Excerpts from The Jerusalem Post Magazine, 2001.01.19, p. 18-19
"… The story starts 1,100 years ago, but we will begin in 1958. That was the year a Jew risked his life to smuggle an ancient Hebrew manuscript out of Aleppo, Syria, into Turkey. He made his way to Israel where he delivered it to Yitzkhaq Ben-Tzvi, the president of the young state. Ben-Tzvi noticed that whole sections of the ancient book were missing and ordered the Mossad to retrieve them. The Mossad was unsuccessful, but where they failed, Bible scholars succeeded.
"That ancient manuscript was the Bible. Not just any handwritten copy of the Bible, but – according to many – the most accurate version of the Hebrew scriptures in existence.
"’The Aleppo Codex is one of the most important documents in Jewish history,’ says Prof. Menakhem Cohen, head of the Aleppo Codex resotration project at [Orthodox religious] Bar-Ilan University…
"While there are no significant differences between the 24 canonized books of the Hebrew Bible and those of the Aleppo manuscript (the narration and the commandments are the same), there are differences of thousands of silent letters, musical cantillations, vowels and page layout.
"Enough to ruffle the hairs under more than a few kippot in the Orthodox community which traditionally believes that every letter, jot and tittle of the Torah we read today is identical to those that were transmitted to Moses at Mount Sinai.
"But where does the Aleppo Codex draw its authority? The codex (Latin for book), written in 910 in Tiberias, was produced under the direct supervision of the famous scholar Aaron ben Moses Ben-Asher. Ben-Asher came from a long line of scholarly scribes world-renowned for their diligence in counting and cross-checking every letter of the scriptures to ensure accuracy.
"Until the codex, Bible books were written separately; this manuscript contained all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible. The Ben-Asher text was used by scribes who wanted to write a copy of a Torah scroll…
"This Ben-Asher book eventually made its way to Cairo, where the great theologian Maimonides copied from it when he wrote his own Torah scroll… And, in Maimonides’ magnum opus of Jewish legal writings, he attests that this book is the most authentically accurate manuscript of the Bible.
"It is believed that sometime in the 13th century, the great-great-grandson of Maimonides brought the book to Aleppo, where it remained in the main synagogue under lock and key.
"In December 1947, after the United Nations voted for partition and to create Israel, the Arabs of Aleppo rioted, destroying the synagogue where the codex was kept. Two thirds of the book survived… and it remained hidden in the Jewish community until 1958. Mordechai Facham then smuggled it into Israel, where it can be seen on exhibit in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
"The codex reached Israel sans the first four and a half books of the Pentateuch, as well as a few books of Writings, the third section of the Bible. The surviving pages were not singed, making it unlikely that the missing pages were burned. It remains a mystery whether the missing sections were destroyed in the rioting or subsequently stolen. And it was stolen, by whom? Arabs or Jews?
"Indeed, in 1981, an Aleppo-born Jew living in Brooklyn died; among her possessions was a page from the Aleppo Codex.
"In 1994, with the codex in hand and books of the Prophets intact, Yitzkhaqi, with the help of a scribe, printed a new addition of the Prophets…
"The irony is that Maimonides himself gave currency to the codex. It is, in fact, the Bible of today that differs from Maimonides’ edition a millenium ago.
"Although there exist various biblical codices containing textual variations, Orthodox Jews are typically exposed to only one unified text. The reason is simple: with the invention of movable type in the 15th century, printed Bibles became uniform.
"In Venice, circa 1524 [!!!; ybd], a Tunisian scholar named Yaaqov Ben-Khaiim used the printing press to produce an edition of all 24 books of the canonized Bible, the first of its kind. With its inclusion of famous Bible commentators such as Rashi and Ibn Ezra, the Mikraot Gedolot Edition, as it became to be known, was accepted as the definitive and authoritative Torah text. After another printing in Warsaw, it became the standard for Orthodox communities.
"There is just one problem: the Mikraot Gedolot is highly inaccurate. Of that edition, the Five Books of Moses, the Prophets and the Writings together contain several thousands of errors. Not just of musical cantillations and vowels, but letters as well.
"Yaaqov Ben-Khaiim carried out his manuscript comparisons on texts that were within his geographical reach, but they were not accurate themselves…
"The textual inaccuracies are the impetus for the Bar-Ilan project…" [Comparisons should also be made between the correspondence of the Teimâni vis-à-vis Ashkenazi text, vowels and cantillations to the Aleppo Codex; ybd] "To date, the project has published seven out of the 24 books.
"In the 10th century, when the codex was written, Bible chapter divisions were not yet created; to refer to another verse one had to quote the verse itself. Inside the margins of the books of prophets of the codex, for example, are masoretic notes that quote whole erses from the Five Books of Moses. The researchers compiled and organized these quotes, much like a jigsaw puzzle, to reconstruct the text…
"Typically, [computer] search engines are built to look for letters. But since Hebrew vowels are dots and dashes under the consonants, Bar-Ilan’s software was designed to find letters, dots, and dashes, as well as musical cantillation both above and below letters. ‘Our computer program tracks and studies patterns of syntax and vowel usage in the existing codex to recreate these patterns for the missing sections,’ says Cohen.
"Bar-Ilan’s Prof. Jordan Penkower took a different route. While ‘innocently browsing’ through early printed editions of the Bible in the rare-books room of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, he came across in incunabulum – a book printed before 1501. Written on the inside cover was a note saying that the book was corrected according to the Aleppo Codex. ‘I almost fell off my chair,’ says Penkower. ‘I spent the next half a year researching that claim and verifying that indeed it was corrected according to the Aleppo Codex and not some other manuscript…’
"A handful of academic scholars who are also Orthodox Jews have made attemts to educate the Orthodox masses concerning textual inaccuracies, but they have met with resistance…
"’You can put on blinders and cower from codices or you can look at it straight-on and decide how you’re going to deal with it,’ says Penkower, who is Orthodox. ‘I don’t think Judaism ever intended for people to avoid the truth in order to preserve their conception of Judaism and Jewish history…’" [Âmein!!!; ybd]
"Halâkhâh unequivocally states that if the layout of the Tôrâh text is incorrect, or a single letter is missing, the entire scroll is not kosher and may not be read from in a synagogue. If the reconstruction of the Aleppo Codex means that the most accurate text of the Tôrâh is now available, then Tôrâh scrolls need to be rewritten. (A new scroll costs about $35,000.)
"And what does acknowledgment of textual variations do to the ‘Codes Theory,’ which claims that divinely created codes exist in the Tôrâh? …"
First, see the Qabâlâh eZine in our Convention Center. Moreover, despite ‘codes’ advocates claims to the contrary, either the addition or subtraction of even a single letter within a sequence would destroy any given ‘code.’
Recall also: [1] Ramb"m noted that the Mâshiakh is to restore the breaches of Tôrâh and [2] the teaching of Ribi Yehôshua (The Netzarim Reconstruction of Hebrew Matityahu (NHM) 5.17) "Should the heavens and hâ-ârêtz exchange places, still not even one é
[yôd] nor one qêrên [an ancient cantillation mark resembling a yôd] of the Oral Law of Môshêh shall so much as exchange places; until it shall become that it is all being fully ratified and performed non-selectively…"