Leningrad Codex text sample, portions of Exodus 15:21-16:3
A Hebrew Bible manuscript is a handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) made on papyrus, parchment, or paper, and written in the Hebrew language (some of the biblical text and notations may be in Aramaic). The oldest manuscripts were written in a form of scroll, the medieval manuscripts usually were written in a form of codex. The late manuscripts written after the 9th century use the Masoretic Text. The important manuscripts are associated with Aaron ben Asher (especially Leningrad Codex).[1]
The earliest sources (whether oral or written) of the Hebrew Bible disappeared over time because of the fragility of media, wars (especially the destruction of the First and Second Temple) and other intentional destructions.[2] As a result, the lapse of time between the original manuscripts and their surviving copies is much longer than in the case of the New Testament manuscripts.
The first list of the Old Testament manuscripts in Hebrew, made by Benjamin Kennicott (1718–1783) and published by Oxford in two volumes in 1776 and 1780, listed 615 manuscripts from libraries in England and on the continent.[3] Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822–1894) published a list of 731 manuscripts.[4] The main manuscript discoveries in modern times are those of the Cairo Geniza (c. 1890) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947). 260,000 Hebrew manuscripts were discovered in an old synagogue in Cairo, 10,000 of which are biblical manuscripts.[5][6] There are more than 200 biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of them were written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. They were written before 70 CE. 14 scroll manuscripts were discovered in Masada in 1963–1965.[7]
The largest organized collection of Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts in the world is housed in the Russian National Library ("Second Firkovitch Collection") in Saint Petersburg.[4]
Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. Manuscripts earlier than the 13th century are very rare. The majority of the manuscripts have survived in a fragmentary condition.
The oldest complete Torah scroll still in use has been carbon-dated to around 1250 and is owned by the Jewish community of the northern Italian town of Biella.[8]
^H. Kelley, Daniel Stephen Mynatt, Timothy G. Crawford, The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: introduction and annotated glossary, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998, p. 18
^Randall Price, Searching for the Original Bible, Harvest House Publishers, 2007, p. 45-50
^Thomas Hartwell Horne, An introduction to the critical study and knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (1836), vol. 2, p. 7. Page 6 states: "To Dr. Kennicott's Hebrew Bible, M. De Rossi published an important supplement at Parma (1784–1787), in four volumes..."
^ abOld Testament manuscripts
^Fragmentos do Gueniza do Cairo[permanent dead link]
^David Sinclair, An Overview of the Bible Archived 2013-12-28 at the Wayback Machine (2006)
^Würthwein Ernst (1988). Der Text des Alten Testaments, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, pp. 38–39; translated into English and published in 1995 as Wurthwein, The Text of the Old Testament (2nd rev. ed, 1995, Grand Rapids, Mich., Wm.B. Eerdmans Publg. Co.)(this is the source for most of the dates of the mss listed).
^Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Oldest Torah scroll still in use found in Italy, 3 March 2016, accessed 2 August 2019
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