Talk:Aleppo Codex

What is C.E.? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.219.227.213 (talk) 05:09, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Common Era--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 11:43, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

What Maimonides said and didn't say
The famous quotation comes from his great codification of Jewish law, Mishneh Torah. The section is Hilchot Tefillin uMezuzah v'Sefer Torah, chapter 8, paragraph 4; I quote the Moznaim translation, as the only one I had to hand, although it is sometimes unclear and translates sefer uniformly as scroll although of course the Aleppo Codex is not a scroll.

Paragraph 1 explains p'tuchah - beginning a new paragraph. Paragraph 2 explains s'tumah - a gap in the middle of a line. Paragraph 3 discusses correcting a Sefer Torah if there is a mistake in p'tuchah or s'tumah or the layout of the songs in Beshallach or Ha'azinu.

Paragraph 4 says "Since I have seen great confusion about these matters in all the scrolls I have seen, and similarly, the masters of the tradition who have written down and composed to have it let known [which passages] are p'tuchot and which are s'tumot are divided with regard to the scrolls on which to rely, I saw fit to write down the entire list of all the passages in the Torah that are s'tumot and p'tuchot, and also the form of the songs. In this manner, all the scrolls can be corrected and checked against these [principles].

"The scroll on which I relied on for [clarification of] these matters was a scroll renowned in Egypt, which includes all the 24 books [of the Bible]. It was kept in Jerusalem for many years so that scrolls could be corrected from it.  Everyone relies upon it because it was corrected by ben Asher, who spent many years writing it precisely, and [afterward] checked it many times.

"I relied [on this scroll] when I wrote a Torah scroll according to law."

He then goes on, as he said, to give a complete list of all the places in the Torah where there is a p'tuchah or s'tumah, and to give the laws of how to write the two special songs. Given the context, it is clear that he is referring to issues of formatting rather than text. Had he considered that there were places where the text, or even the spelling of some words, was in dispute, he would surely have given a list of them and what he considered that the text should be.

It must be remembered that Aaron ben Asher's contribution was mainly in the areas of vowel signs, the musical notes and especially the marginal masoretic notes. However, a sefer torah contains only the consonants of the Torah. It does not even have the verse dividers. While there may have been quite a lot of variation between manuscripts on the other points, there would have been far less disagreement on the consonants. Maimonides saw nothing worth saying about uncertainty in the consonants, which presumably means that the text was very stable by his time. RachelBrown 19:29, 19 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree. Entirely too much is made of Maimonides' remarks. Beyond the layout of the layout of spacings in the text and the two songs, he says nothing at all about relying on the codex for either malei/chaseir (inclusin or omission of vav's and yod's as clues to vowelization), other spellings, anc certainly nothing about vowel marks or cantillation marks.Kepipesiom (talk) 18:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * This is not correct. Ben Asher's contribution as the masran was add vocalization and masoretic notes, and then to correct the letter text of the manuscript according to the masoretic notes by proofreading it time after time over the course of a lifetime. This is exactly what Maimonides praises him for, and that praise is correct, for his proofreading efforts led to the most accurate masoretic manuscript ever produced. Furthermore, comparison of Tiberian manuscripts shows that there is far more variation in the letter-text (especially malei-haser) than in the vocalization (which is often close to identical). And furthermore, Penkower's studies have shown that Maimonides relied on the spelling of the Aleppo codex for the text of mezuzot and tefillin, and presumably for his Torah scroll as well. And finally, even if Maimonides himself is silent on the issue, later scholars saw every element of Ben Asher's text as something to be emulated and made every effort to do so, and they did so based on Ben Asher's reputation as bolstered by Maimonides. Dovi (talk) 18:51, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but I stand by my remarks. Maimonides says nothing at all about malei/chaser, vowel marks, cantillation marks. In Tefillin and Mezzuzos he lists each malei/chaser instance; if this is identical with the Aleppo, that is entirely happenstance. Why would M not give credit to Ben Asher if he were copying from that codex? And as for the rest of the Torah, M lists no malei/chasers at all. No, the only thing M has taken from Aleppo, according to his own words, is the pesucha/sesuma formatting, and the two songs.Kepipesiom (talk) 20:31, 19 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi. Maimonides wrote: "Everyone relied upon it because Ben Asher corrected and examined it for many years, correcting it many times..."


