Writings: JudaismThe Aleppo Codex3 of 10

Writings: Judaism

The Aleppo Codex

The Aleppo Codex is a Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, on vellum, written in Tiberias in the first half of the 10th century CE, with vowels, accents, and notes on the text. Kept for centuries in Aleppo, Syria, it is now in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, with a third to two fifths of it missing, including most of the Torah.

Last reviewed:

Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    about 1300 BCE, for the giving of the Torah at Sinai (the Orthodox Union, an Orthodox body, says it was given "some thirty three hundred years ago" on a page dated 21 June 2006; the year is computed here from that phrase and the page's date stamp, because the page states no year of its own; the Orthodox Union is the only voice consulted that dates the giving, and the date applies to the giving only; it also says the Men of the Great Assembly determined the Tanakh's composition, an event no statement consulted dates; its glossary entry on the Tanakh, its overview of Maimonides's thirteen principles, the Conservative statement Emet Ve-Emunah (1988), and the Reform statements of 1976 and 1999, as consulted, give no year)

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    about the 10th century BCE to the 3rd century BCE, for the Torah's sources (Christine Hayes of Yale, in a lecture: the documentary hypothesis, which she calls a major hypothesis that is not without criticism, assigns its sources relative dates, not absolute dates, and dates the earliest Torah source, J, to about the 10th century BCE; other scholars date all of it after the fifth century BCE, in the fourth or third; she says the last book of the Tanakh was written in the 160s BCE and all the books were probably organized in some way by the end of the 1st century CE; this bar marks the writing of the Torah's sources, as the tradition's bar marks the giving of the Torah)

  3. This copy made

    about 930 CE (the Ben-Zvi Institute gives around 929; Neriah Klein of the Hebrew University Bible Project gives the first half of the 10th century)

  4. This copy found

    1947 to 1958, from the hiding of the codex in Aleppo to its delivery to the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem (hidden after the 1947 riots in Aleppo, smuggled out of Syria in 1957, and delivered to the Ben-Zvi Institute on 24 January 1958)

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

The Aleppo Codex is a Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, on vellum leaves bound as a codex, a book of pages rather than a scroll.1 It has vowel signs, accents (cantillation marks that guide chanting), and the Masorah. The Masorah is the notes in which the Masoretes, Jewish scholars of Tiberias, recorded how the text is spelled and read.123

It now holds 294 of its original 487 leaves, according to the Magnes Press's undated description.1 Most of the Torah, the five books of Moses, is lost.3 The Ben-Zvi Institute, which coordinates the committee that owns it, puts the loss at a third of the pages. Paul Sanders, reviewing a book about it, puts it at around 40 percent.24

How the copy was dated

The sources used here report no laboratory test of the codex. The Ben-Zvi Institute writes that the scribe Shlomo ben Boya'a copied it in Tiberias around 929, and that Aharon Ben Asher, a leading Masorete, added the vowels, accents, and notes. It takes this from a dedicatory colophon, a note about a book's making or gift, written about a hundred years later.2

The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry on Ben Asher deduces his date from a list in the codex and adds that its scribe wrote another Hebrew Bible dated 930. It says that, although the note was written after his death, it now appears likely that Ben Asher added the vowels and Masorah.5 Yosef Ofer holds that the masoretic pages at the codex's head were probably added later by another Masorete.6 The Center for Online Judaic Studies gives about 930. Neriah Klein of the Hebrew University Bible Project gives the first half of the 10th century.78 See how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The strip above marks the Torah, the five books of Moses, not this copy or the rest of the Tanakh. The tradition's bar marks the giving of the Torah at Sinai, in a year computed here from the Orthodox Union's statement, on a page dated 2006, that it was given some 3,300 years ago. The Conservative and Reform statements consulted give no year. The scholars' bar spans the dates Christine Hayes reports for the Torah's sources.

