There are many important old manuscripts of the Old Testament. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the most ancient of these was the Cairo Codex, containing the former and latter prophets, copied in A.D. 895 by Moses Ben Asher, a leader of the Masoretes, in Tiberias, Palestine.
One of three important manuscripts copied in the 900's A.D. was the Leningrad Codex of the prophets (copied in A.D. 916), containing only the latter prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets). Two others are the Aleppo Codex (copied by Aaron ben Asher in A.D. 930) and the British Museum Codex (copied in A.D. 950).1 The Aleppo Codex was complete until it had to be rescued from a burning synagogue in Aleppo, Syria in 1948 and smuggled into Israel. The British Museum Codex (Oriental 4445) is an incomplete manuscript of the Pentateuch, containing Genesis 39:20 through Deuteronomy 1:33.
The Leningrad Codex (copied in A.D. 1008) is now the largest and only complete manuscript of the Old Testament. It had been copied from a corrected codex prepared by Rabbi Aaron ben Moses ben Asher before A.D. 1000. The Reuchlin Codex of the Prophets was copied in A.D. 1105, while the Cairo Geniza fragments (6th- 9th centuries A.D.) contain over 120 Biblical manuscripts discovered during the rebuilding of the synagogue at Cairo, Egypt, in 1890.2
The accuracy of these manuscripts has been corroborated not only by their faithfulness to the Septuagint (a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek done during the third and second centuries B.C.)3 and the Vulgate (a translation into Latin completed by Jerome in A.D. 405), but by their striking faithfulness to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls (copied between 130 B.C. and A.D. 70) consist of 40,000 fragments. Five hundred books have been reconstructed from them, one hundred of which are from the Old Testament in Hebrew. The only book of the Old Testament not represented is the book of Esther. Included is a complete manuscript of the Hebrew text of the book of Isaiah copied in 125 B.C., which is almost identical to the Masoretic text of A.D. 916 (the Leningrad Codex of the prophets), indicating the unusual accuracy of the Masoretes as copyists over the period of one thousand years.4
1 Gleason L. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, Revised Ed. (Chicago: Moddy Press, 1974), p. 43, states that this manuscript was actually copied in A.D. 850, but that the vowel points were added a century later.
2 Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1968), pp. 249-250.
3 Ibid., pp. 253-254.
4 Ibid., p. 254-263.
