Tanach (Hebrew Scriptures)
The Tanach (mistakenly known as the "Old Testament") is made up of the Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim. The Tanach was canonized in approximately 500 BCE by the Men of the Great Assembly. The Tanach was not originally broken into chapter and verses. The idea of chapter and verses - as well as the breaking apart of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles - is a leftover from Christians in the 13th century. Before the study of Torah a brocha (blessing) is said in which the person thanks G-d for giving the Jews Torah. There have been many rabbis who have written commentaries on the Torah. Any complete study of the Torah needs to include some commentary from these sages. (For further information see: Who wrote the Tanach?)

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Talmud
The Talmud is a basis of Jewish Law. The Talmud consists of the Mishnah and Gemara. The Written and Oral Torahs was handed down through the successive generations from the time of Moses. [See a page of Talmud] The Talmud is divided into 6 seders (orders) and 39 different tractates.

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Midrash
The term "midrash" designates an exegesis which, going more deeply than the mere literal sense, attempts to penetrate into the spirit of the Scriptures, to examine the text from all sides, and thereby to derive interpretations which are not immediately obvious. ... The Bible exegesis of the Rabbis which had a moralizing or edifying tendency must be distinguished from that which was of a legal nature: the former is known as Midrash Haggadah; the latter, as Midrash Halakah.^[1]

Midrash Haggadah embraces the interpretation, illustration, or expansion, in a moralizing or edifying manner, of the non-legal portions of the Bible. The word "haggadah" (Aramaic, "agada") means primarily the recitation or teaching of Scripture; in a narrower sense it denotes the exegetic amplification of a Biblical passage and the development of a new thought based thereupon.^[2] ... Strictly speaking, [Midrash Halakah is] the verification of the traditionally received Halakah by identifying its sources in the Bible and by interpreting these Scriptural passages as proofs of its authenticity. The term is applied also to the derivation of new halakot and legal enactments from the Bible, either by means of a correct interpretation of the obvious meaning of the Scriptural words themselves or bythe application of certain hermeneutic rules.^[3]

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Zohar
The Zohar is widely considered the most important work of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. It is a mystical commentary on the Torah (the five books of Moses), written in medieval Aramaic. It contains a mystical discussion of the nature of G-d, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, sin, redemption, good and evil, and the relationship between God and man.

The Zohar is not one book, but a group of books; these books include scriptural interpretations as well as material on theosophic theology, mythical cosmogony, and mystical psychology.

According to the 20th century religious historian Gershom Scholem, most of the Zohar was written in an exalted, eccentric style of Aramaic, a language that was spoken in the Land of Israelduring the Roman Period in the first centuries of the Common Era. The Zohar first appeared in Spainin the 13th century, and was published by a Jewish writer named Moses de Leon.. Scholem, based on accounts from De Leon's contemporaries, and on evidence within the Zohar (Spanish idioms and syntax, for example), concluded that De Leon was the actual author.^[1]

De Leon himself ascribed this work to a rabbi of the second century, Shimon bar Yochai.^[2] Jewish legend holds that during a time of Roman persecution, Rabbi Shimon hid in a cave for 13 years, studying the Torah with his son, Elazar.³ During this time he is said to have been inspired by Elijahthe Prophet to write the Zohar.^[1]

Most of Orthodox Judaism holds that the teachings of Kabbalah were transmitted from teacher to teacher, in a long and continuous chain, from the Biblical era until its redaction by Shimon ben Yochai. Many accept fully the claims that the Kabbalah's teachings are in essence a revelation from G-d to the Biblical patriarch Abraham, Moses and other ancient figures, but were never printed and made publicly available until the time of the Zohar's medieval publication. The greatest acceptance of this sequence of events is held within Charedi Judaism. Some claim the tradition that Rabbi Shimon wrote that the concealment of the Zohar would last for exactly 1200 years from the time of destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE and so before revealing the Zohar in 1270, Moses De Leon uncovered the manuscripts in a cave in Israel.¹

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Prophecy and Prophets
A prophet is a spokesman for G-d, a person chosen by G-d to speak to people on G-d's behalf and convey a message or teaching. Prophets were role models of holiness, scholarship and closeness to G-d and set the standards for the entire community. The Talmud says there were hundreds of thousands of prophets. Most of the prophets conveyed messages that were intended solely for their own generation and were not reported in scripture. Scripture identifies only 55 prophets (48 male and 7 female) of Israel. Not all prophets were Jewish.. A well-known gentile prophet is Balaam (Numbers 22). Some of the prophets, such as Jonah, were sent on missions to speak to the gentiles. The gift of prophecy has ended for both gentile and Jew but it will be restored during the Messianic Age.

