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TheAleppo Codex (Hebrew:כֶּתֶר אֲרַם צוֹבָא,romanized: Keṯer ʾĂrām-Ṣoḇāʾ,lit. 'Crown of Aleppo') is a medieval bound manuscript of theHebrew Bible. Thecodex was written in the city ofTiberias in the tenth century CE (circa 920) under the rule of theAbbasid Caliphate,[1] and was endorsed for its accuracy byMaimonides. Together with theLeningrad Codex, it contains theAaron ben Moses ben AsherMasoretic Text tradition.
The codex was kept for five centuries in theCentral Synagogue of Aleppo, until the synagogue was torched duringanti-Jewish riots in 1947.[2] 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 theTorah section—was missing, and only two additional leaves have been recovered since then.[3] 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.[4][3]
The portion of the codex that is accounted for is housed in theShrine of the Book at theIsrael Museum.[4]
The codex's Hebrew name isכֶּתֶר אֲרָם צוֹבָאKeṯer ʾĂrām-Ṣoḇāʾ, translated as "Crown of Aleppo".Kether means "crown", andAram-Ṣovaʾ (literally "outsideAram") was a not-yet-identified biblical city in what is nowSyria whose name was applied from the 11th century onward by someRabbinic sources andSyrian Jews to the area ofAleppo in Syria.Kether is a translation of Arabictāj, originally Persiantāj; the codex was calledal-Tāj by locals until the modern period. In Arabic, the termtāj 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 askether, which has only the literal sense of crown.[5]
TheKaraite Jewish community ofJerusalem purchased the codex about a hundred years after it was made.[6][7] When theCrusadersinvaded Jerusalem in 1099, the synagogue was plundered. The codex was held for a high ransom, which was paid with money from Egypt, leading to the codex being transferred there.[1] It was preserved by theKaraites, then at theRabbanite synagogue inOld Cairo, where it was consulted byMaimonides, who described it as a text trusted by all Jewish scholars. It is rumoured that in 1375 one of Maimonides' descendants brought it toMamluk-ruled Aleppo, leading to its present name.[1]
The Codex remained in Syria for nearly six hundred years. In 1947, rioters enraged by theUnited Nations Partition Plan for Palestine burned down thesynagogue where it was kept.[1] The Codex disappeared, then reemerged in 1958, when it was smuggled into Israel bySyrian Jew Murad Faham and presented to the president of the state,Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. Sometime after arrival, it was found that parts of the codex had been lost. The Aleppo Codex was entrusted to the Ben-Zvi Institute andHebrew University of Jerusalem. It is currently (2019) on display in theShrine of the Book at theIsrael Museum.
Israel submitted the Aleppo Codex for inclusion in UNESCO'sMemory of the World international register and was included in 2015.[8]
The Karaite Jewish community of Jerusalem received the book from Israel ben Simha ofBasra sometime between 1040 and 1050.[9] It was cared for by the brothers Hizkiyahu and Joshya, Karaite religious leaders who eventually moved toFustat (today part ofOld Cairo) in 1050. The codex, however, stayed in Jerusalem until the latter part of that century.[9] After theSiege of Jerusalem (1099) during theFirst Crusade, the Crusaders held the codex for ransom.[10][11] Letters in theCairo Geniza describe the inhabitants ofAshkelon borrowing money from Egypt to "buy back two hundred and thirty Bible codices, a hundred other volumes, and eight Torah Scrolls" from the Crusaders[12] which may have included the codex.[13][11][10] A Judeo-Arabic inscription on the lost first page of the Codex described that the book was
Transferred according to thecommandment to redeem captives, from the loot of the holy city of Jerusalem, may she be rebuilt and reestablished, to the Egyptian congregation, to the Jerusalemite synagogue, may [Jerusalem] be rebuilt and reestablished in the life of Israel. Blessed be he who preserves it and cursed be he who steals it or sells it or pawns it.It may never be sold or bought.[14]
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 theCentral Synagogue of Aleppo, supposed to have been 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 worldwide, who asked that various textual details be checked, preserved in theresponsa literature. It allowed for the reconstruction of information in the missing parts today. Most importantly, in the 1850s,Shalom Shachne Yellin sent his son-in-law, Moses Joshua Kimḥi, to Aleppo to copy information about the Codex; Kimḥi sat for weeks and copied thousands of details about the codex into the margins of a small handwrittenBible. The existence of this Bible was known to 20th-century scholars from the book‘Ammudé Shesh byShemuel Shelomo Boyarski, and then the actual Bible itself was discovered byYosef Ofer in 1989.
However, the community limited outsiders' direct observation of the manuscript, especially by scholars in modern times.Paul E. Kahle, when revising the text of theBiblia Hebraica in the 1920s, tried and failed to obtain a photographic copy. This forced him to use theLeningrad Codex instead for the third edition, which appeared in 1937.
