![]() ![]() ![]() These Judeo-Arabic letters were discovered by noted Jewish historian Shelomo Dov Goitein in 1952. 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. After 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 codex, however, stayed in Jerusalem until the latter part of that century. 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 Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem received the book from Israel ben Simha of Basra sometime between 10. The Aleppo Codex was submitted by Israel for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register and was included in 2015. It is currently (2019) on display in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum. The Aleppo Codex was entrusted to the Ben-Zvi Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sometime after arrival, it was found that parts of the codex had been lost. 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 was smuggled into Israel by Syrian Jew Murad Faham, and presented to the president of the state, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. The Codex remained in Syria for five hundred years. It is rumored that in 1375 one of Maimonides’ descendants brought it to Aleppo, Syria, leading to its present name. ![]() The Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem purchased the codex about a hundred years after it was made. During the First Crusade, the synagogue was plundered and the codex was transferred to Egypt, whose Jews paid a high price for its ransom. It was preserved at the Karaite then Rabbanite synagogue in Old Cairo, where it was consulted by Maimonides, who described it as a text trusted by all Jewish scholars. It was being guarded in the oldest synagogue in Aleppo, Syria, a predominantly Muslim town, which was an ancient, very small community of Jews. Yet, this really never impacted anything. For example, we have what is agree to be the most important Hebrew manuscript, called the Keter, the “Crown,” that originally contained the entire Hebrew Scriptures. Nevertheless, the Hebrew scriptures had the early sopherim (scribes) taking liberties with the text but not in extreme ways and yes some scribal errors slipt into the Hebrew text. The Hebrew manuscript had been faithfully copied for centuries until. Why? Because these manuscripts contained “Jehovah” (Heb., יהוה), the Tetragrammaton, the Hebrew letters representing the sacred, personal name of God. The Jews carried out this practice for fear that their Scriptures would be profaned or misused. After some time passed and they had accumulated a number of worn Hebrew manuscripts, they would be taken outside and buried. Why were there so few ancient Hebrew manuscripts when we consider the enormous amount we have for the New Testament? Following the customary Jewish practice, any Hebrew Bible manuscript that was considered too worn for further use, it was locked away in a genizah, which was a storeroom in the synagogue. Does this mean that prior to 1947, textual scholars and translators were uncertain about the Hebrew Bible that lies behind our English Old Testament? No, there was the most important Hebrew manuscript, which is called the Keter, the “Crown,” that originally contained all the Hebrew Scriptures, or the “Old Testament.” That is bit a mere thousand years ago when the thirty-nine Hebrew Old Testament Bible books date from 2,500 to 3,500 years ago. Together with the Leningrad Codex, it contains the Ben-Asher Masoretic tradition, but the Aleppo Codex lacks most of the Torah section and many other parts.īEFORE the discovery of the cache of Hebrew scrolls in the Dead Sea caves in 1947, aside from a few fragments, our Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts were from the late 9th to the 11th century C.E. under the rule of the Abbasid Caliphate, and was endorsed for its accuracy by Maimonides. The codex was written in the city of Tiberias in the 10th century C.E. ![]() The Aleppo Codex (Hebrew: כֶּתֶר אֲרָם צוֹבָא Keter Aram Tzova or Crown of Aleppo) is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. ![]()
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