Jerusalem, Israel – A worldwide hunt is under way, and an appeal to members of the Jewish community throughout the world for missing segments of the oldest and most reliable copy of the Hebrew Bible, nearly half of which disappeared 60 years ago during anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo, Syria.
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The Ben-Zvi Institute is spearheading the effort and hopes to enlist the help of Aleppo's now-dispersed Jewish population, some of whom live in the U.S.
"We are appealing to the older members of Aleppo's once-great Jewish community, who are scattered throughout the world, to look for the missing fragments and bring them to us," said Zvi Zameret, the institute's director.
Known as the Aleppo Codex, this religious and linguistic treasure dates back 1,000 years and is regarded by scholars as unsurpassed in accuracy and calligraphy.
Although the Dead Sea Scrolls predate it by nearly a millennium, they do not include all of the books that comprise the Jewish Bible's three sections — most of which are in Hebrew, and some of which are in Aramaic.
Those three sections are the Pentateuch (also known as The Five Books of Moses), the Prophets and the Scriptures. [Washington Times]
The Dead-Sea Scrolls, whose authenticity has been questioned (not the physical authenticity. That’s a fact. They were discovered
in a cave in Qumran (Kumran) by a shepherd. But the authentic story they purportedly tell.) speak of life and worship by the Essenes. (Issyim, in Hebrew). They lived an ascetic lifestyle, and were among multiple groups with a “Messianic” message. The Prushim, the much-knocked “Pharisees” were not “happy” with them and their message.
Although the Dead Sea Scrolls predate it by nearly a millennium, they do not include all of the books
Beside which, the Dead Sea Scrolls are not a reliable text. The maalah of the Keter is not that it’s the oldest manuscript but that it’s the most reliable (it has a “haskoma” from the Rambam himself; you can’t get any better than that!)