Prophecy is not a gift that is arbitrarily conferred upon people. The gift of prophecy is the culmination of a person's spiritual and ethical development. When a person reaches a sufficient level of spiritual and ethical achievement, the Shechinah comes to rest upon him or her. Likewise, the gift of prophecy leaves the person if that person lapses from his or her spiritual and ethical perfection.

The greatest of the prophets was Moses. It is said that Moses saw all that all of the other prophets combined saw, and more. All subsequent prophecy was merely an expression of what Moses had already seen.

Prophets of the Tanach

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Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
The Jewish Apocrypha (from the Greek, meaning "secret" or "things hidden away") and Pseudepigrapha are made up of various books - written mostly in Greek with some in Hebrew or Aramaic - that were written by Jews but never canonized in the Tanach. Some of these books have been included in Protestant and Catholic Bibles but are not part of the Jewish Holy Texts. The Protestant Bibles place these texts between the "Old Testament" and "New Testament" and are referred to as the Apocrypha. The Catholic Bibles places these texts throughout the Bible and are referred to as the Deuterocanonical. Jewish Apocryphal texts are generally divided into four types: historical, prophetic, lyric, and didactic.

Apocrypha:
Additions to Esther
"The additions were probably made in the time of the Maccabees, when the people were hoping for another sudden liberation by divine intervention. They aimed chiefly to supply the religious element signally lacking in the canonical book." (source)

1 Baruch | 2 Baruch
"One of the Apocryphal or so-called deuterocanonic books of the Old Testament. It consists of two parts. The first (i. 1-iii. 8) is in the form of a prose letter with a historical introduction. ... The second part of the book (iii. 9-v. 9), which differs greatly in form and tone from the first, consists of two poems." (source)

Bel and the Dragon
"An Apocryphal tract, placed, in the Septuagint and Theodotion, among the additions to the Book of Daniel (see Apocrypha). It consists of two separate stories: one relating to Bel; the other, to the Dragon. In the former, Daniel, by a clever device, exposes the trick by which the priests of Bel made it appear that the idol consumed the food and drink set before it. In the latter, Daniel slays the Dragon-god by putting into its mouth cakes made of pitch, fat, and hair, after eating which it bursts asunder. Daniel is thereupon cast into a den of lions, but remains unharmed by the beasts, and is fed by the prophet Habakkuk, who is miraculously brought from Judea for that purpose by an angel." (source)

1 Esdras | 2 Esdras
"I Esdras may be divided into ten sections, eight of which are only excerpts from certain parts of II Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. ... [II Esdras] consists of seven sections, called "visions" since Volkmar (1863): 1-3 treat chiefly of religious problems; 4-6 consist mainly of eschatological visions; 7 tells of Ezra's literary activity and death." (source)

Judith
"The events of the narrative are represented as taking place on the occasion of the hostile advance of an "Assyrian" army into Palestine. The inhabitants of a certain Jewish city called "Bethulia," (properly "Betylua") can check the advance of the enemy, because their city occupies the narrow and important pass through which is the entrance into Judea (Judith iv. 7 et seq., viii. 21-24). But the Assyrians, instead of attempting to force the pass, blockade the city and cut off its water-supply. In the distress which follows, Judith, a woman of Bethulia, works deliverance for her city—and thus for all Judea and Jerusalem—by bewitching the Assyrian captain, Holofernes, and cutting off his head." (source)

Letter of Jeremiah
"A Greek apocryphon, being a fictitious letter which Jeremiah is supposed to have written to the Jews who were about to be led as captives to Babylonia, the purpose of the letter being to warn them against idolatry." (source)

1 Maccabees | 2 Maccabees | 3 Maccabees | 4 Maccabees
"The First Book of the Maccabees covers the period of forty years from the accession of Antiochus (175 B.C.) to the death of Simon the Maccabee (135 B.C.). ... The Second Book of the Maccabees opens with two letters written by Jews resident in Palestine to brethren dwelling in Egypt. ... [The books then go on to relatre] how the attempt of Heliodorus to plunder the Temple , [narrating] the wickedness of the high priests Jason and Menelaus, and of Simon, the Temple overseer, how Antiochus began the persecution of the Jews, the story of the martyrdom of Eleazar and the seven young men and their mother, [and] the history of the wars of Judas Maccabeus." (source)