 * If Maimonides thought that Ben Asher's text was only valuable and authoritative for petuhot and setumot, then what was he talking about? What did Ben Asher examine and correct for so many years? If it was just for the parashot in the Torah, they can be carefully examined in their entirety in just a few hours, and checked over and over again in the course of a few days. What did Ben Asher do for "many years"?


 * It is far more reasonable to assume that Ben Asher worked over the course of many years to correlate the letter-text of the Aleppo Codex with its masoretic notes and correct those letters, as well as perfecting the vowels and cantillation signs, laborious work that indeed takes years and may never be perfectly finished, as in evident all other masoretic codices which are from perfect. The Aleppo Codex is the only one that is perfect in nearly all of its three million orthographic signs.


 * Regarding the letter-text of tefillin, could it be happenstance? Maybe, but Penkower considers that unlikely on a statistical level when comparing it with other similar manuscripts, and considers the opposite possibility more reasonable. That is a sourced opinion from one of the finest masoretic scholars alive today. If there is a contrary source it should be cited too.


 * As far as why Maimonides didn't then record the correct spellings of every letter in the Torah, the answer would appear to be that he only recorded what could reasonably be included in Mishneh Torah and valuable for its readers. For the letter-text of the entire Torah it was not Maimonides' work that was needed, but rather the masoretic apparatus itself! Especially as found in the Aleppo Codex...


 * Rachel Brown wrote some years ago: "It must be remembered that Aaron ben Asher's contribution was mainly in the areas of vowel signs, the musical notes and especially the marginal masoretic notes. However, a sefer torah contains only the consonants of the Torah. It does not even have the verse dividers. While there may have been quite a lot of variation between manuscripts on the other points, there would have been far less disagreement on the consonants." This is misleading, because while Ben Asher's contribution in the area of vowels and musical notes was indeed immense, there are nevertheless thousands of variants in the letter-texts of all the other Tiberian masoretic codices. The very purpose of those "marginal masoretic notes" was to try to create a perfect uniformity for the letters, something that never actually happened except with the Aleppo Codex itself!


 * In terms of sources, all of this is very clear in the scholarly literature on the topic. I urge all to read Israel Yeivin's The Aleppo Codex of the Bible: A Study of its Vocalization and Accentuation as well as his introduction to the mesorah; and Mordechai Breuer's Keter Aram Zova. Also Menachem Cohen's introduction to Mikraot Gedolot ha-Keter. Dovi (talk) 16:16, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

¶ Tawil & Schneider, Crown of Aleppo (op.cit., page 30-31) noted that Goshen-Gottstein refuted some doubts about whether Maimonides had been using and describing the Aleppo Codex by very carefully examining manuscripts written by Maimonides's own hand, including some manuscripts that had not yet been published in any book, and established that Maimonides was describing obscurities and peculiarities of the Aleppo Codex, even to details that had never been previously made public. See his article: Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, "The Authenticity of the Aleppo Codex", Textus vol. 1 (1960) pages 17-58, reprinted in Leiman (op.cit).Sussmanbern (talk) 22:22, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Mechon Mamre edition
NOTE from mechon-mamre.org: The following is terribly confused and full of inaccuracies. The author of this article should give mechon-mamre.org a call and get accurate info and rewrite this error infested article.

