museum where it is kept in a vault, consists of the 294 pages delivered by the Ben-Zvi Institute, plus one full page and a section of a second one recovered subsequently. The pages are preserved unbound and written on both sides. Each page

583-637: The Damascus Pentateuch in academic circles and as the "Damascus Keter", or "Crown of Damascus", in traditional Jewish circles. It was also written in Israel in the tenth century, and is now kept at the National Library of Israel as "ms. Heb 5702". It is available online here [1] . (This should not be confused with another Damascus Keter, of medieval Spanish origin.) The Aleppo Codex was the manuscript used by Maimonides when he set down

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636-663: The Siege of Jerusalem (1099) during the First Crusade , the Crusaders held the codex and other holy works for ransom, along with Jewish survivors. The Aleppo Codex website cites two letters in the Cairo Geniza that describe how the inhabitants of Ashkelon borrowed money from Egypt to pay for the books. These Judeo-Arabic letters were discovered by noted Jewish historian Shelomo Dov Goitein in 1952. The Letter of

689-400: The 1850s, Shalom Shachne Yellin sent his son in law, Moses Joshua Kimchi, to Aleppo, to copy information about the Codex; Kimchi sat for weeks, and copied thousands of details about the codex into the margins of a small handwritten Bible . The existence of this Bible was known to 20th-century scholars from the book ‘Ammudé Shesh by Shemuel Shelomo Boyarski , and then the actual Bible itself

742-536: The Aleppo Codex. The Leningrad Codex (a codex is a handwritten book bound at one side, as opposed to a scroll ) is so named because it has been housed at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg since 1863 (before 1917 named Imperial Public Library). In 1924, after the Russian Revolution , Petrograd (formerly Saint   Petersburg) was renamed Leningrad, and, because the codex

795-601: The Aleppo Jews. It was given first to Shlomo Zalman Shragai of the Jewish Agency , who later testified that the Codex was complete or nearly so at the time. Later that year it was given to the Ben-Zvi Institute . Still during 1958, the Jewish community of Aleppo sued the Ben-Zvi Institute for the return of the Codex, but the court ruled against them and suppressed publication of the proceedings. In

848-487: The Cave of Elijah. It was regarded as the community's most sacred possession: Those in trouble would pray before it, and oaths were taken by it. The community received queries from Jews around the world, who asked that various textual details be checked, correspondence which is preserved in the responsa literature, and which allows for the reconstruction of certain details in the parts that are missing today. Most importantly, in

901-601: The Codex Petersburgensis or Codex Petropolitanus , or the St. Petersburg Codex. This is ambiguous as, since 1876, these appellations refer to a different biblical codex (MS. Heb B 3) which is even older (AD 916), but contains only the later Prophets . The biblical text as found in the codex contains the Hebrew letter-text along with Tiberian vowels and cantillation signs. In addition, there are masoretic notes in

954-437: The Codex was in Israel, it was found that no more than 294 of the original (estimated) 487 pages survived. The missing leaves are a subject of fierce controversy. Originally it was thought they were destroyed by fire, but scholarly analysis has shown no evidence of fire having reached the codex itself (the dark marks on the pages are due to fungus). Some scholars instead accuse members of the Jewish community of having torn off

1007-464: The Codex would be hit by the curse. The consonants in the codex were copied by the scribe Shlomo ben Buya'a in Palestine circa 920. The text was then verified, vocalized, and provided with Masoretic notes by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher , the last and most prominent member of the ben Asher dynasty of grammarians from Tiberias , rivals to the ben Naphtali school. The tradition of ben Asher has become

1060-560: The Karaite elders of Ascalon , the more descriptive of the two, states that the money borrowed from Alexandria was used to "buy back two hundred and thirty Bible codices, a hundred other volumes, and eight Torah Scrolls." The documents were transported to Egypt via a caravan led and funded by the prominent Alexandrian official Abu’l-Fadl Sahl b. Yūsha’ b. Sha‘yā, who was in Ascalon for his wedding in early 1100. Judeo-Arabic inscriptions on