Prayer of Manasseh
"[The] whole story of Manasseh is given as an instructive lesson to bishops in their dealings with the erring and in the administration of justice." (source)

Prayer of Azariah
"A prayer and hymn credited to the three young associates of Daniel-Ananiah, Misael, and Azariah, better known by their Babylonian names-Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The addition begins with Abednego's prayer of confession for Israel's sins, offered while the three are in the fiery furnace. This poetry is followed a brief prose account, identifying the fourth man in the fire as an angel of the Lord. Poetry resumes in the hymn of the three, still in the furnace, who bless God for his deliverance and the created order." (source)

Psalm 151
"Psalm 151 is the name given to a short psalm that is found in most copies of the Septuagint[1] but not in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible." (source)

Susanna
"The main story is as follows: Susanna, ... the beautiful and pious wife of the rich Joacim (Joakim) of Babylon, walking in her garden, is seen by two elders, recently appointed judges, who, inflamed with lust, approach her with an infamous proposal, and, when repulsed, accuse her publicly of adultery. Brought before the tribunal, she is found guilty, and is led forth to execution; but at this moment Daniel, then a young lad, interposes and by a clever device shows the falsity of the accusers. These are put to death; Susanna is justified; and Daniel's reputation among the people is thenceforth very high." (source)

Tobit
"The story of the book is as follows: Tobit, a pious man of the tribe of Naphtali, who remained faithful to Jerusalem when his tribe fell away to Jeroboam's cult of the bull, was carried captive to Nineveh in the time of Enemessar (Shalmaneser), King of Assyria." There he, wife, and son lived lives a service to others. (source)

Wisdom of Joshua Son of Sirach
The Wisdom of Joshua Son of Sirach "is a collection of moral counsels and maxims, often utilitarian in character and for the most part secular, although religious apothegms occasionally occur. They are applicable to all conditions of life: to parents and children, to husbands and wives, to the young, to masters, to friends, to the rich, and to the poor. Many of them are rules of courtesy and politeness; and a still greater number contain advice and instruction as to the duties of man toward himself and others, especially the poor, as well as toward society and the state, and most of all toward [G-d]." (source)

Wisdom of Solomon
"The first six chapters of Wisdom form an address to the rulers of the earth. They accentuate the necessity of wisdom as indispensable to rulers. ... The second part contains an address of King Solomon, relating how his life was guided solely by wisdom, and closing with a prayer offered by him to God that he might obtain her." (source)

Pseudepigrapha:
Ahiqar
"The narrative of the initial part of the story is expanded greatly by the presence of a large number of wise sayings and proverbs that Ahikar is portrayed as speaking to his nephew." (source)

Apocalypse of Abraham
"This apocalypse, written in the name of Abraham, tells how the patriarch's experience with pagan idols led him to seek the true G-d. G-d, the Creator, answers Abraham in the form of fire. G-d tells him to go to Mount Horeb and offer sacrifices to G-d. Abraham obeys and receives a vision, including a revelation of the Covenant, the destruction of the Temple, and the struggles the Jews will endure. Ten plagues will test humanity, but G-d will prevail over evil and the promised Messiah will appear and lead G-d's chosen people to everlasting peace and rejoicing." (source)

Apocalypse of Adam
"The revelation which Adam taught his son Seth in the seven hundreth year." (source)

Apocalypse of Elijah
"Michael reveals the end of time to Elijah on Mt. Carmel." (source)

Apocalypse of Zephaniah
"The narrative tells of Zephaniah being taken to see the destiny of souls after death." (source)

Apocryphon of Ezekiel
"[The] story of a blind man and a lame man and their attempt at thievery. The story tells how a king has had his figs stolen by the blind man and the lame man as a team. Neither of the two men can accomplish this on their own, but by working together, they could do so. The [story] ends with a stated moral of the story which says that the body and the soul of a person will be judged by God for the acts that both commit, for they go through life as a team." (source)

Book of Adam
The Book of Adam tells of Adam's time in the Garden of Eden and the expulsion as well as Adam's repentance, illness, death, and funeral. (source)