I have put a "citation needed" template on the claim that Mechon Mamre's online edition of the Aleppo Codex differs in some fine details from the Breuer edition and reconstruction. Mechon Mamre has never been forthcoming about documenting their editorial decisions. Should they explicity document exactly what features of their reconstruction and edition differ from that of Breuer, then those facts should be noted in the article (and they would also be doing a fine service to scholarship). Until they do so, however, any claims about differences should be noted as exactly that, namely "claims," and a citation notice should be in place. Dovi (talk) 21:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's not a 'they' but a 'he'. Mechon Mamre is the work of Shlomo Ben Avraham. I've been to his house, he has stacks and stacks of manuscripts in binders in his bookcase. I could call him up and ask him how his text differs. 89.138.192.76 (talk) 21:41, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That would be fantastic! One easy way to deal with this would be if Rav Ben Avraham had a page at his website documenting his editioral method in detail (including if and how it differs from Breuer). Then the citation here could simply link to his own explanation.
 * It seems to me that the better documented the Mechon Mamre Tanakh is, the more it would be cited and linked to, and it would be better regarded as a standard text. It would be extraordinarily cool the website contained an interactive vehicle for discussing the editor's decisions and asking questions.Dovi (talk) 17:00, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I spoke to him. He says that his method involved finding all the old Yemenite manuscripts, and following the majority of them. his text differs from the Breuer in some places regarding nikkud. He also disagrees that the Aleppo Codex today is the exact compilation the Rambam used when writing the Mishneh Torah, since in the lists of paragraph breaks in the most accurate editions of the MT, there's two differences between that and the Aleppo Codex. NachMS (talk) 07:07, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Now THAT is interesting information. He states that he is consulting Yemenite mss for niqqud instead of directly transcribing the Aleppo codex. This first of all confirms my suspicion that for the letter-text (ketiv) there is nothing unique about the MM text. For the niqqud, then, it would be interesting to get an actual list of the mss he consults and try to confirm when and how he employs their data.
 * As far as the paragraph breaks, he seems to be mistaken: There is one place where a small space in the Aleppo codex was interpreted differently by Maimonides than by others who saw the codex intact, and another place where Maimonides' list is ambiguous. For both of these, see the footnotes to the Parashah article. Dovi (talk) 08:01, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh thanks, such information is quite useful to me. NachMS (talk) 10:00, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

¶ I am extremely annoyed that someone took it upon himself to undo my addition of the page size of the Codex pages, ostensibly because I failed to cite a source - although all sources that provide the size agree (I have since added those citations) - and yet ignore claims back and forth on the authenticity of the Codex as Maimonides's model text which cited no sources. Sussmanbern (talk) 22:50, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Jerusalem - Cairo
The "History" section reads:

"The Codex has had an eventful history. In the mid-11th century, about a century after it was written, the text was delivered to the Karaite community of Jerusalem, apparently after having been purchased from the heirs of Aharon ben Asher. Not long after (either in 1079 by the Seljuks or in 1099 by the Crusaders) it was looted from Jerusalem and eventually wound up in the Rabbanite synagogue in Cairo, where it was consulted by Maimonides."

Is this somebody’s opinion or does it have an actual source? I’m leaning towards the former. It just sounds like some one is trying to pull a reason out of thin air for why it ended up in Cairo. Why would the Sejuks take the book to Cairo since the Fatimids were their enemies? I think I have a more plausible historical reason for the appearance of the book in Cairo and I’ve even got a source for it.