1113-525: The Leningrad Codex the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived intact to this day. In modern times, the Leningrad Codex is significant as the Hebrew text reproduced in Biblia Hebraica (1937), Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977), and Biblia Hebraica Quinta (2004–present). It also serves as a primary source for the recovery of details in the missing parts of

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1166-526: The Leningrad Codex, the order of the Ketuvim is: Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah. The full order of the books is given below. According to its colophon , the codex was copied in Cairo from manuscripts written by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher . It has been claimed to be a product of the ben Asher scriptorium itself; however, there

1219-532: The World Register and was included in 2015. The Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem received the book from Israel ben Simha of Basra sometime between 1040 and 1050. It was cared for by the brothers Hizkiyahu and Joshya, Karaite religious leaders who eventually moved to Fustat (today part of Old Cairo ) in 1050. The codex, however, stayed in Jerusalem until the latter part of that century. After

1272-476: The area of Aleppo in Syria. Kether is a translation of Arabic taj , originally Persian taj ; the codex was called al-Taj by locals until the modern period. In Arabic, the term taj was used mostly as a stock superlative title (Muslim caliphs did not wear crowns) and applied liberally to model codices. It lost this sense when translated into Hebrew as kether , which has only the literal sense of crown. The Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem purchased

1325-567: The basis for two modern Jewish editions of the Hebrew Bible ( Tanakh ): (Contrary to popular belief as previously stated on this page, the Koren editions of Tanakh are not based primarily on the Leningrad Codex, but on the second edition Mikraot Gedolot published by Daniel Bomberg in Venice in 1525, with changes made to the text based on a variety of older manuscripts which are not named by

1378-633: The codex about a hundred years after it was made. When the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, the synagogue was plundered and the codex was held for a high ransom, which was paid with money coming from Egypt, leading to the codex being transferred there. It was preserved at the Karaite , then at the Rabbanite synagogue in Old Cairo , where it was consulted by Maimonides , who described it as

1431-607: The codex that is accounted for is housed in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum . The codex's Hebrew name is כֶּתֶר אֲרָם צוֹבָא ‎ Keṯer ʾĂrām-Ṣōḇāʾ , translated as "Crown of Aleppo". Kether means "crown", and Aram-Ṣovaʾ (literally "outside Aram ") was a not-yet-identified biblical city in what is now Syria whose name was applied from the 11th century onward by some Rabbinic sources and Syrian Jews to

1484-439: The codex) that not only was it the oldest known masoretic Bible in a single volume, it was the first time ever that a complete Tanakh had been produced by one or two people as a unified entity in a consistent style. During the 1991 Gulf War, and again during the 2023 Israel-Hamas War, the scrolls were temporarily removed from display and placed in secure storage as part of the Israel Museum's emergency protocol. Later, after

1537-519: The edges of the pages were found to be mold rather than fire damage. When the Aleppo Codex was complete (until 1947), it followed the Tiberian textual tradition in the order of its books, similar to the Leningrad Codex , and which also matches the later tradition of Sephardi biblical manuscripts. The Torah and the Nevi'im appear in the same order found in most printed Hebrew Bibles, but

1590-571: The end; all of Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, and Ezra-Nehemiah. In 2016, the scholar Yosef Ofer published a newly recovered fragment of the Aleppo Codex with some portions of the Book of Exodus 8. Several complete or partial editions of the Tanakh based on the Aleppo Codex have been published over the past three decades in Israel, some of them under the academic auspices of Israeli universities. These editions incorporate reconstructions of

1643-587: The exact rules for writing scrolls of the Torah , Hilkhot Sefer Torah ("the Laws of the Torah Scroll") in his Mishneh Torah . This halachic ruling gave the Aleppo Codex the seal of supreme textual authority, albeit only with regard to the type of space preceding sections ( petuhot and setumot ) and for the manner of the writing of the songs in the Pentateuch. "The codex which we used in these works

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1696-509: The fact that eyewitnesses in Aleppo who saw the Codex shortly after the fire consistently reported that it was complete or nearly complete, and then there is no account of it for more than a decade, until after it arrived in Israel and was put, in 1958, in the Ben-Zvi Institute, at which point it was as currently described; his book suggests a number of possibilities for the loss of the pages including theft in Israel. Documentary filmmaker Avi Dabach, great-grandson of Hacham Ezra Dabach (one of