1 Book of Adam and Eve | 2 Book of Adam and Eve
"An elaboration on the biblical account of Adam and Eve. ... The account begins after Adam and Eve have been forced to leave the garden, but the characters recall their life in the garden on several occasions. Eve is portrayed as entirely responsible for the fall and subsequent transgressions. While Adam attempts to do penitence, Eve is again deceived by Satan, who, this time, appears to her as an angel of light. In this story, the supposition is that when a person dies, his or her spirit leaves the body and is not rejoined until the resurrection in the age to come." (source)

Biblical Antiquities of Philo
"It chronicles biblical history from Adam to the death of Saul with omissions, modifications, and additions to the biblical texts." (source)

Book of Giants
"The Book of Giants retells part of this story [the mingling of angel and human] and elaborates on the exploits of the giants, especially the two children of Shemihaza, Ohya and Hahya. Since no complete manuscript exists of Giants, its exact contents and their order remain a matter of guesswork." (source)

Book of Jasher
"A book, apparently containing heroic songs, mentioned twice in the Old Testament: in the account of the battle of Gibeon a fragment of a song of Joshua is given as taken from it; and another fragment is quoted in David's lamentation for Saul and Jonathan." (source)

Book of Noah

Eldad and Modad
"This Messianic prophecy of Eldad and Medad seems to have been made the subject of a special work, consisting of 400 lines, which circulated in the first Christian century." (source)

1 Enoch | 2 Enoch | 3 Enoch
"Apocryphal works attributed to Enoch. From Gen. v. 24 ("Enoch walked with God" and "God took him") a cycle of Jewish legends about Enoch was derived, which, together with apocalyptic speculations naturally ascribed to such a man, credited with superhuman knowledge, found their literary expression in the Books of Enoch." (source)

Genesis Apocryphon (aka Tales of the Patriarchs)
"The 'Tales of the Patriarchs,' which deals with the descendants of Adam, is sometimes referred to as the "Genesis Apocryphon." Originally, the Genesis Apocryphon was referred to as the fourth scroll because it was the fourth scroll out of seven to be found in the Qumran Cave." (source)

Joseph and Aseneth
"Joseph and Aseneth is a narrative describing the conversion of Aseneth, the pagan wife of the patriarch Joseph." (source)

Jubilees
"Midrashic commentary on the Book of Genesis and on part of the Book of Exodus, in the form of an apocalypse, containing the views, legends, and religious practises of the most rigid Pharisaic (or Hasidæan) school of the time of John Hyrcanus, in whose reign it was written, between 135 and 105 B.C." (source)

Ladder of Jacob
"The Ladder of Jacob is based on the Biblical dream of Jacob." (source)

Letter of Aristeas
"By the advice of Demetrius Phalereus, chief librarian of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the king decided to include in his library a translation of the Jewish Lawbook. To secure the cooperation of the high priest Eleazar at Jerusalem, Aristeas advises him to purchase and set free the numerous Jews who had been sold into slavery after his father's campaign against them (312). He sends Andreas, a captain of his body-guard, and Aristeas, laden with rich presents, and entrusted with a letter, asking Eleazar to send him seventy-two elders to undertake the translation." (source)

Lives of the Prophets
"A collection of biographical notes relating details of the lives and deeds of various prophets. It was circulated widely among Christians and probably reflects Jewish sources." (source)

Martyrdom of Isaiah (Chapters 1:1-3:12, and 5:1b-14 are Jewish)
"Isaiah predicts, in the presence of Hezekiah, his own death through Manasseh; after Hezekiah's death. Isaiah, on account of Manasseh's evil doings, flees into the desert with several other prophets; then, accused by Balkira, a Samaritan, he is seized by Manasseh, in whose heart Beliar (Belial) reigns. ... In the presence of Balkira and of other false prophets, Isaiah, refusing to recant, is sawn asunder by means of a wooden saw." (source)

Psalms of Solomon
"The book consists of eighteen psalms, the contents of which may be summarized as follows: suffering inflicted by foreign invasion (i., viii.); desecration of Jerusalem and the Temple, death in Egypt of the invader (ii.); debauchery of Jewish "men-pleasers" (iv.); recognition of God's justice in rewarding the pious and in punishing the wicked (iii., vi., ix., x., xiii., xiv., xv.); expectation of and prayer for divine intervention (vii., xi., xii., xvi.); description of the Messiah (xvii., xviii.)." (source)

