How to Find Your Way around the Aleppo Codex

With the Leningrad Codex, the Aleppo Codex is one of the most important witnesses to the text of the Hebrew Bible.¹ Printed texts definitely have their virtues. Other times, it’s helpful to consult a manuscript. Maybe you’re not making a trip to Israel any time soon, but you can still read the Aleppo Codex online.²

Where to Find the Aleppo Codex Online

There seem to be four major versions of the Aleppo Codex that are openly available online. These include

• An AJAX version photographed by Ardon Bar Hama. This version used to be available via a flash site at AleppoCodex.org. But that domain now simply redirects to this AJAX version.
• The updated, interface- and quality-enhanced version photographed by Ardon Bar Hama. This updated version includes several leaves that were (and remain) missing from the original Bar Hama archive (i.e., 91v, 163r, 188–89, and 197). The new version also has a transparent URL scheme that allows direct linking to each of the individual leaf-side images.
• The PDF version that provides a scan of Moshe Goshen-Gottstein’s facsimile edition (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1976). This version is manuscript number 3 in the collection provided by Tanach Online.
• An unprovenanced PDF version. This version is manuscript number 4 in the collection provided by Tanach Online.

Each version contains good quality images, but the unprovenanced PDF is by far the most incomplete. Bar Hama’s AJAX version and Goshen-Gottstein’s are more complete, but each of these digitizations also has various problems.³ Bar Hama’s updated version is by far the most complete, correct, and helpful.

Where to Find a Passage in the Aleppo Codex

Finding a passage in the Aleppo Codex was pretty straightforward for several years. AleppoCodex.org had a nice menu you could use to jump straight to the portion of the manuscript you were wanting to consult. That changed, however, when AleppoCodex.org’s Flash site got deprecated in favor of the current AJAX delivery method on Bar Hama’s website.

Both there and on the updated site, the interface now simply provides page numbers. It doesn’t include any indexing information. So, using only page numbers, you simply have to read around in the text. As you locate key elements, you can find where you are and get where you want to be.

There are, however, two other indexes to the Aleppo Codex that can make it easier for you to find what you need.

Option 1: Goshen-Gottstein’s Edition

In Moshe Goshen-Gottstein’s facsimile edition, the page footer includes both a page number and the range of text written on that page.⁴

The book names, as well as the chapter and verse numbers are all in Hebrew. But if you’re comfortable enough with Hebrew to read a Hebrew manuscript in the first place, this reference system should be pretty convenient.⁵

A downside is that this edition’s scan is comparatively dark. And there’s nothing on the page to tell you what leaf or side you’re on. So, to move between the scan of Goshen-Gottstein’s edition and Bar Hama’s images, you’ll need to

• do the math to calculate which leaf you’re on based on the number Goshen-Gottstein assigns to a given page and
• observe whether a given page is showing the front (and so “recto”) or back (and so “verso” of a given leaf).

In keeping with usual practice, “recto” (“r”) refers the first side read on a leaf. “Verso” (“v”) refers to the second side read. For left-to-right languages, this means the recto is on the right-hand side of the codex and the verso is on the left-hand side.

But for right-to-left languages, the same terminology has the opposite meaning. The recto falling on the left-hand side and the verso falls on the right-hand side.

What is common to the two seemingly opposite definitions, however, is that the recto is always the first side read on the leaf. The verso is always the second side read, irrespective of the direction the text runs.

Option 2: A Combined Index

The other option is to use a separate index like the one available here below. This index will give you the information you need to consult a passage in the Aleppo Codex in either of Bar Hama’s archives or the Goshen-Gottstein facsimile scan.

The base of this index came from the old AleppoCodex.org Flash site. I then corrected and supplemented its information by consulting the Goshen-Gottstein facsimile and Bar Hama’s updated site.

In this index, I’ve included direct links to each side of each page in Bar Hama’s updated archive for the Aleppo Codex based. Each link is keyed to the portion of the biblical text that appears on that side. The index also includes notes about oddities in the three other online versions of the Aleppo Codex mentioned above.

The index

• lists the biblical passages on each leaf and side of the Aleppo Codex,
• gives the leaf and side for those passages if you want to cite this leaf or look it up in Bar Hama’s AJAX archive,
• provides a direct link to each leaf and side in Bar Hama’s updated archive,
• notes the page number if you want to easily reference the scan of Goshen-Gottstein’s facsimile, and
• adds some additional notes about where there are gaps in the online versions of the codex.

To get a copy of this index, just click the button below to, enter your email address, and I’ll be happy to send the index along directly. Enjoy working with the Aleppo Codex!

1. Header image provided by Wikimedia Commons. ↩︎
2. For a good list of some other Hebrew manuscripts that have been brought online to varying degrees, see Charles Grebe, “Digital Facsimiles of Biblical Hebrew Manuscripts,” Animated Hebrew, n.d. ↩︎
3. I presume the issues with the PDF for Goshen-Gottstein’s edition are simply byproducts of the digitization process and not in the print version of his facsimile. Thus far, however, I have been unable to verify this suspicion from the print facsimile itself. ↩︎
4. Image provided by the Lanier Theological Library. ↩︎
5. If you need an easy reference for masoretic numbers, see the back cover of William R. Scott and H. P. Ruger, A Simplified Guide to BHS: Critical Apparatus, Masora, Accents, Unusual Letters and Other Markings, 3rd ed. (affiliate disclosure; North Richland Hills, TX: Bibal, 1995). ↩︎