1749-661: The first page of the Codex mention the book was then "transferred to the Jerusalemite synagogue in Fustat ." The Aleppo codex website reveals how the book changed hands. [It was] transferred [...] according to the law of redemption from imprisonment [in which it had fallen] in Jerusalem, the Holy City, may it be rebuilt and reestablished, to the congregation in Egypt of Knisat Yerushalayim, may it be built and established in

1802-516: The last caretakers of the Codex when it was still in Syria), announced in December 2015 an upcoming film tracing the history of the Codex and possibly determining the fate of the missing pages. The film, titled The Lost Crown  [ he ] , was released in 2018. In January 1958, the Aleppo Codex was smuggled out of Syria and sent to Jerusalem to be placed in the care of the chief rabbi of

1855-492: The late 1980s, the codex was placed in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum . This finally gave scholars the chance to examine it and consider the claims that it is indeed the manuscript referred to by Maimonides. The work of Moshe Goshen-Gottstein on the few surviving pages of the Torah seems to have confirmed these claims beyond reasonable doubt. Goshen-Gottstein suggested (in the introduction to his facsimile reprint of

1908-455: The life of Israel. Blessed be he who preserves it and cursed be he who steals it, and cursed be he who sells it, and cursed be he who pawns it. It may not be sold and it may not be defiled forever. The Aleppo community guarded the Codex zealously for some 600 years: it was kept, together with three other Biblical manuscripts, in a special cupboard (later, an iron safe) in a basement chapel of the Central Synagogue of Aleppo , supposed to have been

1961-425: The margins. There are also various technical supplements dealing with textual and linguistic details, many of which are painted in geometrical forms. The codex is written on parchment and bound in leather. The Leningrad Codex, in extraordinarily pristine condition after a millennium, also provides an example of medieval Jewish art. Sixteen of the pages contain decorative geometric patterns that illuminate passages from

2014-413: The missing leaves and keeping them privately hidden. Two missing portions of the manuscript—a single complete leaf from the Book of Chronicles and a fragment of a page from the Book of Exodus —were turned up from such sources in the 1980s, leaving open the possibility that even more may have survived the riots in 1947. In particular, the 2012 book The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman calls attention to

2067-414: The missing parts of the codex based on the methodology of Mordechai Breuer or similar systems, and by taking into account all available historical testimony about the contents of the codex. Complete Tanakh: These are complete editions of the Tanakh , usually in one volume (but sometimes also sold in three volumes, and, as noted, in more). Apart from the last, they do not include the masoretic notes of

2120-431: The one accepted for the Hebrew Bible . The ben Asher vocalization is late and in many respects artificial, compared to other traditions and tendencies reaching back closer to the period of spoken Biblical Hebrew. The Leningrad Codex , which dates to approximately the same time as the Aleppo codex, has been claimed by Paul E. Kahle to be a product of the ben Asher scriptorium . However, its colophon says only that it

2173-697: The order for the books for Ketuvim differs markedly. In the Aleppo Codex, the order of the Ketuvim is Books of Chronicles , Psalms , Book of Job , Book of Proverbs , Book of Ruth , Song of Songs , Ecclesiastes , Book of Lamentations , Book of Esther , Book of Daniel , and Book of Ezra and Book of Nehemiah . The current text is missing all of the Pentateuch to the Book of Deuteronomy 28.17; II Kings 14.21–18.13; Book of Jeremiah 29.9–31.33; 32.2–4, 9–11, 21–24; Book of Amos 8.12– Book of Micah 5.1; So 3.20–Za 9.17; II Chronicles 26.19–35.7; Book of Psalms 15.1–25.2 (MT enumeration); Song of Songs 3.11 to

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2226-402: The publisher. It is possible, as some have claimed, that the Leningrad Codex was among those used, but it is not specifically named by the publisher.) For minute masoretic details, however, Israeli and Jewish scholars have shown a marked preference for modern Hebrew editions based upon the Aleppo Codex. These editions use the Leningrad Codex as the most important source (but not the only one) for

