Hebrew Voices #174 – How We Got Our Hebrew Bible

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #174, How We Got Our Hebrew Bible, Nehemia brings on the world’s foremost expert in the Masoretic Text, Professor Yosef Ofer of Bar-Ilan University. They discuss how ancient Jewish scribes determined precisely which letters to copy, the primacy of the Aleppo Codex, and Maimonides’s preoccupation with dividing the biblical text into paragraphs.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:https://audio.nehemiaswall.com/Hebrew-Voices/Hebrew-Voices-174-How-We-Got-Our-Hebrew-Bible-NehemiasWall.mp3Download Audio

Transcript

Hebrew Voices #174 – How We Got Our Hebrew Bible

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Yosef: The Masoretes did not create the version of the Bible. They had traditions, and their goal was to determine which of the traditions should be accepted and which of them should be denied.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Professor Yosef Ofer of Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He was my PhD supervisor, and so he is my teacher. He’s also the Vice President of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. Shalom, Professor Ofer.

Yosef: Shalom, shalom, Nehemia.

Nehemia: It’s wonderful to be here with you today. I’m really excited! You’ve got a really important book that recently came out, and let’s just show the people here. It’s called Ha’Masora l’Mikra u’Dracheha. But don’t freak out, because he has an English translation as well, which is The Masora on Scripture and its Methods. And if you’re studying the Masora, which we’ll explain what Masora is, he’ll explain, this right now is the definitive work. This is it! This is a key text you need to be studying.

Professor Ofer, let’s start with a really basic question. You wrote a book on the Masora; what is the Masora?

Yosef: So, the Masora was created in the 9th or 10th century, and its goal is to preserve the version of the Hebrew Bible. Now, centuries ago, there were many differences in the versions of the Bible. If we go back to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we can see that even two scrolls that were found in the same cave in Qumran differ from each other in many, many details of the Bible.

Now, the Masoretes believe that the Bible should only be one version. If there is some dispute, they have to decide what’s the right version and they did it using some of the accurate books of the Masora. Then they had to determine one version of each word in the Hebrew Bible, and then they had to guard these versions to prevent any errors that may occur. So, they used different methods to create these procedures of keeping, even the spelling of each word, if it’s written defective or plene. So, they wrote many, many notes, comments, in their books, to keep the accurate version of each word.

Nehemia: I want to back up a little bit. You said there are differences between two scrolls in a single cave in Qumran. And I want the audience to understand; what is the level of these differences? Is it that one version of, let's say, Exodus, says that it was written by Moshe, and the other says it was written by Shimshon? What are the types of differences we’re talking about?

Yosef: That's right. So, we refer to that as the starting point of the Masora. And then if we go back to Qumran, there are two scrolls of the Book of Isaiah. Both of them give the same text, but there are many differences in spelling, and even differences in adding some other letters, and sometimes one or two words are added. Basically, it’s the same text, but there are many differences. Every line that you go through, you find some differences. If you go to the Septuagint, that is another evidence of old Hebrew versions of the Bible, and you reconstruct the Hebrew origin.

Nehemia: Wait; tell them what the Septuagint is. Let’s assume they don’t know.

Yosef: Okay. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. It was very ancient and was created in about the 2nd or 3rd century BCE. And then, if you go back and try to understand what was the Hebrew background of the Hebrew text that was translated into Greek, you can find that there are many differences, even more serious differences of adding some verses and sentences also.

And now, when the Masoretes created what we call the Masoretic version, they took every dispute and they decided. It’s like halakha…

Nehemia: A religious decision, a legal decision.

Yosef: Yes. There are many disputes in the Mishnah. And then came the later generation and they decided what the halakha is, which of these two versions, two opinions, is to be followed, is to be the halakha. And the same methodology was created also in the version of the Bible. And very quickly they succeeded to create a Hebrew version of the Bible which has no disputes about verses, about sentences, about verse, where the only differences are in adding letters that are not read. For example, a word like shomer could be written with three letters Shin-Mem-Reish, or with four letters, with an additional Vav, Shin-Vav-Mem-Reish. Now, there is no difference in the meaning of these two forms, but they tried to determine exactly, according to tradition, which word in the Bible the word should be written with three letters and in which other verses it should be written with an additional Vav. And then they wrote out lists that determined these decisions. They wanted the Sifrei Torah, the Torah scrolls, to be uniform. And also, the reading of the Torah and the whole Bible to be uniform, so if we can read a word with a kamatz or patach, they should determine what’s the right reading of this word.

