Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nash Papyrus was the oldest known manuscript containing text from the Hebrew Bible. Location: Unknown – allegedly from Fayyum, EgyptĬontents: The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) and part of The Shema (a prayer from the Torah) The reunited scroll contains a section from the Book of Exodus, including the “Song of the Sea.” The owner of the London Manuscript, the Loewentheil Family of New York, also cooperated with Engel and Mishor on their mission to reunite the two pieces. The University gave Engel and Mishor a facsimile of the manuscript and gave them permission to publish their findings. The Ashkar-Gilson Manuscript had been donated to Duke University after it was first discovered in 1972. Edna Engel of the Hebrew Palaeography Project at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, who determined that the two fragments were in fact a perfect match. Mordechay Mishor, a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, is credited with first noticing the similarities between the Ashkar-Glison Manuscript and the London Manuscript. Prior to 2007, no one knew that the two Torah fragments known as the Ashkar-Gilson Hebrew Manuscript #2 and the London Manuscript were actually part of the same scroll.

Photo source: Center for Online Judaic Studies Location: Found in Beirut, Lebanon may have actually come from the Cairo Genizah in Egypt London Manuscript and Ashkar-Gilson Hebrew Manuscript #2 Over the years, a few of the missing pages have turned up and many efforts have been made to find the rest of the Aleppo Codex.ĥ. Today only about 295 pages of the Aleppo Codex have survived, including nearly all of the Torah (the Pentateuch). In 1958, the remaining Aleppo Codex was smuggled out of Syria and taken to Jerusalem for safe keeping.

Initially, everyone thought that the Aleppo Codex had been completely destroyed, but parts of it were secretly rescued. It resided in Aleppo, Syria for hundreds of years before being destroyed in 1947 after riots broke out in Syria following the establishing of the State of Israel. For more than a thousand years, the Aleppo Codex was carefully preserved by Jewish communities in the Middle East.

The Aleppo Codex was at one point the oldest and most accurate copy of the complete Hebrew Bible. Location: Tiberias, in what is now Northern Israel currently in JerusalemĬontents: Prior to 1947, the complete Hebrew Bible hundreds of pages missing today, including nearly the whole Torah (Pentateuch)

The seventh scroll book