2279-520: The reconstruction of parts of the Aleppo Codex that have been missing since 1947. As explained in the Contents section above, the order of the books in the Leningrad Codex follows the Tiberian textual tradition and is different from most modern Hebrew bibles: The Torah : The Nevi'im : The Ketuvim Aleppo Codex The Aleppo Codex ( Hebrew : כֶּתֶר אֲרָם צוֹבָא , romanized : Keṯer ʾĂrām-Ṣōḇāʾ , lit. 'Crown of Aleppo')

2332-517: The synagogue was torched during 1947 anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo . The fate of the codex during the subsequent decade is unclear: when it resurfaced in Israel in 1958, roughly 40% of the manuscript—including the majority of the Torah section—was missing, and only two additional leaves have been recovered since then. The original supposition that the missing pages were destroyed in the synagogue fire has increasingly been challenged, fueling speculation that they survive in private hands. The portion of

2385-459: The text. The carpet page shows a star with the names of the scribes on the edges and a blessing written in the middle. The order of the books in the Leningrad Codex follows the Tiberian textual tradition, which is also that of the later tradition of Sephardic biblical manuscripts. This order for the books differs markedly from that of most printed Hebrew bibles for the books of the Ketuvim . In

2438-457: The university denied him access to the codex, Mordechai Breuer began his own reconstruction of the Masoretic text on the basis of other well-known ancient manuscripts. His results matched the Aleppo Codex almost exactly. Thus today, Breuer's version is used authoritatively for the reconstruction of the missing portions of the Aleppo Codex. The Jerusalem Crown (כתר ירושלים, Keter Yerushalayim, lit. "Jerusalem Crown"), printed in Jerusalem in 2000,

2491-447: Was believed that women allowed to look at it would become pregnant, and that those in charge of the keys to the Codex vault were blessed. On the other hand, community elders have written at the top of some pages "Sacred to Yahweh, not to be sold or defiled" and "Cursed be he who steals it, and cursed be he who sells it". The community feared being destroyed by a plague, should they lose the Codex, and they believed that he who stole or sold

2544-414: Was corrected from manuscripts written by ben Asher; there is no evidence that ben Asher himself ever saw it. However, the same holds true for the Aleppo Codex, which was apparently not vocalized by ben Asher himself, although a later colophon, which was added to the manuscript after his death, attributes the vocalization to him. The community of Damascus possessed a counterpart of the Aleppo Codex, known as

2597-510: Was discovered by Yosef Ofer in 1989. However, the community limited direct observation of the manuscript by outsiders, especially by scholars in modern times. Paul E. Kahle , when revising the text of the Biblia Hebraica in the 1920s, tried and failed to obtain a photographic copy. This forced him to use the Leningrad Codex instead for the third edition, which appeared in 1937. The only modern scholar allowed to compare it with

2650-507: Was smuggled into Israel by Syrian Jew Murad Faham, and presented to the president of the state, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi . Some time after arrival, it was found that parts of the codex had been lost. The Aleppo Codex was entrusted to the Ben-Zvi Institute and Hebrew University of Jerusalem . It is currently (2019) on display in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum . The Aleppo Codex was submitted by Israel for inclusion in UNESCO's Memory of

2703-466: Was suggested by Moshe Goshen-Gottstein that an existing text not following ben Asher's rules was heavily amended so as to make it conform to these rules. The codex is now preserved in the National Library of Russia , accessioned as "Firkovich B 19 A". Its former owner, the Crimean Karaite collector Abraham Firkovich , left no indication in his writings where he had acquired the codex, which

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2756-641: Was taken to Odessa in 1838 and later transferred to the Imperial Library in St   Petersburg. In 1935, the Leningrad Codex was lent to the Old Testament Seminar of the University of Leipzig for two years while Paul E. Kahle supervised its transcription for the Hebrew text of the third edition of Biblia Hebraica (BHK), published in Stuttgart, 1937. The codex was also used for Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) in 1977, and

2809-593: Was used as the basic text for the Biblia Hebraica since 1937, it became internationally known as the "Leningrad Codex". Although the city's name was restored to the original St   Petersburg after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the National Library of Russia requested that "Leningrad" be retained in the name of the codex. Nonetheless, the Codex is occasionally referred to as

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