The Aleppo Codex

[First posted in AWOL 10 January 2011, updated 27 February 2017]

The Aleppo Codex

The Aleppo Codex, the most splendid, old, and accurate manuscript of the Bible, is presented here for the first time in full color photograph, permitting the reader to examine the handiwork of the greatest of the Masoretes, who were active in Tiberias in the tenth century, Aharon Ben Moshe Ben Asher, and to gain an impression of the way the Masoretes worked to preserve the accurate text of the Bible and the reading tradition. 

The Aleppo Codex is a full manuscript of the entire Bible, which was written in about 930. For more than a thousand years, the manuscript was preserved in its entirety in important Jewish communities in the Near East: Tiberias, Jerusalem, Egypt, and in the city of Aleppo in Syria. However, in 1947, after the United Nations Resolution establishing the State of Israel, it was damaged in riots that broke out in Syria. At first people thought that it had been completely destroyed. Later, however, it turned out that most of the manuscript had been saved and kept in a secret hiding place. In 1958, the Aleppo Codex was smuggled out of Syria to Jerusalem and delivered to the President of the State of Israel, Izhak Ben-Zvi.

Once the Aleppo Codex reached Israel, precise study of it began in many areas. Scholars of the Masora and of the text of the Bible took note of its special status among the manuscripts related to it. It was found that the match between the spelling of the Aleppo Codex and the comments of the Masora was excellent, far better than the match of other manuscripts. Similarly, the vocalization signs in the Aleppo Codex were examined and described, along with the cantillation marks, the system of ge’iyot (a kind of accent mark), and the apparatus of the Masora. All of these terms will be explained and demonstrated in this site...

Site Content

• Home Page


• Reading and Searching the Codex


• Hebrew Version


• Contact

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Articles

Introduction
The Bible and its Transmission - Scrolls, Manuscripts, Printings
The Masoretes
The Aleppo Codex
The Vicissitudes of the Aleppo Codex
The Aleppo Codex Today

 See also Codex Sinaiticus