Revelation of Moses
"For the modesty displayed by Moses when summoned to appear before Pharaoh to demand the liberation of the Israelites, God commands Meṭaṭron (Enoch) to allow Moses to ascend into heaven. After Meṭaṭron has transformed Moses' body into a fiery figure like unto that of the angels, he leads him up through the seven heavens. ... God then tells Moses that He will confer on him the further privilege of seeing hell and paradise." (source)

Testament of Abraham
"The book contains the story of the death of Abraham, told in exactly the same form as that in which the death of Moses is described by the ancient Haggadah; with the view of portraying in poetic style the pious man, on the one hand, struggling against the fate of mortality, and yet, on the other, enjoying, while still in mortal garb, the privilege of surveying the whole world with the eyes of an immortal being." (source)

Testament of Job
"Like the Patriarchs, ... Job in a farewell address to his children reviews his life, telling them that he is of the generation of Abraham, a descendant of Esau, and was known as "Jobab," a rich ruler of the land of Uz (Ausitis), before G-d called him "Job" because of his martyrdom; that his second wife, their mother, was Dinah, the daughter of Jacob" (source)

Testament (Assumption) of Moses
"As the time for Moses' death approached, God permitted him to ascend into heaven, and unveiled to him the future world." (source)

Testament of Solomon
"Pseudepigraphic treatise on the forms and activities of demons and the charms effective against them. ... The Testament professes to be Solomon's own account of certain experiences of his during the building of the Temple." (source)

Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
"Title of twelve connected documents which purport to record the last words and exhortations of the twelve sons of Jacob." (source)

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Dead Sea Scrolls
Timetable of Discovery and Debate

The Dead Sea scrolls consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea.^[1]

The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 CE, and preserve evidence of considerable diversity of belief and practice within late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus. These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE to 70 CE. The scrolls are most commonly identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, but recent scholarship has challenged their association with the scrolls.^[1]

In 1947, young Bedouin shepherds entered a long-untouched limestone cave and found jars filled with ancient scrolls. That initial discovery by the Bedouins yielded seven scrolls and began a search that lasted nearly a decade and eventually produced thousands of scroll fragments from eleven caves. During those same years, archaeologists excavated the Qumran ruin, a complex of structures located on a barren terrace between the cliffs where the caves are found and the Dead Sea. Historical, paleographic, and linguistic evidence, as well as carbon-14 dating, established that the scrolls and the Qumran ruin dated from the third century BCE to 68 CE - during the late Second Temple Period - the scrolls are older than any other surviving biblical manuscripts by almost one thousand years.

The Dead Sea Scrolls texts are identified by a number and letter combination, indicating the cave from which they were recovered. This initial code is followed by either a second number (the catalog file number assigned to each fragment as it was  archived) or by a few letters that abbreviate an alternative name given to a fragment by researchers, usually the supposed title of the text.

Generally speaking the manuscripts fall into one or more of the following genres:  Biblical texts, Pentateuch stories and commentaries; legal and ritual texts; prophets stories and commentaries; psalms and poetry; wisdom literature; prophecy and visions; sectarian literature; and "miscellaneous things that don't fit anywhere else".  Some texts can be assigned to several categories depending on the subjective reading of the interpreter.

Scrolls Discovered in the Caves
Cave 1: Manual of Discipline, War of Sons of Light, Thanksgiving Scroll, Isaiah, Genesis Apocryphon and Habakkuk Pesher.^[2]
Cave 2: 300 fragments of other scrolls, including Jubilees and the Wisdom of Ben-Sirach^[1]
Cave 3: Copper Scroll^[2]
Cave 4: 122 biblical scrolls (or fragments)^[2]
Caves 5-6: Modest finds^[1]
Cave 7: Fragments written in Greek^[1]
Caves 8-9: Fragments^[1]
Cave 10: Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Genesis, and various fragments^[2]
Cave 11: Thirty scrolls were found including Leviticus and the Temple Scroll^[2]

Significance
The significance of the scrolls relates in a large part to the field of textual criticism. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible were Masoretic texts dating to 9th century. The biblical manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls push that date back to the 2nd century BCE. Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were in Greek in manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.^[1]

Access and Publication
Prior to 1967, the Scrolls were housed in the Rockefeller Museum (formerly known as the Palestine Archaeological Museum) in Jerusalem. After the Six Day War, the Scrolls were moved to the Shrine of the Book, at the Israel Museum.^[1]