The only modern scholar allowed to compare it with a standard printedHebrew Bible and take notes on the differences wasUmberto Cassuto, who examined it in 1943.[15] 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 the1947 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.[2][17]
The missing leaves are a subject of fierce controversy. Initially, 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).[2] Some scholars instead accuse Jewish community members of having torn off the missing leaves and kept them privately hidden. Two missing portions of the manuscript—a single complete leaf from theBook of Chronicles and a fragment of a page from theBook 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.[18][3] In particular, the 2012 bookThe Aleppo Codex byMatti Friedman calls attention to 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 several possibilities for the loss of the pages including theft in Israel.[19]
Documentary filmmaker Avi Dabach, great-grandson ofHacham Ezra Dabach (one of 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.[20] The film, titledThe Lost Crown [he], was released in 2018.[21]
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 the Aleppo Jews.[4] It was given first toShlomo Zalman Shragai of theJewish Agency, who later testified that the Codex was complete or nearly so at the time.[4] Later that year, it was given to theBen-Zvi Institute.[4] Still during 1958, the Jewish community of Aleppo sued the Ben-Zvi Institute for the return of the Codex. The court ruled against them and suppressed the publication of the proceedings.[4]
In the late 1980s, the codex was placed in theShrine of the Book at theIsrael Museum.[3] This finally gave scholars a chance to examine it and consider the claims that it is indeed the manuscript referred to by Maimonides. The work ofMoshe 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 the codex that not only was it the oldest knownMasoretic Text (𝕸) in a single volume, but it was the first time that one or two people had produced a completeTanakh as a unified entity in a consistent style.
During theGulf War, and again during theGaza war, the scrolls were placed in secure storage as part of the Israel Museum's emergency protocol.[22]
Later, after the university denied him access to the codex,Mordechai Breuer began his reconstruction of the Masoretic text based on other well-known ancient manuscripts. His results matched the Aleppo Codex almost precisely. Breuer's version is used authoritatively to reconstruct the missing portions of the Aleppo Codex. TheJerusalem Crown (Hebrew:כתר ירושלים,romanized: Keter Yerushalayim,lit. 'Jerusalem Crown'), printed in Jerusalem in 2000, 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.[23]
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 its owner's good health and well-being.[3] Historically, it 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.[3] On the other hand, history left every quire with the inscription "Sanctified to God, not to be sold or bought," and the first leaf once included a common warning for medieval Hebrew manuscripts,[24] "Cursed be he who steals it, and cursed be he who sells it."[14]
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 byAaron ben Moses ben Asher, the last and most prominent member of the ben Asher dynasty of grammarians fromTiberias, rivals to theben Naphtali school. The tradition of ben Asher has become the one accepted for theHebrew Bible.[25] 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.[26]
TheLeningrad 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 Asherscriptorium. However, itscolophon says only that it 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.[27]
The community of Damascus possessed a counterpart of the Aleppo Codex, known as theDamascus 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 theNational 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 the exact rules for writing scrolls of theTorah,Hilkhot Sefer Torah ("Laws of theTorah Scroll") in hisMishneh Torah.[11] Thishalachic ruling gave the Aleppo Codex the seal of supreme textual authority, albeit only concerning the type of space preceding sections (petuhot andsetumot) and the manner of the writing of the songs in the Pentateuch.[27] "The codex which we used in these works 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.[citation needed]
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,[2][17] plus one full page and a section of a second one recovered subsequently.[3] The pages are preserved unbound and written on both sides.[3] Each page is parchment, 33 cm high by 26.5 cm wide (13 inches × 10.43 inches).[28] In particular, only the last few pages of theTorah are extant.[29] Theink was made of three types ofgall, ground and mixed with blacksoot andiron sulfate.[3]
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".[3] The purple markings on the edges of the pages were found to bemold rather thanfire damage.[3]
When the Aleppo Codex was complete (until 1947), it followed the Tiberian textual tradition in the order of its books, similar to theLeningrad Codex, and which also matches the later tradition ofSephardi biblical manuscripts. TheTorah and theNevi'im appear in the same order found in most printed Hebrew Bibles, but the order for the books forKetuvim differs markedly. In the Aleppo Codex, the order of the Ketuvim isBooks 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, andBook of Ezra andBook of Nehemiah.
The current text is missing all of thePentateuch to theBook 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 Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, and Ezra-Nehemiah.[26]
In 2016, the scholar Yosef Ofer published a newly recovered fragment of the Aleppo Codex with some portions of theBook of Exodus 8.[30]
Several complete or partial editions of theTanakh 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 the missing parts of the codex based on the methodology ofMordechai 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 theTanakh, usually in one volume (but sometimes also sold in three volumes, and, as noted, in more). Apart from the last, they donot include the masoretic notes of the Aleppo Codex.
Complete online Tanakh:
Partial editions:
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