Nehemia: So, if there was a dispute about the vowel… were the vowels written down in the period that you’re talking about? Or are they still…

Yosef: It began in the period that the vocalization signs were not created. And then the Masoretes created the written signs for the vowels and for the cantillation - the melody of the reading of the Bible - and they were not allowed to write them down on the Torah scrolls because the Torah scrolls were holy, and no changes could be made there. So, they created another type of book which is called mizchafim, or codices. And in these codices, they wrote the whole Bible with vowel signs and with cantillation signs so the oral tradition of reading the Bible would be kept and also be uniform.

Nehemia: So, it’s not that the Masoretes invented the vowels, the words were pronounced in a certain… I’m asking, did they already exist? Or did they say, “We don’t know if this word is shvu'ayim, or shiv'im, or shvu'im, so we’re going to invent a pronunciation?” Or they already had it, and they wrote it down?

Yosef: The Bible was transmitted for many generations in two ways; in written form and the oral form. And these two ways go together because everyone that goes to read the Bible used the written scroll and then he had an oral tradition on how to read it. We know about many reading traditions. Also, today we have some traditions in Yemenite readings, or Sephardic, or Ashkenazic reading. And so, in these ancient periods we have a Tiberian way of reading the Bible, and a Babylonian way of reading the Bible, but each scroll made its special signs. So, we have Tiberian niqqud, we also have Babylonian niqqud in other books, and over the generations the Tiberian tradition became the only one that was used all around the Jewish world.

Nehemia: Well, I mean in Yemen they continue to use Babylonian in some form, right?

Yosef: Yeah, sometimes.

Nehemia: And we’ll get to Babylonian, because you’re actually one of the world's top experts in the Babylonian Masora.

Yosef: Doctor, I’ll tell you this about the Babylonian Masora…

Nehemia: So, hopefully we’ll get to that. But I want to go back… you talked about the two Isaiah scrolls, 1Q Isaiah a, and 1Q Isaiah b, and they have differences, and I asked, “Is it the difference of whether it was Moshe or Shimshon?” And I just want to be clear, we weren’t talking about that kind of difference, right?

Yosef: No.

Nehemia: We’re talking about whether there’s a Vav in the word shomer or not.

Yosef: In my book I checked some lines of these two scrolls and compared them and found about 15 or 20 differences in five or six lines. They’re all small differences, tiny differences of adding some letters. Maybe one word that doesn’t exist there and exists in the Masoretic version, or something like that.

Nehemia: When you say the Masoretes went through this process where they made the Biblical text uniform down to the exact letters, I want to understand; was that an arbitrary thing where they said, “Ah! We want this to have a Vav”? What was it based on? How did they decide that? Or do we not know?

Yosef: We have an ancient Baraita that speaks about three books that were kept in the Temple…

Nehemia: And a Baraita is a source from the Tannaitic Period, which is up until the year 200, approximately.

Yosef: And this Bararita says that these three accurate and holy books of the Bible differ from each other in three words. And so, in each case they took the majority, the two scrolls against the one. So, if in two scrolls it was written “na’arei”, “the boys of Israel”, and in one was written “za’atutei”, they preferred the version that appeared in the two scrolls. I think that this Baraita is typical; it doesn't only speak about one historical case, but it’s the way that was used during all generations. The Masoretes did not create the version of the Bible. They had traditions, and their goal was to determine which of the traditions should be accepted and which of them should be denied.

Nehemia: And let’s look at that example. It’s Exodus 24 verse 5, and it says, “Va’yishlach et na’arei b'nei Israel,” “And Moses sent the young boys of the children of Israel,” “Va’ya’alu olot,” “they brought sacrifices.” And in one manuscript in the Temple, instead of “na’arei”, “the young boys of the children of Israel”, it said, “za’atutei”, which also means, “children of Israel”, but it’s a completely different word.

Yosef: Yeah, it’s just a very different word. It looks strange that such differences occur, but there were such differences. And if we go again to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we can find differences in the same Biblical text. Something like that.

Nehemia: Here’s an example that Professor Kutscher of Hebrew University brought decades ago. In Isaiah 13:10, it says, “Ki choch’vei ha’shamayim u’chesileihem,” “The stars of the heaven and their constellations,” or something, “lo ya’helu oram.”

Yosef: Yes.

