Leningrad Codex

The Leningrad Codex is the oldest known Hebrew manuscript that includes the whole of the Old Testament (second only to the Aleppo Codex, parts of which are missing); it dates from 1008 CE.

Leningrad Codex (cover page E, folio 474a).

Quotes

• Samuel b. Jacob, who copied the Leningrad Codex, declares expressly that he had copied the Codex from several correct and clear codices which had been prepared by the master Aaron b. Moses b. Asher.
  • Paul Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (2nd edition, 1959) 110-111

• There is no need to defend the use of the Leningrad Codex B19^A (L) as the basis for an edition of the Hebrew Bible, whatever one may think of its relationship to the Ben Asher text. P. Kahle's own views on the matter may be consulted in his book The Cairo Geniza (Oxford, 1959, 2nd edition). In any event, L is still "the oldest dated manuscript of the complete Hebrew Bible."
  • Karl Elliger and Wilhelm Rudolph, Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, "Foreword to the First Edition", p. xii. Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft (1977). ISBN 3-438-05218-0.

• Samuel ben Jacob wrote and pointed and provided with Masora this codex of the Holy Scriptures from the corrected and annotated books prepared by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher the teacher, may his rest be in the Garden of Eden!
  • Introduction, quoted in E. Wurthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, 2nd ed 1995, p. 180

• A certain Samuel b. Jacob copied this Standard Codex of Ben-Asher for Meborach Ibn Osdad. This very important copy is now in the Imperial Public Library at St. Petersburg.
  • C. D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible, 1897, p.243

• It comprises the single most complete source of all of the Bible books which is closest to the Ben Asher tradition.
  • Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001], p. 47

See also

• Aleppo Codex
• Masoretic Text
• Tanakh