Aleppo Codex

Overview

The Aleppo Codex is not a term that appears in the biblical text; it is the name of a Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament. A manuscript is a book copied by hand. In Hebrew it is called Keter Aram Tzova, meaning "the Crown of Aleppo." The name comes from the fact that the manuscript was kept for several centuries in a synagogue in the Syrian city of Aleppo. It is a codex, a book made of bound leaves, and is considered the oldest and most accurate of the manuscripts that transmit the Masoretic Text.

Production and Transmission

The manuscript is believed to have been produced in the first half of the tenth century in Tiberias, a city on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. The prevailing view is that the consonantal text was written by the scribe Solomon ben Buya'a, while the vowel points and textual notes (the Masorah) were added by the Masorete Aaron ben Asher. The Masoretes were Jewish scholars who meticulously recorded and transmitted the reading and pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible.

According to tradition, the manuscript was later taken to Jerusalem and then to Cairo, Egypt, before arriving in Aleppo around the fourteenth century. It is widely held that this is the manuscript the twelfth-century Jewish scholar Maimonides used as his standard when he codified the rules for copying the Torah.

During the anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo in 1947, the synagogue was set on fire and the manuscript was severely damaged. By the time it was brought to Israel in the late 1950s, about 40 percent of its original contents had been lost. Most of the Pentateuch is missing, and the surviving text begins in the latter part of Deuteronomy. A few individual leaves have since surfaced separately.

Significance for Biblical Textual Studies

Most modern critical editions of the Hebrew Old Testament are based on the Leningrad Codex of about 1008, because it is the oldest manuscript that preserves the entire Old Testament intact. Nevertheless, many scholars regard the Aleppo Codex as more precise. For this reason, some editions, such as the Bible project of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, use the Aleppo Codex as their base text. Together with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint, it is a key resource for studying how the text of the Old Testament was transmitted.

Points of Discussion

• Attribution to Ben Asher: The mainstream view, based on the dedicatory inscription attached to the manuscript, attributes the work to Ben Asher. However, opinions differ about the nature of that inscription.
• Missing leaves: It remains unclear whether all the portions lost after 1947 were destroyed by fire or whether some were removed and circulated separately.
• Order of books: Because the codex follows the traditional Jewish arrangement, its order of books differs from that of Protestant Bibles. For example, the Writings begin with 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles. The content of the text, however, is the same as that of the Old Testament that Protestants accept as canon.

In the Korean Church

The Aleppo Codex is rarely mentioned directly in the Korean church. It is discussed mainly in seminary courses on Old Testament introduction and textual criticism and in presentations on the history of the Bible's transmission. The Old Testament of Korean Bible translations such as the New Korean Revised Version is translated from the Masoretic Text, and the Aleppo Codex is presented as a leading example of how accurately that text has been transmitted.