Nehemia: And it has this strange word, ya’helu. What is ya’helu? “They will shine,” I guess, from the context, and it's related to the word hilel, “the bright one”, maybe. And then in 1Q Isaiah a, it has, “lo ya’iru oram”, which is just the normal word for “to give light”.

Yosef: So, if we are going back to these scrolls, we have the two versions and we don’t know what was the original. It may be that the very simple word, “ya’iru”, is more understood and maybe it was the first. And maybe it was just the opposite.

We had a special word that some scribes did not understand what it meant, so they altered the word with a common word that meant the same thing. However, scholars may think that one alternative is the original, or the other one, but they have one solid fact: what was the decision of the Masoretes? We have the Biblical version which is presented in the Aleppo Codex, and which is also presented in general in all printed books from the last centuries. They all did not use the Qumran ancient scrolls. They did not use the Septuagint, the Greek translation. They used the tradition which came from the Masoretes, and in all the books it will be written “ya’helu oram”. It doesn’t mean that we are sure that that was the most original word that Isaiah used. As a scholar, you can correct the version of the Masora. You can accept it and write many articles about that, but one solid fact exists; that the decision of the Masora is “ya’helu”, in this example. That’s how all Bibles are printed, and that’s the starting point of reading the Book of Isaiah.

If someone wants to assume, to think, to correct, to suggest corrections about what should have been the original version, it may be very interesting, but it cannot be a fact that will change the printing of the Bible of today.

What we have today, the Masoretic version, represents the decisions of the Masoretes. And if we want to know what the Masoretic version is, we have to go to accurate manuscripts like the Aleppo Codex, like the Leningrad Codex, like other codices. In some places we will find some differences among them, and the question will not be, what is the original version that Isaiah spoke and wrote? The question will be: what was the decision of the Masoretes? And which of the codices of the Masoretes represent the decision of these Masoretes? In most cases, the differences will be only tiny things regarding ot kriah, of some letters, Vav and Yud, which do not change the meaning. And then we can use the Masora comments, which also appear in many places in these codices, and these comments help us to reconstruct what really were the decisions of the early Masoretes.

Nehemia: This is fascinating. So, I’m going to summarize, hopefully correctly, what you just said. In your research, you’re not working on what did Isaiah write or say, or someone wrote about him.

Yosef: Yes.

Nehemia: You’re working on what did the Masoretic text, or the Masoretes, determine was the official version of Isaiah.

Yosef: That’s right.

Nehemia: Okay, wow.

Yosef: And that was a decision of the Jewish nation, to get the work of the Masoretes. And then, if we are going to print… I want to speak about my late teacher, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, who created a new version of the Bible. What does that mean, a new version? He went back to the manuscripts of the Masoretes, he took the Aleppo Codex, he took the Leningrad Codex of the whole Bible, and other ancient codices, he compared them, and he tried to find out what was the version of the Masoretes.

It’s not far from the version that was printed before in Venice in the 16th century, or in other printed books, but there are differences in plene and defective spellings and some punctuation signs. So, I believe that his work better represents the decisions of the Masoretes because he used manuscripts, ancient manuscripts from the period of the Masoretes. And one of them, the Aleppo Codex, was created by the great Masorete, Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher, who was well known among the Masoretes. They all said they relied upon… also Maimonides relied upon his work, and if you examine his manuscript, the Aleppo Codex, you can find out that it is better, more accurate, than other manuscripts.

Nehemia: We had the opportunity together in January 2020, just before the pandemic; we went to the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum, and we examined the Aleppo Codex directly.

Yosef: At least the pages which survived…

Nehemia: Right. The pages that didn’t survive we didn’t examine. Or maybe they survived but we don’t know where they are. So, let me ask this question. When we examined the Aleppo Codex together, you say it’s the most accurate. This raises an interesting question; what are you comparing it with? And I know the answer but explain to the audience. In other words, a lot of people say, “The Aleppo Codex is the Masoretic text.” So, if there’s something in the Aleppo Codex that’s right or wrong, that's what the Masoretes determined the Masoretic text to be. And you’re saying it’s the closest to the Masoretic text. What does that mean?

Yosef: I’ll go back again to my teacher, Rabbi Breuer. He said, “I don’t use the Aleppo Codex because it has prestige or something like that. I want to examine, to see which of the ancient manuscripts is more accurate. And the method will be to examine the Masora comments and to see which of the manuscripts implement correctly the context of the Masora comments in the Biblical version of his own manuscript."

