Aleppo Codex, Ben Zvi Institute, Jerusalem

The glory of the Masoretic tradition, the Aleppo Codex dates to the late tenth century C.E. Shown below is the consonantal Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 31:28–32:14, along with the Masoretic vowel marks, accents, spacings and masorah notes (as discussed in the sidebar to this article).

Generally regarded as the most accurate of all Masoretic manuscripts, the Aleppo Codex also had the distinction of being the oldest complete edition of the Hebrew Bible until this century. Unfortunately, the codex was seriously damaged in 1947 during a fire set by rioters in Aleppo, Syria, where the manuscript was housed. The substantial portion of the manuscript that survived, however, was eventually smuggled from Aleppo to Jerusalem. There, it is currently being used by scholars of the Hebrew University Bible Project as the base text for their forthcoming critical edition of the Hebrew Bible.