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Jerusalem Crown
The Jerusalem Crown (Hebrew: כתר ירושלים, romanized: Keter Yerushalayim) is a printed edition of the Hebrew Bible printed in Jerusalem in 2000, and based on a manuscript commonly known as the Aleppo Codex.
The printed text consists of 874 pages of the Hebrew Bible, two pages setting forth both appearances of the Ten Commandments (from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, each showing the two different cantillations for private), and for public recitation, 23 pages briefly describing the research background and listing alternative readings (mostly from the Leningrad Codex, and almost all very slight differences in spelling or even pointing that do not change the meaning), a page of the blessings—the Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Yemenite versions—used before and after reading the Haftarah (the selection from the Prophets), a 9-page list of the annual schedule of the Haftarot readings according to the three traditions.
The text has been recognized as the official Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Knesset of Israel since 2001. Since its publication, it has been used to administer the oath of office to new presidents of the state of Israel. The text was edited according to the method of Mordechai Breuer under the supervision of Yosef Ofer, with additional proofreading and refinements since the Horev edition.
The Jerusalem Crown is a printed edition of the Aleppo Codex, known in Hebrew as the כתר ארם צובה (Keter Aram Tsovah – "Crown of Aleppo"), a Masoretic Text worked up c. 929 and claimed to have been proofread and provided with vowel points and accents by the great Masoretic master, Aaron ben Moses ben Asher. During the December 1, 1947 anti-Jewish riot in Aleppo, two days after the United Nations voted to recommend partition of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the Syrian Army firebombed the Central Synagogue of Aleppo and the Codex was originally reported as completely destroyed.
In fact, more than two-thirds of the Codex survived and was later smuggled into Israel c. 1957. At that time, only 294 pages arrived (later, one more page was donated) from an original total whose estimates run from 380 to 491 pages; possibly the lowest estimate is for the Bible text alone, and the higher estimates include appendices such as Masoretic notes, treatises on grammar, etc., such as are part of the Leningrad Codex. In general, most of the Torah was missing (the surviving text started at Deuteronomy 28:17), some pages were missing from the Prophets, and a substantial portion of the Ketuvim was missing (the surviving text ended at Song of Songs 3:11; completely lost were Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah—as well as some pages in the midst of surviving books). Starting in 1986, the Israel Museum took ten years to remove a thousand years' accumulation of dirt, and even fungus, from the manuscript, and do other restorative work.
The Bible scholar Mordechai Breuer made a point of finding and collecting every known pre-1947 description of the Aleppo Codex (most of these were unpublished), including some surreptitious photographs, and used the descriptions of the surviving parts to verify the authenticity of the Codex and the descriptions of the missing parts to provide insights into the readings. To fill in remaining gaps he used the text of the Leningrad Codex, which was almost as distinguished and authoritative. He produced an edition of this reconstructed Bible for the Mossad Harav Kook, in Jerusalem, in 1989 and again (slightly revised) in 1998. Additionally, a photo-facsimile edition of the surviving pages of the Aleppo Codex was published by Nahum Ben-Zvi in 1976.
The pages smuggled into Israel were verified as the authentic Aleppo Codex, which owed its high reputation partly to the praise heaped upon it by Maimonides in the late 12th century, and partly also to its claim to have been personally proofread and marked with the vowel points and accents by the last of the great family of Masoretes, Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher, not only by matching the various descriptions which had been published, but also by matching descriptions by Maimonides in documents which had not yet been published.
As might be expected, the handwritten notes made by scholars who had been privileged to handle the Codex could not be as completely reliable as the manuscript itself. For example, a number of them had, on different occasions, copied down, supposedly word-for-word, the dedicatory colophon of the Codex (on a page now missing), which included some details of the manuscript's provenance—yet their different copies disagreed with each other.
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Jerusalem Crown
The Jerusalem Crown (Hebrew: כתר ירושלים, romanized: Keter Yerushalayim) is a printed edition of the Hebrew Bible printed in Jerusalem in 2000, and based on a manuscript commonly known as the Aleppo Codex.
The printed text consists of 874 pages of the Hebrew Bible, two pages setting forth both appearances of the Ten Commandments (from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, each showing the two different cantillations for private), and for public recitation, 23 pages briefly describing the research background and listing alternative readings (mostly from the Leningrad Codex, and almost all very slight differences in spelling or even pointing that do not change the meaning), a page of the blessings—the Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Yemenite versions—used before and after reading the Haftarah (the selection from the Prophets), a 9-page list of the annual schedule of the Haftarot readings according to the three traditions.
The text has been recognized as the official Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Knesset of Israel since 2001. Since its publication, it has been used to administer the oath of office to new presidents of the state of Israel. The text was edited according to the method of Mordechai Breuer under the supervision of Yosef Ofer, with additional proofreading and refinements since the Horev edition.
The Jerusalem Crown is a printed edition of the Aleppo Codex, known in Hebrew as the כתר ארם צובה (Keter Aram Tsovah – "Crown of Aleppo"), a Masoretic Text worked up c. 929 and claimed to have been proofread and provided with vowel points and accents by the great Masoretic master, Aaron ben Moses ben Asher. During the December 1, 1947 anti-Jewish riot in Aleppo, two days after the United Nations voted to recommend partition of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the Syrian Army firebombed the Central Synagogue of Aleppo and the Codex was originally reported as completely destroyed.
In fact, more than two-thirds of the Codex survived and was later smuggled into Israel c. 1957. At that time, only 294 pages arrived (later, one more page was donated) from an original total whose estimates run from 380 to 491 pages; possibly the lowest estimate is for the Bible text alone, and the higher estimates include appendices such as Masoretic notes, treatises on grammar, etc., such as are part of the Leningrad Codex. In general, most of the Torah was missing (the surviving text started at Deuteronomy 28:17), some pages were missing from the Prophets, and a substantial portion of the Ketuvim was missing (the surviving text ended at Song of Songs 3:11; completely lost were Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah—as well as some pages in the midst of surviving books). Starting in 1986, the Israel Museum took ten years to remove a thousand years' accumulation of dirt, and even fungus, from the manuscript, and do other restorative work.
The Bible scholar Mordechai Breuer made a point of finding and collecting every known pre-1947 description of the Aleppo Codex (most of these were unpublished), including some surreptitious photographs, and used the descriptions of the surviving parts to verify the authenticity of the Codex and the descriptions of the missing parts to provide insights into the readings. To fill in remaining gaps he used the text of the Leningrad Codex, which was almost as distinguished and authoritative. He produced an edition of this reconstructed Bible for the Mossad Harav Kook, in Jerusalem, in 1989 and again (slightly revised) in 1998. Additionally, a photo-facsimile edition of the surviving pages of the Aleppo Codex was published by Nahum Ben-Zvi in 1976.
The pages smuggled into Israel were verified as the authentic Aleppo Codex, which owed its high reputation partly to the praise heaped upon it by Maimonides in the late 12th century, and partly also to its claim to have been personally proofread and marked with the vowel points and accents by the last of the great family of Masoretes, Aaron ben Moshe ben Asher, not only by matching the various descriptions which had been published, but also by matching descriptions by Maimonides in documents which had not yet been published.
As might be expected, the handwritten notes made by scholars who had been privileged to handle the Codex could not be as completely reliable as the manuscript itself. For example, a number of them had, on different occasions, copied down, supposedly word-for-word, the dedicatory colophon of the Codex (on a page now missing), which included some details of the manuscript's provenance—yet their different copies disagreed with each other.