Nehemia: Explain what the Masoretic comments are, because I’m sure a lot of the audience don’t understand what that means.

Yosef: So, let’s go to the cases of defective and plene spellings.

Nehemia: Explain to us what defective and plene is. You mention the example of shomer, that it can be written with the Vav and without the Vav.

Yosef: Yes. So, the Masora can say… let’s take one example.

Nehemia: Perfect. He wrote a book about it. Let’s see what the book says. And on the website, NehemiasWall.com, we’ll put a link to where you can go and find this book on Amazon, or wherever it’s available. Hopefully it’s on Amazon or is it on De Gruyter?

Yosef: De Gruyter.

Nehemia: We’ll put a link to wherever it’s sold.

Yosef: Okay. So, let’s take the word, “vayir'u”, “and they feared”. The same word is written in some verses with two Yuds, “vayir'u”, Vav-Yud-Yud-Reish-Aleph-Vav, and in other verses in the Bible, the same word with the same meaning is written defective only with one Yud.

Nehemia: So, defective is when it’s written without one of these letters, like Yud, Vav or Hey, and plene is when it has more of them?

Yosef: Okay. So now the Masora comments try to describe the places in the Bible, the distribution of the two ways of writing. And it says, “In the Book of Samuel, the defective writing is the common, and there is only one exception,” and it gives the exception. “In all other books, the distribution is the opposite. Most cases are written plene and only four cases are written defective.” So, the Masora gives an exact description of all the times… there about 20 occurrences of the word in the whole Bible and according to the Masora, it gives us the full details about these 20 cases.

Now, you can go back to the codices and find out which of them follow the instructions of the Masora. And then you may find in many cases that the Leningrad Codex does not follow these instructions, it differs in one word or two from these comments. And sometimes the same comment is written somewhere in the Masora of the manuscript, but maybe it’s written in the Book of Samuel, and then you go to the Book of Daniel, or the Book of Chronicles and you find a word that was not written according to the rules of the Masora which are accepted by all manuscripts.

So, you can conclude that the version of the Aleppo Codex is nearly complete. It always follows the instructions of the Masora, much more than in the other manuscripts that were compared.

Nehemia: So, in other words they took detailed notes, and they recorded detailed notes of, “This word is spelled this many times this way and that way.” Even though it doesn’t change the meaning, they wanted the fixed, exact spelling. And then you go and compare the manuscripts and see which of them follow those instructions.

Yosef: Yes.

Nehemia: And you’re saying that the Aleppo Codex is the closest. So, it’s not that it was Aaron ben Asher and his prestige, it was that this is the one that fits the Masoretic notes the closest.

Yosef: That’s right, that was the finding of Rabbi Breuer. And I thought about it; I don’t think it means that Aaron ben Asher was cleverer than other Masoretes, but how did he succeed to create such a book that follows the Masora in all cases? Let’s take the example which we spoke about earlier. If a Masorete wanted to copy this Masora comment, he had to copy two or three lines. You can do it in two or three minutes. Now, if he wants to check the context of this Masora, to implement it all over the Bible, he should read the whole Bible. He didn’t have a Concordance. He didn’t have a computer. He had to find out where these were. “Vayir'u” appears all over the Bible, and you have to make sure that in each case of these 20 cases which are spread out all over the Bible, that each of them follows the instruction of the Masora. To do that you have to work days, or maybe more than days, to verify that one comment of the Masora is implemented perfectly all over the Bible.

We know about the Aleppo Codex, that it was the personal manuscript of Aaron ben Asher, and during all his lifetime he checked it again and again. We can see that the Masora comments were not written at one time, that he added from time-to-time other Masora comments, additional Masora comments, and then he also corrected the spelling in many cases. And that’s why his manuscript was so accurate, because he checked it again and again.

The Masorete of the Leningrad Codex, we know his name, Shmuel ben Yaakov. We know that he wrote many, many codices. He signed his name on many codices, so he was an expert in copying, in writing the Masora and creating new Masora comments. But he worked and wanted to complete one book and get his money for his work and go on to create another one. That’s what his work was, to copy books, to copy the Masora comments, to complete and then to create many, many codices of the Bible.

Aaron ben Asher had one personal book, a version on which he worked all his life, and I think that’s the explanation why it was found so accurate compared to others.

Nehemia: So, you’re saying this was his personal copy. What did he use it for? The Aleppo Codex was Aaron ben Asher’s personal copy, you're saying?

