What was the Aleppo Codex?

The Aleppo Codex is the earliest known Hebrew manuscript comprising the full text of the Bible. The text was then verified, vocalized, and provided with the Masorah by Aaron Ben-Asher, the last and most prominent member of the Ben-Asher dynasty, which shaped the Hebrew text of the Bible.

What language is the Aleppo Codex in?

Hebrew language
Portion of the Aleppo Codex, a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible written in the Hebrew language in the 10th century ce; in the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Where is the Aleppo Codex kept?

Jerusalem
In 1958, the Aleppo Codex was smuggled out of Syria to Jerusalem and delivered to the President of the State of Israel, Yitzhaq Ben Zvi. It is preserved in Jerusalem in the Shrine of the Book.

Who were the masoretes and what did they do?

The Masoretes, who from about the 6th to the 10th century ceworked to reproduce the original text of the Hebrew Bible, replaced the vowels of the name YHWH with the vowel signs of the Hebrew words Adonai or Elohim.

How did the Aleppo Codex get its name?

The Aleppo Codex, the oldest Hebrew Bible in existence today, is so named because it was housed for half a millennium in Aleppo, Syria.

How did Moses kimchi copy the Aleppo Codex?

Most importantly, in 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.

How many pages of the Aleppo Codex survived?

During the 1947 Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo, the community’s ancient synagogue was burned. Later, while 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.

Who is Aaron ben Asher in the Aleppo Codex?

The text was verified and vocalized by Aaron ben Asher, the last and most prominent member of the Masoretic grammarians from Tiberias. This edition contains some old photos of currently missing pages and a recovered fragment.

What is missing from the Aleppo Codex?

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 the end; all of …

Where is the Leningrad Codex?

the Russian National Library
History. The Leningrad Codex is the world’s oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible that has been preserved to the present time. It is housed in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg ( formerly Leningrad), and thus it has become known simply as the Leningrad Codex.

What is the oldest Bible?

the Codex Sinaiticus
Along with Codex Vaticanus, the Codex Sinaiticus is considered one of the most valuable manuscripts available, as it is one of the oldest and likely closer to the original text of the Greek New Testament.

Where was the Aleppo Codex found?

Syria
A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex.

What is the date of the Aleppo Codex?

10th century ce

What does Adonai mean?

My Lord
At the same time, the divine name was increasingly regarded as too sacred to be uttered; it was thus replaced vocally in the synagogue ritual by the Hebrew word Adonai (“My Lord”), which was translated as Kyrios (“Lord”) in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Who were the Masoretic people?

The Masoretes (Hebrew: בעלי המסורה‎, romanized: Ba’alei ha-Masora) were groups of Jewish scribe-scholars who worked from around the end of the 5th through 10th centuries CE, based primarily in medieval Palestine (Jund Filastin) in the cities of Tiberias and Jerusalem, as well as in Iraq (Babylonia).

What is the oldest version of the Bible?

Its oldest complete copy in existence is the Leningrad Codex, dating to c. 1000 CE. The Samaritan Pentateuch is a version of the Torah maintained by the Samaritan community since antiquity and rediscovered by European scholars in the 17th century; the oldest existing copies date to c. 1100 CE.

What are the oldest copies of the Bible?

The Aleppo Codex (c. 920 CE) and Leningrad Codex (c. 1008 CE) were once the oldest known manuscripts of the Tanakh in Hebrew. In 1947 CE the finding of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran pushed the manuscript history of the Tanakh back a millennium from such codices.

Why was the Aleppo Codex important to Judaism?

Until it was damaged and partially lost, the Aleppo Codex was considered to be the “crown” of ancient Biblical manuscripts, and was the version of the Hebrew Bible that was ultimately considered the most authoritative text in Judaism. Its loss was an enormous blow to Jewish scholarship.

How are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Aleppo Codex different?

For centuries, this text has been the foundation for Jewish and Christian translators. The major difference between the Aleppo Codex and the Dead Sea Scrolls is the addition of the vowel pointings (called nikkudotin Hebrew) in the Aleppo Codex to the Hebrew words.

Is there a copy of the Aleppo Bible?

The only complete copy of the Hebrew Bible from the same period as the Aleppo Codex is the Leningrad Codex in St. Petersburg. It is similar to the Aleppo Codex in many respects—in both date (to within a few decades at most) and in distinction.

Where is the Aleppo codex currently on display?

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 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.