The tradition's view, with Shapiro's report of practice

This column draws on statements of Jewish movements, which name no codex, and on reports of what tradition holds about this one. The Orthodox Union, an Orthodox body, says the Torah was given at Sinai some 3,300 years ago. It says the Men of the Great Assembly determined the composition of the Tanakh under the influence of the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh).910

According to tradition, as the Center for Online Judaic Studies puts it, Maimonides (died 1204) relied on this codex in ruling on Torah scrolls.74 Marc Shapiro writes that the religious community, which reads the Torah publicly a number of times each week, uses scrolls that differ from the codex in places, in letters, line breaks, and spacing, and still uses them uncorrected.3 The Conservative movement's 1988 statement describes several views of revelation. Reform's 1999 statement calls Torah God's ongoing revelation.1112

Scholars of the Tanakh's text: Hayes, Tov, Shapiro, Cassuto, Goshen-Gottstein, Dotan, and Penkower

Christine Hayes of Yale says in a lecture that the documentary hypothesis, which she calls a major hypothesis that is not without criticism, dates the earliest Torah source, J, to about the tenth century BCE. She adds that other scholars date all of it after the fifth century BCE.13

Emanuel Tov holds that the archetype of the proto-Masoretic text, the consonantal text later given vowels and notes, was not formed at one time. He proposes that its three sections were fixed in stages.14 The Encyclopaedia Judaica says it is generally agreed that the codex Maimonides used is the one later in Aleppo. It reports that Cassuto doubted this, that Goshen-Gottstein sought to refute the doubts, and that Dotan later supported Cassuto.5 Shapiro holds that Goshen-Gottstein proved it conclusively, and that Jordan Penkower's finding of notes in a Bible printed in Spain in 1490 supported him.3

How it was found

This is not a find. The Ben-Zvi Institute writes that the Karaite community of Jerusalem held it, and that the Jerusalem Jews then living in Egypt ransomed it after the Crusader conquest of 1099.2 The Karaite Korner website says Karaites hold Karaism to be the original form of Judaism.15 The Institute says Maimonides frequently used the codex, which the Magnes Press's description places in Cairo. The Institute says it reached Aleppo, apparently in 1375, though Shapiro places this in the 15th century.213

After riots in Aleppo following the United Nations vote of 29 November 1947, the community's elders hid the codex for about ten years. It was smuggled out through Turkey in 1957 and reached the Ben-Zvi Institute on 24 January 1958.1

On how it left the community's hands, the Ben-Zvi Institute writes that the Aleppo community brought it to Israel's president, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, in 1958. It writes that a court decision then placed its ownership with a committee of the Institute, the Aleppo community, and the Chief Sephardic Rabbi. The sources used here do not say if this is the 1962 ruling below.2

Sanders reports that the Israeli government and the Institute gave the account that the Aleppo rabbis intended the courier, Murad Faham, to hand the codex to the president. Shapiro reports Faham's account: the chief rabbi of Aleppo said he could give it to whomever he chose, and he offered it to Ben-Zvi.43

Sanders reports that the journalist Matti Friedman describes a four-year trial that, in his account, was kept quiet. The Aleppo community had sued, Shapiro writes. Its rabbis stated that they had told Faham to take the codex to a rabbi in Israel, which Faham denied. In 1962, Sanders says, the court kept the codex at the Institute and declared the rabbis' account trustworthy. Friedman calls the government's conduct theft. Sanders adds that Friedman understands why the government saw the codex as the heritage of all Jews. The sources used here carry no reply from the Institute or the government.43

Ben-Zvi's 1958 article ascribed the loss of leaves to the 1947 riots, while Friedman suggests most were taken around the smuggling, though Sanders finds one of his witnesses' statements problematic.4 The Institute says the leaves' whereabouts are unknown.2

What it shows, and what it does not

The evidence shows that a Tanakh with vowels, accents, and Masorah was copied in Tiberias in the early 10th century. Klein, whose project uses the codex as its base text, reports that in the Torah it differs from the Masorah in only three places, against about 120 in the Leningrad Codex. He does not say how this is checked for the lost leaves.8

