Aleppo Codex

Did You Know?

• The codex's Hebrew name Keṯer ʾĂrām-Ṣoḇāʾ translates as 'Crown of Aleppo'; it was called al-Tāj by locals until the modern period.
• The purple markings on the edges of the pages were found to be mold rather than fire damage.

History

The Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem purchased the codex about a hundred years after its creation. During the Crusader invasion of Jerusalem in 1099, the synagogue was plundered and the codex was held for a high ransom, paid with money from Egypt, leading to its transfer there. It was preserved by the Karaites, then at the Rabbanite synagogue in Old Cairo, where Maimonides consulted it. Around 1375, a descendant of Maimonides is rumored to have brought it to Mamluk-ruled Aleppo, giving it 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 the synagogue where it was kept. After arrival, parts were found missing. It was entrusted to the Ben-Zvi Institute and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is currently displayed in the Shrine of the Book. Israel submitted it for UNESCO's Memory of the World register, and it was included in 2015. The Karaite community had received the book from Israel ben Simha of Basra between 1040 and 1050, and it was cared for by the brothers Hizkiyahu and Joshya, who moved to Fustat in 1050. After the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099, letters in the Cairo Geniza describe inhabitants of Ashkelon borrowing money from Egypt to buy back codices from the Crusaders, possibly including this one.

Authoritative text

The consonants 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 prominent member of the ben Asher dynasty from Tiberias. The ben Asher tradition has become the accepted one for the Hebrew Bible, though its vocalization is late and in many respects artificial compared to earlier traditions. The Leningrad Codex, dating to approximately the same time, has been claimed by Paul E. Kahle to be a product of the ben Asher scriptorium, but its colophon only states it was corrected from manuscripts written by ben Asher, with no evidence he saw it. The same holds for the Aleppo Codex, which was apparently not vocalized by ben Asher himself, though a later colophon attributes the vocalization to him. The community of Damascus possessed a counterpart known as the Damascus Pentateuch, also written in Israel in the tenth century, now kept at the National Library of Israel. The Aleppo Codex was used by Maimonides when setting down rules for writing Torah scrolls in his Mishneh Torah, giving it the seal of supreme textual authority regarding space preceding sections and the writing of songs in the Pentateuch. David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra testified this was the same codex later transferred to Aleppo.

Contents

When complete until 1947, the codex followed the Tiberian textual tradition in the order of its books, similar to the Leningrad Codex and matching later Sephardi tradition. The Torah and Nevi'im appear in the same order as most printed Hebrew Bibles, but the order for Ketuvim differs: Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, and Ezra-Nehemiah. The current text is missing all of the Pentateuch to Deuteronomy 28:17, along with many other passages. In 2016, scholar Yosef Ofer published a newly recovered fragment with portions of Exodus 8.

Modern editions

Several complete or partial editions of the Tanakh based on the Aleppo Codex have been published in Israel over the past three decades, some under academic auspices. These incorporate reconstructions of missing parts based on Mordechai Breuer's methodology or similar systems, using historical testimony about the codex's contents. Complete editions include the Mossad HaRav Kook edition (Torah 1977, Nebi'im 1979, Ketubim 1982, full Tanakh 1989), the first to reconstruct letters, vowels, and cantillation marks in missing parts. The Horev publishers edition (1996–98) incorporated newly discovered information on parashah divisions for Nebi'im and Ketubim. The Jerusalem Crown (2000) was edited according to Breuer's method under Yosef Ofer's supervision.