Yosef: Yes. I can also add that it was not so common to write a book of the whole Bible. It’s a very heavy book with about 600 or 500 leaves, so it’s a lot of work. Many other codices contained only the Torah or only the former Prophets, only parts of the Bible. The Aleppo Codex is a codex that contains the whole Bible, and it was written in very nice letters. The letters were not written by Aaron ben Asher. He took an expert scribe who knew how to write very nice letters, but that was the basis of his work, the work of a scribe, whose name was Shlomo ben Buya’a. And then Aaron ben Asher got his work, and not only added all the punctuation and cantillation signs, and the Masora notes, he also checked every spelling all over the Bible and corrected where it should be corrected according to the Masora.

Nehemia: When he had these notes, like you gave the example of vayir'u, which is written with two Yuds or with one Yud, if he found a place where it was written wrong, he would fix it.

Yosef: Of course, yes.

Nehemia: Okay.

Yosef: We can find such cases in the manuscripts where the spelling was written plene and someone corrected it, and we can assume it was Aaron ben Asher himself that corrected the plene. And then sometimes he added a Masora note which is connected with his change of spelling.

Nehemia: So, here’s the quote from Maimonides. I’m just going to read this. At the time of Maimonides, the Aleppo Codex was in Cairo, and he says, “The manuscript that we relied upon is the famous manuscript in Egypt that contains the 24 books, which was in Jerusalem a number of years ago, to proofread manuscripts based on it. Everyone used to rely on it because Ben Asher proofread it, checking the details in it for years, and he proofread it many times.” And he says, “as has been reported,” “kemo sheh'he'etiku”.

Yosef: We have to emphasize that Maimonides didn’t personally know Ben Asher.

Nehemia: No, it was 100 years later.

Yosef: He was about 100 years before, about 250 years before. But these traditions… he heard about the Aleppo Codex, and he knew that when it had been in Jerusalem it became a famous manuscript and a very prestigious manuscript which people relied upon. If someone wanted to be sure about the version of some word, he went to Jerusalem, he asked to see the manuscript, and then he got an answer to his question.

Maimonides heard about that and knew about that. He also said that Ben Asher corrected his version. Maybe he saw it in the manuscript himself, some correction, maybe a tradition, an oral tradition about this.

But Ben Asher worked in Tiberias. After his death, his codex moved to Jerusalem and was kept by the Nesi'ei haKaraim, the Karaite leaders of Jerusalem. And then anyone who wanted to see something went to them and got permission to check this famous manuscript. And then, when the Tzalbanim…

Nehemia: The Crusaders.

Yosef: When the Crusaders came, they took it with them. And then the people of Cairo redeemed the manuscript.

Nehemia: They ransomed it from the Crusaders.

Yosef: Yes. And that's how it came to Cairo. And now we have to go to Maimonides, for what purpose he himself used the Aleppo Codex. In his Halakhic treatise, Mishneh Torah, he wrote about how to write a Torah scroll, and he said that you have to follow the spaces of parashiyot petuchot u'stumot, open and closed sections, according to tradition, according to the tradition of writing. That you have to put every space, not to omit any space and not to change its form from stumah to p'tuchah, and vice versa.

So, Maimonides says that there is a problem with that because the Torah scrolls in his generation differ from each other by the spaces of the parashiyot. Maimonides said that he wanted to solve this problem and he wanted to follow one tradition which is very, very important. So, he relied on the Aleppo Codex. He made a list of all the spaces, all the parashiyot of the Aleppo Codex in the part of the Torah, in the Pentateuch, and then he wrote it in his halakhic book, Mishneh Torah.

Nehemia: So, what we’re talking about here is, when you get to the end of a thought in the Torah there is a space, and there are two types of spaces, open and closed ones. And what Maimonides was saying is that these have to be reproduced perfectly in a Torah scroll or the Torah scroll isn’t valid for reading in the synagogue. And everyone is doing it wrong, so he relied on the Aleppo Codex.

Yosef: And that's not so simple, because there were many traditions all over the Jewish world, and there were many disputes in his time. Also, when we look at the ancient manuscripts, like the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, the spaces are not identical. We can find different sorts of parashiyot when comparing these two manuscripts. Or if you go on and compare other manuscripts, you’ll find many, many differences.

