Oldest Surviving Copy of Hebrew Bible Recognized as UNESCO World Treasure

Stoyan Zaimov via “Christian Post“

The Aleppo Codex, the oldest surviving copy of the Hebrew Bible that some experts believe all versions of the Old Testament stem from, has been recognized by UNESCO as an important world treasure.

I24News reported that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization added the millennium-old Codex earlier this week to its International Memory of the World Register, which honors some of the most important discoveries relating to human history.

Adolfo Roitman, the head curator of the Shrine of the Book Museum in Jerusalem, which holds the Codex, explained its significance, stating that all current versions of the Old Testament stem, “in one way or another, from this ancient manuscript.”

Amir Ganor, director of the unit for the prevention of antiquities robbery in the Israeli Antiquities Authority, shows a document, thought to be an ancient text written on papyrus, at Jerusalem Magistrates Court May 6, 2009. According to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, the document is written in ancient Hebrew script, which is characteristic of the Second Temple period and the first and second centuries CE. This style of writing is primarily known from the Dead Sea scrolls and various inscriptions that occur on ossuaries and coffins. It was seized from two men suspected to be antiquities robbers in an elaborate undercover operation.

The Codex is believed to have been written somewhere around the year 930 in the town of Tiberias on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. It has been moved around through several different cities, and as many as 190 pages are missing from the surviving copy, though scholars disagree where and when they were lost.

It was smuggled out of Syria and arrived in Israel in 1958, before it was eventually moved to the Israel Museum in the mid-1980s.

It is also not clear who precisely owns the Codex, though filmmaker Avi Dabach, who is planning to make a documentary about the ancient manuscript, believes that it belongs to the Jewish community that fled Syria.

“In the 1960s the Aleppo-Jewish community sued the people who brought the Codex to Israel. … The Israeli Authorities decided to confiscate this item and then, from a position of strength, force on the community an arrangement,” Dabach has said.

Although the Aleppo Codex is considered the oldest copy of the Hebrew Old Testament, there are much older fragments of biblical manuscripts in existence, such as the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls. . . 

 

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1,500-Year-Old Text Has Been Digitally Resurrected From a Hebrew Scroll

by Devin Powell via “The Smithsonian“

More than four decades ago, an archaeologist discovered a scroll in the ruins of an ancient settlement built near the Dead Sea. Found inside a holy ark, the fragile document was so badly burned that the scientist decided not to risk unrolling it, lest it crumble to pieces. Kept safe in storage ever since, the Ein Gedi scroll has held on to its secrets—until now.

This week a computer scientist announced that his team found a way to unroll the scroll virtually. Working off x-ray scans of the artifact, specialized software detected the layers of parchment and digitally unwound them, revealing for the first time Hebrew characters written on the scroll about 1,500 years ago.

“I’ve actually never seen the actual scroll,” says Brent Seales, a professor at the University of Kentucky. “For me, that’s a testament to the power of the digital age.”

His interest in damaged texts began years ago with a cache of old Roman scrolls unearthed at what had once been the resort town of Herculaneum. Buried during the infamous A.D. 79 Vesuvius eruption, the Herculaneum scrolls seemed like little more than cylinders of charcoal. To try and take a deeper look, Seales and his colleagues bombarded the relics with x-rays from a micro-CT scanner—a device similar to the computerized tomography scanners hospitals use to see inside human bodies, but much more powerful.

“It’s a bit expensive and time-consuming to do, but you’re able to see inside an object without destroying it,” says James Miles, a graduate student at the University of Southampton and director of Archaeovision, a company that scans ancient objects. “You can’t do this any other way.”

To suss out the contours of rolled papyri, Seales wrote a computer program. He likens the process to cartography: the density data from a micro-CT scan is a whole world of chaotic shapes and forms, and the turns of the papyri are like edges of continents that his algorithms can sketch. Sadly, his x-rays and algorithms proved blind to the carbon-based ink on the Roman scrolls, which was too similar to the carbonized papyri to be distinguished.. . .

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Road workers find 1,500-year old church near Jerusalem

by Ruth Schuster via “Haaretz”

The remains of a large Byzantine-era church has been discovered on an even more ancient road at the entrance to Abu Ghosh, a town in the hills just off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway.

The current excavation season uncovered a church measuring about 16 m in length. The church featured a large side chapel, 6.5 by 3.5 meters in area, with a white mosaic stone floor. A baptismal font in the form of a four-leafed clover, symbolizing the cross, was installed in the chapel’s northeast corner, the Israel Antiquities Authority says.

The four-clover leaf shaped baptismal font found in the 1,500-year Byzantine church by Abu Ghosh. Photo by Annette Nagar, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

Fragments of red-colored plaster found in the rubble strewn throughout the building indicate that the church walls had been decorated with frescoes, the IAA adds. The site had a water source – the ‘Ain Naqa‘a seep spring.

Rooms that may have served as dwelling quarters and storage were uncovered just west of the church.

Among the other finds at the site were oil lamps, coins, glass vessels, marble fragments, and mother-of-pearl shells.

A small oil lamp, seen against the white mosaic floor of the Byzantine church found by Abu Ghosh. Photo by Assaf Peretz, courtesy of the IAA

As are so many archaeological finds in Israel, this one was made by the National Roads Company, in this case while expanding the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. The company is also funding the excavation by the IAA, headed by Annette Nagar.

“The road station and its church were built in the Byzantine period beside the ancient road leading between Jerusalem and the coastal plain,” Nagar said in a statement. . . . .

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