Introduction

The Leningrad Codex, or Leningradensis, is the oldest complete Hebrew Bible still preserved. While there are older parts of Bibles or biblical books, still in existence, there is no older manuscript which contains the whole Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament in Hebrew). The Leningrad Codex is considered one of the best examples of the Masoretic text.

The manuscript was written around the year 1010 C. E. It was probably written in Cairo, and later sold to someone living in Damascus. Today it is in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the National Library of Russia, where it has been since the mid-1800’s. When the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center and West Semitic Research photographed the Bible in 1990, the city was still called Leningrad. The name of the manuscript continues to be called the Leningrad Codex in order to avoid confusion.

The Leningrad Bible is called a “Codex” because it is in the form of a book (“codex” being an old word for “book”). The Bibles in the synagogues were in the form of scrolls, which meant that one never had an entire Bible together in one scroll. The codex would not have been used in the synagogue but would have been used as a study Bible by students and scholars.

Most modern printed editions of the Hebrew Bible use the Leningrad Codex,together with a few other incomplete Hebrew Bibles, as the basis for their translations. This is because it is the oldest complete manuscript copied with the Masoretic system developed by the Ben Asher family.

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