So, Maimonides not only decided that the Aleppo Codex is a good tradition and should be followed, he had to convince all the Jews all over the world to leave their local traditions and take the tradition of the Aleppo Codex, and prefer it. And then write new Torah scrolls according to the Aleppo Codex. That's not so simple, because you cannot imagine that in one week they will decide, “Okay, Maimonides is right. Let’s take all our Torah scrolls and put them into the Genizah. But we have to read the Torah on the next Shabbat. What will we do?” It cannot be done in one week or one year. But during some generations, many communities who wanted to write new Torah scrolls followed the list of parashiyot in Mishneh Torah. So, they followed the Aleppo Codex because this is what was relied upon. And then they began to write more and more Sifrei Torah according to this tradition of parashiyot, and in some generations they looked at their old Torah scrolls, and they said, “Oh, there are some scrolls that do not fit the Halakha of Maimonides.” So, they put them in the Genizah, or maybe they even corrected them and tried to adjust them according to the list of Maimonides.

Nehemia: That’s interesting. So, when they looked at one of these old Torah scrolls, they probably thought, “Oh this is a mistake.” But at the time it was written it might not have been a mistake, it was just following a different tradition.

Yosef: Yes. As I said, it took some generations. And the main factor is that new Torah scrolls were written according to the list of Maimonides, which was very, very stable. We’ll speak later about how Maimonides succeeded in creating a list that would not be another case of having disputes in copying it, and it would remain stable as it went out of his hands. But he succeeded; he did that with some sophisticated manners.

So, during the generations, most of the new Torah scrolls were written according to this well-known list of Maimonides. And then, if you skip some generations forward, the old Torah scrolls… maybe they didn’t use them because a Torah scroll after some centuries became pasul, the ink fades…

Nehemia: The ink fades and it becomes invalid for use.

Yosef: Yes. So maybe it became, through such procedures, that in some synagogues all the Torah scrolls were new scrolls that were written according to Maimonides, and that’s how this tradition overcame. But in other places, most of the Torah scrolls were according to Maimonides, but they found one or two Torah scrolls that were written according to another tradition. They were old or were copied from other old codices. And that was the question; what to do with them? To take them out of use, to say that these are Sifrei Torah pesulim, or to try to correct them.

But what we know is that the end of the story was that all communities of the Jews in Yemen, Sephardic and Ashkenazic, adopted this tradition. So, all the Torah scrolls today all over the Jewish world are all written according to the Aleppo Codex as copied by the list of Maimonides.

Nehemia: And there’s a certain irony here because part of the Aleppo Codex is missing, and specifically, most of the Torah is missing. And so, all we really have is the list of Maimonides to know where the open and closed sections are.

Yosef: We have other evidence. And there are one, or two, or three cases which have to be checked because the evidence that we have about the Aleppo Codex is not exactly what Maimonides writes. I’m not going into details now, but in one case there is a dispute between the communities, between the Yememite Torah scrolls and the Sephardic and Ashkenazic, in Leviticus chapter 7, about where to put a parashah. And in that case, maybe Maimonides failed at copying and arranging his list and skipped one parashah. And so maybe there is one place that our tradition is not exactly that of the original, of the Aleppo Codex. But we cannot be sure because, as you said, these pages, these leaves of the Aleppo Codex, do not exist today.

Nehemia: Or if they exist, we don’t know where they are. There are theories about…

Yosef: Okay.

Nehemia: Do you know where they are?

Yosef: I don’t know where they are!

Nehemia: Or if you do, you can’t say!

Yosef: No, no.

Nehemia: You don’t know.

Yosef: I don’t know. I will be very glad if someone will find them. I don’t believe there is a high chance to find them, because we know the Aleppo Codex was complete until 1947. And then in riots in the city of Aleppo it got damaged. We have one piece of a leaf from the Book of Exodus that was torn and was kept by one of the members of the Aleppo community in New York. We have it today; it is presented at the Shrine of the Book in the Israel Museum. So, we know that the Aleppo Codex was damaged in these riots, and I think most of the leaves were burned or damaged in these riots. Maybe other leaves were taken by someone, but the fact that in the last 40 years nothing has been found… I hope I am wrong, but I don’t see a high chance that these parts will be found in the future.

Nehemia: And the thing you’re talking about from Exodus is, it was a Jew who had fled from Aleppo. And I think he was a taxi driver, I want to say, and he went around in his wallet with little pieces of the Aleppo Codex laminated. And when he died, I think his daughter turned them over to the Israel Museum, and you examined them and authenticated them, right?