In 1952, S.D. Goitein discovered two contemporary Jewish letters among the Cairo Geniza. One of these letters, the Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon, mentions how after the 1099 siege of Jerusalem, Karaite Jewish survivors and holy relics (torah scrolls, codexes, etc.) were held ransom by the Crusaders. The Karaite elders reached out to their coreligionists in Alexandria and funds were sent to pay for pockets of Jews and relics over several years. Those ransomed were then transported to the main Karaite community in Egypt. Now if the person who “guesstimated” the above material would like my source, please write me on my talk page. However, my source does not mention this codex by name. So keep in mind by adding whatever material I provide you with to this article is original research. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 03:28, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi, the information I provided in the source above is based on the historical survery by Yosef Ofer, which is found in the companion volume to the Jerusalem Crown Tanakh (available online). Similar information can be found at aleppocodex.org. Everything is either based upon the colophones in the manuscript or other documented texts, and anything which is not is conjecture (on the part of Ofer and other scholars), namely: How did the codex get from Jerusalem to Cairo? The Seljuks and Crusaders are the two most obvious culprits, but there is no hard evidence for either. I see no reason why Goitein should not be referred to in a footnote on the word "Crusaders" as parallel, supporting fact. Dovi (talk) 12:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, but why is the Jerusalem Crown Tanakh not directly referenced to after the statement? I found one website that mentions neither the Seljuks nor Crusaders, they just state it went missing after the First Crusade (see here). However, I did find material on the aleppocodex.org website that states its possible that it was apart of the holy books ransomed by the Crusaders (See point "4.4" here). It appears others have seen the same similarities as myself. I will be deleting the bit about Seljuks or Crusaders and will add both the "possible" statement from the Aleppo website and my own sources to explain the event in more detail. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 18:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. As to why something is not referenced, the "wiki way" is that if you find something that needs adding, then go ahead and add it! I'd love to hear more about your novel (from your user page). Dovi (talk) 21:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * PS Read Ofer's survey article here. Dovi (talk) 21:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I read his article earlier while cleaning up the external links. It does mention the Sejuks and Crusaders, but, although an educated guess, it falls short of the mark. As I previously explained, the Seljuks were at war against the Fatimids in Egypt. The Fatiminds where wanting to use the Crusaders as a buffer between them and the Seljuks to keep the Turkish forces from invading their lands. So, the Seljuks would not have had a reason to send a friendly mission to Cairo just to deliver a Jewish holy book (see The Crusades: Islamic Persecutive (1999) for more details). Nor would the Crusaders for the same reason. However, I understand that not everyone knows about the Karaite letter. I researched the First Crusade for years and didn't know about it until I contacted a Jewish Crusader historian from Hebrew University. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 21:24, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I would like to see more about the provenance of the codex, and convincing proof that the Aleppo Codex is indeed the identical object with the sefer that Mimonides described. I find most disturbing, that Maimonides' use of the word sefer invariably refers to a scroll, and at this one and only point, without warning to the reader, he uses the same word to describe a codex. Very puzzling. Kepipesiom (talk) 18:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Friedman's book
In my opinion the book of Friedman deserves more attention in the article than it gets, and claims that it disputes (in my opinion, disproves) shouldn't be stated as fact any more. In particular Friedman and others show that the work was essentially whole when brought to Israel, and also that it was not given to the state on behalf of its owners. This article in Tablet gives an update on the book. Zerotalk 00:06, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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"sacred to Yahweh"
I understand that the source article uses the full Name, but would pious Jews actually have written it like that? --2607:FEA8:D5DF:F945:5C78:5149:5F14:2542 (talk) 14:06, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Aleppo Codex At Mikraot Gedolot Haketer
I put at the "External Links" a link to Aleppo Codex at 'Mikraot Gedolot Ha'keter' (MGK) website: https://www.mgketer.org/kazms. MrOllie deleted this edit because: "It was redundant with links already present and with material hosted at Wikimedia commons." I don't agree with him: 1. MGK is the only website where you can see on the manuscript the beginning of the chapter start and end of it. 2. At MGK you can see the verses number, at the top of each column which make it very easy to find the verse you look for. 3. At MGK you can see the chapter on the manuscript against the text of MGK. 4. At MGK you can see the Masora on the manuscript against the Masora's text of MGK. 5. At MGK you can see the 'Ein Hamasora' - a unique interpretation of the Masora. 6. The link was approved by the Hebrew Wiki, Deutsch Wiki and many others. I would like to hear your opinion about this issue. Noli1001 (talk) 12:25, 29 July 2020 (UTC)