The Leningrad Codex is so named because it has been housed at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg since 1863. In 1924, after the Russian Revolution, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad, and, because the codex was used as the basic text for the Biblia Hebraica since 1937, it became internationally known as the "Leningrad Codex". Although in 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the city's original name was restored to St Petersburg, the National Library of Russia requested that "Leningrad" be retained in the name of the codex. Nonetheless, the Codex is occasionally referred to as the Codex Petersburgensis or Petropolitanus, or the St. Petersburg Codex. This is ambiguous as, since 1876, these appellations refer to a different biblical codex which is even older, but contains only the later Prophets.
Contents
The biblical text as found in the codex contains the Hebrew letter-text along with Tiberian vowels and cantillation signs. In addition, there are masoretic notes in the margins. There are also various technical supplements dealing with textual and linguistic details, many of which are painted in geometrical forms. The codex is written on parchment and bound in leather. The Leningrad Codex, in extraordinarily pristine condition after a millennium, also provides an example of medieval Jewish art. Sixteen of the pages contain decorative geometric patterns that illuminate passages from the text. The carpet page shows a star with the names of the scribes on the edges and a blessing written in the middle. The order of the books in the Leningrad Codex follows the Tiberian textual tradition, which is also that of the later tradition of Sephardic biblical manuscripts. This order for the books differs markedly from that of most printed Hebrew bibles for the books of the Ketuvim. In the Leningrad Codex, the order of the Ketuvim is: Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah. The full order of the books is given below.
History
According to its colophon, the codex was copied in Cairo from manuscripts written by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher. It has been claimed to be a product of the Asher scriptorium itself; however, there is no evidence that Asher ever saw it. Unusual for a masoretic codex, the same man wrote the consonants, the vowels and the Masoretic notes. In its vocalization system it is considered by scholars to be the most faithful representative of ben Asher's tradition apart from the Aleppo Codex. Its letter-text is not superb, however, and contradicts its own masoretic apparatus in many hundreds of places. There are numerous alterations and erasures, and it was suggested by Moshe Goshen-Gottstein that an existing text not following Asher's rules was heavily amended so as to make it conform to these rules. The codex is now preserved in the National Library of Russia, accessioned as "Firkovich B 19 A". Its former owner, the Crimean Karaite collector Abraham Firkovich, left no indication in his writings where he had acquired the codex, which was taken to Odessa in 1838 and later transferred to the Imperial Library in St Petersburg.
Modern editions
Biblia Hebraica
In 1935, the Leningrad Codex was lent to the Old Testament Seminar of the University of Leipzig for two years while Paul E. Kahle supervised its transcription for the Hebrew text of the third edition of Biblia Hebraica, published in Stuttgart, 1937. The codex was also used for Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia in 1977, and is being used for Biblia Hebraica Quinta. As an original work by Tiberian masoretes, the Leningrad Codex was older by several centuries than the other Hebrew manuscripts which had been used for all previous editions of printed Hebrew bibles until Biblia Hebraica. The Westminster Leningrad Codex is an online digital version of the Leningrad Codex maintained by the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research at the Westminster Theological Seminary. This is a verified version of the Michigan-Claremont text, transcribed from BHS at the University of Michigan in 1981-1982 under the direction of H. Van Dyke Parunak and Richard E. Whitaker with funding from the Packard Foundation and the University of Michigan, with further proofreading and corrections. The online version includes transcription notes and tools for analyzing syntax.
Jewish editions
The Leningrad Codex also served as the basis for two important modern Jewish editions of the Hebrew Bible :
The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh and the various volumes of the JPS Torah Commentary and JPS Bible Commentary.
For minute masoretic details, however, Israeli and Jewish scholars have shown a marked preference for modern Hebrew editions based upon the Aleppo Codex. These editions use the Leningrad Codex as the most important source for the reconstruction of parts of the Aleppo Codex that have been missing since 1947.
Sequence of the books
As explained in the Contents section above, this is different from most modern Hebrew bibles: The Torah: The Nevi'im: The Ketuvim