Yosef: In the 80’s I got a picture of part of a page, which was not taken out of its cover and was just photocopied. So, I published it as it was, because I got only a photocopy of it. And then when it came to Israel and was delivered by the daughter of this man to the Israel Museum, I checked it again and I saw some letters and some Masora comments that I was not able to see on the scratched photos as it was before. However, that's what remains of a piece of one leaf in the Book of Exodus. We have some photos, I think two photos of one page of Genesis and two pages of the Book of the Deuteronomy, the Ten Commandments. And that’s what we have about the Torah, except the last 11 pages that survived, and we have them. They also contain the song of Ha’azinu.

Nehemia: Which is Deuteronomy 32. So, you examined these pieces of the Aleppo Codex when they came into Israel. And one of the things that you examined, and I know because I was there, is the Sassoon Codex. How did that happen, that you got to examine the Sassoon Codex?

Yosef: Okay. The Sassoon Codex was known for many years in the 20th century. It was bought by David Sassoon at the beginning of the 20th century, and a photocopy of it was known to scholars. I also spoke about the Bible edition created by Rabbi Mordechai Breuer; he used five or six ancient manuscripts and one of them was the Sassoon Codex. It’s also a codex that contains the whole Bible, and there are not so many. There is the Aleppo Codex, and then the Leningrad Codex, and that’s the third ancient manuscript of the Masoretes that contained the whole Hebrew Bible.

Some pages are not complete, but it contains most of the pages of the Hebrew Bible, more than 90% of the text of the whole Bible. And it’s one of the most important manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. It was kept by David Sassoon with other ancient manuscripts, many thousands of manuscripts that were in his collections, and after his death most of them were sold. Then the Sassoon Codex was bought by someone, but no one knew where it was, and about seven years ago I got a phone call from Mr. Safra in Geneva.

Nehemia: Geneva, Switzerland.

Yosef: And he said, “I own this manuscript. I want you to examine it and to write something about it.” I took this opportunity to see and to examine high quality photos of this important manuscript. And also later, Nehemia and I both went to Geneva and saw the original.

Years after, I prepared an edition of the Masora, the whole Masora Magna of this manuscript, and research about this manuscript. And then the manuscript was put up at auction, and some months ago it was sold to the Museum ANU in Tel Aviv. And I’m very glad that this important manuscript will be kept now in Tel Aviv by a famous museum. It will be kept very well. And then scholars will be able to get to see the manuscript, to examine the manuscript, and all the people, the crowd, will be able to see this manuscript, like the Aleppo Codex which is presented in Jerusalem. So, we have two famous Bibles of the Masoretic Period, the Period of the Masoretes, one in Jerusalem, in the Shrine of the Book, and one will be in Tel Aviv in the Museum ANU.

Nehemia: So, you had a major discovery with the Sassoon Codex about two Masoretes. Tell us about that.

Yosef: Okay. So, when I examined this manuscript, I found out that it was not a work of one Masorete, but of two Masoretes. The first one may have been the scribe who wrote the manuscripts, the signs of niqqud and cantillation signs, and he also wrote Masora notes; not so many Masora notes, but he wrote two lines at the bottom of each page. And then came another Masorete, which was maybe a better Masorete. It was later, maybe some decades or years later, and he took these manuscripts and added many other Masora comments. He used the top of each page to write Masora comments and also added some lines at the bottom.

And then, after working and completing about 100 pages of the Masora, he changed his mind and he wanted to write more Masora comments. He erased all the work of the first Masorete in the rest of the Bible in order to write his own Masora comments and to use all the space to write many Masora comments. He did so on about 200 pages, and then, for some unknown reason he stopped his work, so many of the pages of this codex remained without Masora Magna, only with Masora Parva. And also, there are some pages without the Masora at all because this second Masorete, whose name we don’t know, did not complete his work.

Nehemia: So, we don’t know his name, but he mentions a name. Do you want to tell people about that? What’s the name he mentions? The second Masorete.

Yosef: Yes. In one Masora comment, in one place, he mentions the name Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher, and he cited a long Masora comment from the Aleppo Codex. He said, “I copied these comments from the work of Aaron ben Asher in his book, in his Bible, which is named Al-taj.” Al-taj means “the crown”.