Some of the documents were published early. All the writings in Cave 1 appeared in print between 1950 and 1956, those from eight other caves were released in 1963, and 1965 saw the publication of the Psalms Scroll from Cave 11. Their translations into English soon followed.^[1]

An exception was the contents of Cave 4, representing 40% of the total. Their publication had been entrusted to "The International Team" led by Father Roland de Vaux, a member of the Dominican Order in Jerusalem. This group published the first volume of the material entrusted to them in 1968, but spent much of their energies defending their theories regarding the materials, instead of publishing them. Geza Vermes, who had been involved from the start in the project, blamed the delay—and eventual failure—on de Vaux's selection of a team poorly suited to the work, as well as de Vaux's vain reliance on "his personal, quasi-patriarchal authority" to ensure its prompt completion.^[1]

Thus a large portion of the finds in Cave 4 were not released for years. Access to the scrolls was governed by a "secrecy rule" which allowed only the original International Team or their designates to view the original materials. After de Vaux's death in 1971, his successors repeatedly refused to allow the publication even of photographs of these materials, preventing other scholars from making their own judgments. This rule was eventually broken, first by Ben Zion Wacholder's publication in the fall of 1991 of 17 documents reconstructed from a concordance that had been made in 1988 and had come into the hands of scholars outside of the International Team; next, in the same month, by the discovery and publication of a complete set of facsimiles of the Cave 4 materials at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, which were not covered by the "secrecy rule". After further delays, these photographs were published by Robert Eisenman and James Robinson as A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. As a result, the "secrecy rule" was lifted.^[1]

Publication accelerated with the appointment of the respected Dutch-Israeli textual scholar Emanuel Tov as editor-in-chief in 1990. Publication of the Cave 4 documents soon commenced, with five volumes in print by 1995. As of March 2009 volume XXXII remains to be completed, with the whole series, Discoveries in the Judean Desert, running to thirty nine volumes in total.^[1]

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Targum
Targum Onkelos is the Babylonian Targum to the Torah. The work has been identified with Aquila of Sinope. Some believe that the name “Onkelos” originally referred to Aquilla but was applied to the Aramaic translation instead of the Greek translation. However, we may never know who the author was since the author takes great pains to avoid any type of personification or identification. Since Talmudic times, the Yemenite communities recite the Targum Onkelos alternately with the Hebrew verses of the Torah in the synagogue.

Targum Yonatan is the Babylonian Targum to the Nevi’im [Prophets] section of the Tanach. Talmudic tradition attributes its authorship to Yonatan ben Uzziel. It is similar in style to the Targum Onkelos. Since Talmudic times, the Yemenite communities recite the Targum Yonatan alternately with the Hebrew Haftorah verses of the Nevi’im in the synagogue. The Talmud in Berachot 8b states: “The Gemara says that if [one] reads the Parshah twice each week and its Targum once, ‘his days and years are lengthened.’”¹ Many people believe that this Targum refers to Targum Yonatan as well as to Targum Onkelos.

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Aleppo Codex
The Aleppo Codex – also known as the Keter Aram Tsova (כֶּתֶר אֲרָם צוֹבָא‎) – is a medieval bound manuscript of the Tanach written in the tenth century CE.¹ It is considered to be the most authoritative document in the masorah [tradition] by which the Tanach has been preserved from generation to generation.

The Codex was purchased by the Karaite community of Jerusalem about one hundred years after it was written. During the First Crusade, the synagogue was plundered and the Codex was transferred to Egypt after the Jews paid a high price to ransom it. The Codex was preserved in the Rabbanite synagogue in Cairo where Maimonides (Rambam) described it as a text trusted by all Jewish scholars.¹ The Aleppo Codex was the manuscript used by Maimonides when he set down his rules in his Mishneh Torah in the book Hichot Sefer Torah.

“Since I have seen great confusion about these matters in all the scrolls I have seen, and similarly, the masters of the tradition who have written down and composed [texts] to make it known [which passages] are p’tuchot and which are s’tumot are divided with regard to the scrolls on which to rely, I saw fit to write down the entire list of all the passages in the Torah that are s’tumot and p’tuchot, and also the form of the songs. In this manner, all the scrolls can be corrected and checked against these [principles].

The scroll on which I relied on for [clarification of] these matters was a scroll renowned in Egypt, which includes all the 24 books [of the Bible]. It was kept in Jerusalem for many years so that scrolls could be checked from it. Everyone relies upon it because it was corrected by ben Asher, who spent many years writing it precisely, and [afterward] checked it many times.

