Leningrad Codex

The Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete manuscript of the entire Hebrew Bible, written in Cairo and dated by its own colophon to 1008 or 1009 CE. It belongs to the Tiberian Masoretic tradition of Aaron ben Asher and was copied by a single scribe, Samuel ben Jacob, who wrote the consonantal text, added the vowel-points and cantillation, and supplied the marginal Masoretic notes, an unusual concentration of the whole task in one hand that gives the book a remarkable internal consistency.

Its name comes from St Petersburg, which was called Leningrad through the Soviet period; the manuscript has been held there, in what is now the National Library of Russia, since the 19th century. Although the Aleppo Codex is somewhat older, its loss of most of the Torah left the Leningrad Codex as the oldest complete Masoretic Bible in existence. For that reason it was adopted as the base text of the Biblia Hebraica editions, the standard scholarly printings of the Hebrew Bible, and so stands behind a great deal of modern biblical study and translation.

The codex was made in Fustat (Old Cairo) at the start of the 11th century. Its colophons record the scribe Samuel ben Jacob and state that the text was prepared and corrected from manuscripts pointed by Aaron ben Asher, tying it to the most authoritative branch of the Tiberian tradition. Beyond its text it is a fine object in its own right, with sixteen illuminated "carpet pages" of geometric ornament and micrography (patterns formed from minute writing).

Its modern history runs through the collection of Abraham Firkovich, a 19th-century Karaite scholar who gathered manuscripts across the Near East. His collection was acquired by the Imperial Public Library in St Petersburg, and the codex has remained there, through the city's renaming to Leningrad and back, as MS Firkovich B 19A, now in the National Library of Russia.

In the 20th century the manuscript acquired a new prominence. When Paul Kahle sought a complete, early Masoretic text as the base for the third edition of Rudolf Kittel's Biblia Hebraica, he chose the Leningrad Codex. It has served that role ever since, in Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the in-progress Biblia Hebraica Quinta, and it was among the first major Hebrew manuscripts to be fully photographed and digitised, making the oldest complete Hebrew Bible freely consultable.

Unlike relics whose age must be inferred, the Leningrad Codex dates itself: its colophon gives the year of completion (variously computed as 1008 or 1009 CE by different eras of reckoning), and its script, vocalisation and Masoretic apparatus are entirely consistent with an early-11th-century Tiberian manuscript. Its authenticity is therefore not in dispute, and it functions as a fixed point against which other Masoretic witnesses are compared.

Scholarly discussion concerns its text rather than its genuineness. Because it was corrected toward the Ben Asher standard, it is very close to the Aleppo Codex, and where the two can be compared they agree in the overwhelming majority of details; the small divergences, and occasional scribal corrections visible in the Leningrad manuscript, are studied precisely because the book is the base of printed editions. Some scholars prefer the Aleppo Codex where it survives, treating Leningrad as the best complete substitute rather than the single most accurate witness. None of this touches the manuscript's date or integrity: it is a securely dated, complete and continuously housed book, which is what makes it so valuable as a reference text.