The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the recovery of the two oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible—the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex—all occurred in the past 75 years; together they have revolutionized textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible in ways hardly imagined just decades ago.
The Aleppo Codex dates to about 915 C.E. and is the work of Aaron ben Asher, considered the greatest of the Masoretes, rabbinic Jewish (or, possibly, Karaite) scribes who specialized in the text of the Bible. The codex’s reputation as the best Hebrew Bible manuscript was secured when Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish scholar, declared that he relied on the work of ben Asher. In 1947, however, rioters in the Syrian city of Aleppo who were violently opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine set fire to the city’s ancient synagogue and almost all of the Torah from the Aleppo Codex was destroyed (the remainder was later smuggled to Israel).
The Leningrad Codex, about a century younger than the Aleppo Codex (it was written by a scribe named Samuel ben Jacob in Old Cairo in 1009 C.E.), is today the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible.a Little is known of its history from 1009 until 1489, when it was donated to the Karaite synagogue in Damascus (the Karaites broke away from rabbinic Judaism in about 760 C.E.; they rejected rabbinic law as embodied in the Talmud and consider only the Bible as binding); equally little is known of it from 1489 to the mid-19th century, when it was acquired by Abraham Firkovich, a prosperous Karaite merchant who amassed a remarkable collection of Hebrew manuscripts. In 1862 Firkovich sold his collection, including the Leningrad Codex, to Russia’s Imperial Library in St. Petersburg (known for much of the 20th century as Leningrad).
Based on sophisticated photos taken in 1990 by the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center, Aron Dotan, Tel Aviv University’s eminent scholar of medieval codices of the Hebrew Bible, in his new volume has corrected scribal errors in the Leningrad Codex and has adapted the text for Jewish liturgical use (by, for example, dividing the Pentateuch into the traditional weekly portions). Dotan has thus made the Leningrad Codex useful for a wide Jewish constituency, for both study and worship.
In his painstaking work, Dotan stands in a distinguished line of Jewish textual scholars of the past. These include Jacob ben Hayyim Ibn Adonijah of Tunis, the 16th-century editor who studied scattered Hebrew biblical manuscripts in producing the Second Rabbinic Bible for the publisher, Daniel Bomberg, in Venice in 1525. Whether Dotan’s edition will displace the traditional Rabbinic Bible used by many Jews the world over remains, of course, to be seen.
Biblia Hebraica Leningradensia, which lacks a critical apparatus, is clearly not a critical edition. In adapting the Leningrad Codex for Jewish liturgical use, Dotan has made a number of changes, some of them major. He has placed Chronicles in its traditional position at the end of the Jewish Bible, rather than first in the Ketuvim (Writings), or third section of the Hebrew Bible,b as it is in the Leningrad Codex (and, indeed, in many ancient codices). Dotan has also adjusted some paragraph spacings in the text to conform to Jewish tradition. A felicitous decision reproduces the actual breaks in the texts—the petuchah (a blank space all the way to the end of a line) and setumah (a gap in the middle of a line)—rather than using the Hebrew letters peh and samech to indicate such spacings, as do many editions of the Hebrew Bible. Spacings in all texts are integral to them and essential for interpretation; unfortunately, Dotan has left some spacings as they are in the codex but has adjusted others.
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A major lack in Dotan’s edition is the omission of the masorah of the Leningrad Codex, the scribal notes in the side, top and bottom margins. These notes are often crucial in determining what the text itself was. Instead, Dotan has included only the manuscript’s qere (“reading”) notes, which indicate words that should be read aloud differently from how they are written.
Dotan includes six appendices, much of which he has published elsewhere but which are here adapted to be useful to the serious reader. He has helpfully included the two versions of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2–13 and Deuteronomy 5:6–17) with only the familiar cantilation marks, which indicate accents and serve as guides for chanting the words; the Leningrad Codex inserts what are known as the “upper” and “lower” systems of accents, and the two together can be very confusing to students. Another appendix lists readings in the Leningrad Codex that Dotan has rejected and corrected, and signals those passages where comparison with the published photographs might cause confusion.
In the foreword Dotan expresses the hope that one day he will be able to publish a full scientific apparatus, which would give the history of the text wherever problems occur for the Leningrad Codex, as well as the manuscript’s complete masorah. In the meantime serious students may look forward to the publication, hopefully within five years, of Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ), the fifth edition in the scholarly Biblia Hebraica series. BHQ will be based totally on the Leningrad Codex without adjustments based on Jewish practice and will provide a complete masorah and complete scholarly apparatus. BHQ will indicate textual corrections in footnotes rather than make them in the text and will also be accompanied by textual commentaries for each book of the Bible.
Dotan deserves our congratulations for the painstaking work he has done in adapting the oldest complete Hebrew Bible manuscript for Jewish liturgical use. The 39 volumes of the official publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls are almost complete, and serious critical work on the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex has begun. Much remains to be done, however, in careful study of these recent gifts from the past, and Dotan’s new volume is a rich contribution to that effort.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the recovery of the two oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible—the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex—all occurred in the past 75 years; together they have revolutionized textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible in ways hardly imagined just decades ago.
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The three sections of the Hebrew Bible are Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), Nevi’im (Prophets; Joshua through the Twelve Minor Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings; Psalms through Chronicles). The three sections together are known by the acronym Tanakh.
