Sleuths Getting Closer to Finding Missing Pages from Treasured Aleppo Codex
"For Jews and for Western civilization this manuscript is equivalent to the Magna Carta."
(Jerusalem)—It reads like an Indiana Jones story. The Crown of Aleppo—or the Aleppo Codex—is the 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible which has been missing 196 pages since 1958, when it finally reached Israel after centuries of changing hands throughout Europe and the Mideast. According to a AP report, many scholars consider it the definitive edition of the Bible for Jews throughout the world. (Photo: Rachael Strecher/Associated Press)
Says the report: "Researchers representing the manuscript's custodian in Jerusalem now say they have leads on some of the missing pages and are nearer their goal of making the manuscript whole again. The key to finding the pages is thought to lie with the insular diaspora of Jews originating in Aleppo, Syria, where the manuscript resided in a synagogue's iron chest for centuries. Scholars believe that Aleppo Jews still hold many of the missing pages, while others have fallen into the hands of antiquities dealers."
"If there is a possibility, as the rumors say, that there are not only small fragments but also entire sections, that is extremely exciting," said Adolfo Roitman, the Israel Museum curator in charge of the manuscript. "We're missing entire books—most of the five Books of Moses, except for a few pages, and we have no Book of Esther, no Book of Daniel."
Hayim Tawil of New York's Yeshiva University says, "For Jews and for Western civilization this manuscript is equivalent to the Magna Carta."