So that’s one ancient source that gives us the name Al-taj as referring to the Aleppo Codex. So, we can conclude that in the 10th century, when I think these Masoretes acted, at the end of the 10th century, if the Aleppo Codex got the name, Al-taj, “ha’keter”, expressing the importance, the uniqueness of this manuscript. And then the Masorete of the Sassoon Codex cited a long Masora comment which we cannot find today in the Aleppo Codex because it was written at the beginning of the codex in a special page in a long list of names. But we know about it from some sources that copied this Masora.

Nehemia: So, it’s from one of the pages that’s missing, but it was copied before it went missing.

Yosef: Yes.

Nehemia: And so, what’s in the Sassoon Codex matches what was copied before it went missing in 1947.

Yosef: That’s right. It was copied by Professor Cassuto, who went to Aleppo and copied a part of this Masora. It was also copied by the known Karaite scholar Avraham Firkovich, who also went to Aleppo and copied all the first pages of the Masora which were in the Aleppo Codex. So, we have a lot of evidence about the Aleppo Codex, and we can use it to reconstruct and have a great deal of information about the version of the missing parts of the Aleppo Codex.

Nehemia: You mentioned Cassuto, Moshe David Cassuto. Or Umberto Cassuto, as he was known as well.

Yosef: Yes. He was a rabbi in Florence in Italy, and then he came to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem during the first years of the creation of the Hebrew University. And one of the tasks he undertook was to print a new Hebrew Bible. And he thought about using the Aleppo Codex, so he went to Aleppo and examined the Aleppo Codex. He did not succeed. He got a photocopy of the Aleppo Codex, and in the two or three weeks that they were there he could not copy all the details of the millions of signs in the Aleppo Codex. So, he could not really use the Aleppo Codex for his work. But he wrote some notes, and after his death I examined his lists, and I published all the information that he copied about the missing parts of the Aleppo Codex.

Nehemia: So, this is important because he was a witness to things that we don’t know where they are, or they don’t exist. And he went there, I believe, in 1942 or something, he went there.

Yosef: It was 1943.

Nehemia: 1943. And in '43, in the Aleppo Codex, those pages weren’t missing. They were there.

Yosef: Yes.

Nehemia: Wow! This has been an amazing conversation. There’s so much in here… I mean not just in here, but in your head. There’s just so much!

Yosef: Thank you.

Nehemia: But there’s so much information in this book. I want to give an invitation to the audience, The Masora on Scripture and its Methods by Professor Yosef Ofer. I want this to be just a small taste, and to continue to delve deeper into this. It’s an incredible work here, an incredible body of information that you could spend years studying this book. And as you study it, you get deeper and deeper into the fine details of the text of the Hebrew Bible.

Yosef: The many references, of course, of other scholars that worked here. And I tried in each chapter to add some references, so that if one is interested, he can go on not only what is written in this book, but also the sources that I relied upon, and other sources that can be continued.

Nehemia: Wonderful, thank you so much. Shalom.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!

SHARE THIS TEACHING WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

---

Subscribe to "Nehemia Gordon" on your favorite podcast app!
Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | TuneIn
Pocket Casts | Podcast Addict | CastBox | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Pandora

---

SUPPORT NEHEMIA'S RESEARCH AND TEACHINGS
(Please click here to donate)
Makor Hebrew Foundationis a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Your donation is tax-deductible.

VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
01:08 What is the Masora?
10:36 Masoretic decision-making
20:55 The Aleppo Codex & Masoretic comments
34:16 Maimonides & the uniformity of spaces
46:49 The Sassoon Codex
51:00 The two Masoretes
57:48 Outro

VERSES MENTIONED
Exodus 24:5
Isaiah 13:10
Sefer Ahava; Tefillin, Mezuzah and Sefer Torah 8:4 (Mishneh Torah)
Ha’azinu - Deuteronomy 32

BOOKS MENTIONED
The Masora on Scripture and Its Methods (English)
המסורה למקרא ודרכיה (Hebrew)
by Yosef Ofer

Jerusalem Crown (כתר ירושלים) - The Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
[Torah, Prophets and Hagiographa according to the text and the Masora of the Aleppo Codex and related manuscripts, according to the method of Rav Mordechai Breuer with explanations of the version principles, scientific responsibility on that edition: Yosef Ofer] Jerusalem 2000

EPISODES RELATED
Hebrew Voices #149 – Looking Under the Hood of a Torah Scroll: Part 2

OTHER LINKS
Prof Yosef Ofer's Website

The post Hebrew Voices #174 – How We Got Our Hebrew Bible appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.