I relied [on this scroll] when I wrote a Torah scroll according to law.”²

In 1375, a descendant of Maimonides brought the Codex to Aleppo, Syria which led to its present name.1 The Codex remained in Aleppo for 500 years until riots in 1947 led to the destruction of the synagogue where it was kept. It was assumed at first that the Codex had been completely destroyed but it turned out that the Codex had been saved and kept in a secret hiding place. In 1958, the Codex was smuggled out of Syria and brought to Jerusalem where it was delivered to the president of Israel, Yitzak ben-Zvi.³

In its current condition, the Aleppo Codex contains only 295 pages out of the original 491 pages. The missing or destroyed parts include:

• The first seven pages which included the Masoretic grammatical commentary.
• One hundred and eighteen pages containing the Torah (up to Deuteronomy 28:17).
• Three pages from Second Kings (14:21-18:13).
• Three pages from Jeremiah (29:9-31:34).
• Three pages from the Trei Asar [12 Prophets] (Amos 8:13 to Micah 5:1 and the entirety of Obadiah and Jonah).
• Four pages from the end of the Trei Asar (the end of Zephaniah to Zechariah 9:17 and the entirety of Haggai).
• Two pages from Psalms (15:1-25:1).
• Thirty-six pages from the Ketuvim [Writings] (Song of Songs 3:11 until the end of the Ketuvim-including the entirety of Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah).
• One page containing the dedication of the Aleppo Codex.
• Twenty pages at the end of the Aleppo Codex containing the Masoretic annotations.⁴

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Leningrad Codex

The Leningrad Codex (also known as Leningradensis or the Cairo Codex) is the oldest complete Tanach that is still preserved. This Codex belongs to the group of Hebrew texts known as the Masoretic texts. The Codex was written in 1009 in Cairo, Egypt.¹ The person who commissioned the Codex is known as Meborak Ha-Kohen ben-Netan’el (also called Ozdad ha-Kohen) and written by the scribe Shemu’el ben-Ya’aqob.²

In 1863, The Russian National Library acquired the Codex from the Karaite Abraham Firkovich.² Today it still resides in St. Petersburg, Russia in the Russian National Library where it has been located since the 1800’s. Since the Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete manuscript of the Tanach within the Masoretic textual tradition of the Ben Asher family, it is used today as the basis for most of the modern-day printed editions of the Tanach,³ including the Biblia Hebraica (1937) and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1967/1977).²

The Leningrad Codex is a completely vowelized text. It also contains the te’amim (trop marks) above and below the letters that are used for cantillation marks, markers for the stress in each word, and marks for phrasing and punctuation.¹ The te’amim follow the Masoretic traditions – specifically the traditions from the scholars centered in Tiberias. As a product of the Ben Asher scribal tradition (as is the Aleppo Codex), there are also Masoretic textual and marginal notations throughout the Codex.²

There are also indications as to the Medieval Jewish world contained within this Codex. There are two poems – The Adornment of Israel and the Genealogy of the Prophets of Israel. These poems are attributed to Moshe ben-Asher. The Codex is also illuminated with sixteen full carpet pages decorated in gold, red, and blue painted ornaments. These illustrations are attributed to Shemu’el ben-Ya’aqob.²

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Bible Code
Bible code research dates to at least the 12th century, when rabbinical scholars first wrote about discovering meaningful words hidden in the Hebrew text of the Torah. Tradition holds that everything and everyone that ever was or ever will be was recorded in the text of the first five books of the Bible. Thus, Rabbis encouraged caution in Torah copyists by reminding them that just one letter lost in their work could bring about the end of the world.

The original statistical research, done by three Israeli mathematicians, was published in Statistical Science. These mathematicians reduced the Book of Genesis to a single continuous text string without spaces or vowels, 304,805 characters long. Using Equidistant Letter Sequences (ELS), they tested for a list of 32 famous Jewish scholars and calculated probabilities of their names occurring near the day and month of their birth or death. There have been interesting codes found that refer to such topics as Rabin's assassination, John F. Kennedy's assassination, and Rabbi Kahane's murder.

There is evidence that the Bible Code is purely fictional. Dr. James Price has found many instances of blasphemous statements by using the Bible Code. For example, in Genesis 41:27 he found the code for "We will awaken, YHVH (G-d's proper Name) is an abomination." For more information, please read this article The Yeshua Codes: Fact or Fiction

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