List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts
An Old Testament Hebrew manuscript is a handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Old Testament (Tanakh) made on papyrus, parchment, or paper, and written in the Hebrew language. The oldest manuscripts were written in a form of scroll, the mediaeval manuscripts usually were written in a form of codex. The late manuscripts written after the 9th century use the Masoretic Text. The important manuscripts are associated with Aaron ben Asher (especially Codex Leningradensis).[1]
The original manuscripts and early copies of the Old Testament disappeared because of time, because of wars, (especially the destruction of the First Temple, the Second Temple), and other intentional destructions made by enemies.[2] In result the lapse of time between the original manuscripts and their survived copies is much longer than in the case of the New Testament manuscripts.
The first list of the Old Testament manuscripts in Hebrew, made by Benjamin Kennicott (1776–1780) and published by Oxford, listed 615 manuscripts from libraries in England and on the Continent.[3] Giovanni de Rossi (1784–1788) published a list of 731 manuscripts.[4] The main manuscript discoveries in modern times are those of the Cairo Geniza (c. 1890) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947). In the old synagogue in Cairo were discovered 260.000 Hebrew manuscripts, 10.000 of them are biblical manuscripts.[5][6] There are more than 200 biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of them were written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. They were written before the year 70 AD. 14 scroll manuscripts were discovered in Masada in 1963–1965.[7]
The largest organized collection of Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts in the world are housed in Russian National Library ("Second Firkovitch Collection") in Saint Petersburg.[4]
Codex Leningradensis is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. Manuscripts earlier than the 13th century are very rare. The majority of the manuscripts have survived in a fragmentary condition.
List of manuscripts
- Masorah manuscripts
- Codex Cairensis, dated by a colophon to the 895, Cairo
- Codex Leningradensis, dated to the 1008, Russian National Library
- Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus, dated to the 916, Russian National Library
- Aleppo Codex, c. 930, Museum Ben Zwi
- Reuchlin Codex of the Prophets, dated to the 1105
- Erfurt Codices
- Severus Scroll, a lost manuscript of 1 century, only a few sentences are preserved by Rabbinic literature
- Codex Hilleli, a lost manuscript of AD 600, only a few sentences are preserved by Rabbinic literature[8]
- Codex Muggeh, lost, only a few sentences are preserved by Rabbinic literature
- Codex Orientales 4445, dated between AD 820 and 850; the manuscript contains Genesis-Deuteronomy 1:33 (less Numbers 7:47–73 and Numbers 9:12–10:18).
- Codex Sanbuki
- Codex Jericho, lost, only a few sentences are preserved by Rabbinic literature
- Codex Yeruschalmi, lost, only a few sentences are preserved by Rabbinic literature
- Codex Sinai
- Codex Great Mahzor
- Codex Ezra
- Cairo Geniza fragments contains portions of the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic, discovered in Cairo synagogue, which date from about AD 400
- Ben Asher Manuscripts
- Michigan Codex
- Abisha Scroll, text of Torah from the 11th–14th century, housed in the Samaritan synagogue of Nablus
- Dead Sea Scrolls
See also
References
- ^ H. Kelley, Daniel Stephen Mynatt, Timothy G. Crawford, The Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia: introduction and annotated glossary, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998, p. 18
- ^ Randall Price, Searching for the Original Bible, Harvest House Publishers, 2007, p. 45
- ^ Thomas Hartwell Horne, An introduction to the critical study and knowledge of the Holy Scriptures (1836), vol. 2, p. 7
- ^ a b Old Testament manuscripts
- ^ Fragmentos do Gueniza do Cairo
- ^ David Sinclar, An Overvied on the Bible (2006)
- ^ Würthwein Ernst (1988). Der Text des Alten Testaments, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, pp. 38–39.
- ^ Würthwein, Ernst (1995). The text of the Old Testament: an introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 38. ISBN 9780802807885. http://books.google.com/books?id=FSNKSBObCYwC&pg=PA38#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Further reading
External links