It does not show the text before the Middle Ages: the Dead Sea Scrolls, which lack vowels, are about a thousand years older.16 It does not show what its lost leaves said, though Shapiro reports one witness to part of it, notes in a Bible printed in 1490.3 In the preface to the third Biblia Hebraica, Paul Kahle wrote that he and Rudolf Kittel had hoped to use it, but that its owners would not allow a photographic copy. The third and later editions are based on the Leningrad Codex.17

See also

Sources

  1. The Hebrew University Magnes Press. The Aleppo Codex (facsimile edition; publisher's description and preview). The Hebrew University Magnes Press, Jerusalem, page 2 of the preview (English) and page 6 (Hebrew). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  2. Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi (Ben-Zvi Institute), nominator; contact person Moti Ben-Ari. Nomination form, International Memory of the World Register: Aleppo Codex. UNESCO Memory of the World Programme (form filed by Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; signature block dated 28/11/13), 2013, sections 2.2, 3.1 to 3.4 (pp. 1 to 3), 4.1 to 4.3 (pp. 7 to 8), 5.6, 6.2, and 8.0 (pp. 10 to 11). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  3. Marc B. Shapiro (Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies, University of Scranton). That in Aleppo Once (review of Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider, Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex, Jewish Publication Society, 2010). Jewish Review of Books, Spring 2011, 2011, the whole review. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  4. Paul Sanders (Protestant Theological University, Amsterdam). Review of Matti Friedman, The Aleppo Codex: In Pursuit of One of the World's Most Coveted, Sacred, and Mysterious Books (Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2012). Review of Biblical Literature, Society of Biblical Literature (RBL 04/2015); author's posted PDF, 2015, pp. 1 to 5 of the PDF. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  5. Zeev Ben-Hayyim. Ben-Asher, Aaron ben Moses. Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed., Gale), via Encyclopedia.com, the whole entry. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  6. Yosef Ofer. A Masoretic Note in the Aleppo Codex Concerning the Composite Words. Textus 21, no. 1 (2002), pp. 209 to 233, 2002, the abstract only. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  7. Center for Online Judaic Studies (COJS), text drawn from Adolfo Roitman, The Bible in the Shrine of the Book (Israel Museum, 2006), pp. 62 to 64, and the Israel Museum exhibition 'Blue and White Pages'. Aleppo Codex, c. 930. Center for Online Judaic Studies, the whole page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  8. Neriah Klein (Head of the Text and Masora sections of the Hebrew University Bible Project), interviewed by the Genizah Research Unit. Q&A Wednesday: The Best Crown in Town? Finding the Aleppo Codex in Fustat, with Neriah Klein. Genizah Fragments blog, Cambridge University Library Genizah Research Unit, 27 April 2022, 2022, the whole interview. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  9. OU Staff. Torah. Orthodox Union, 2006. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  10. Orthodox Union. Tanakh (Judaism 101 glossary). Orthodox Union, glossary entry. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  11. Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism. Emet Ve-Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, The Rabbinical Assembly, and The United Synagogue of America, 1988, printed pages 18 to 26. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  12. Central Conference of American Rabbis. A Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism. Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1999, Torah. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  13. Christine Hayes. Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) (RLST 145), Lecture 5: Critical Approaches to the Bible: Introduction to Genesis 12-50. Open Yale Courses, Yale University, transcript, first chapter (Wellhausen's Documentary Hypothesis). Accessed 2026-10-29.
  14. Emanuel Tov. The Formation of the (Proto-)Masoretic Text. Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 9, no. 3 (2020), pp. 306 to 319 (abstract in the Orion bibliography, Hebrew University of Jerusalem), 2020, the abstract only. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  15. Karaite Korner. What is Karaite Judaism. Karaite Korner (a Karaite Jewish website), home page summary. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  16. Biblical Archaeology Society (summary of Yosef Ofer, 'The Mystery of the Missing Pages of the Aleppo Codex', Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2015). The Aleppo Codex: The mystery of the missing pages in the oldest Hebrew Bible. Bible History Daily, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2015, the summary page. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  17. Biblical Archaeology Review (sidebar 'Leningrad vs. Aleppo'; the author is not printed on the saved page). Leningrad vs. Aleppo. Biblical Archaeology Society Library, 2008, the whole sidebar. Accessed 2026-11-06.