In the upper room of a synagogue in Cairo, sometime in the late nineteenth century, an English traveller was shown an old Hebrew codex of unusual size. The codex was opened at the book of Isaiah, and the visitor saw that the consonantal text was pointed with a complete Tiberian vocalization, with accents above and below each consonant, with extensive marginal Masorah in a small square hand, and with a colophon identifying the scribe as one Moses ben Asher, of the Tiberian family of Masoretes. The codex was, the visitor was told, the principal copy of the Latter Prophets used by the Karaite community in Cairo, and had been in their possession since the early medieval period. The visitor took notes, and within a few years the manuscript had been described in the journals of the Palestine Exploration Fund, in the catalogues of the Cambridge University Library, and in the first fascicles of what would eventually become the critical apparatus of the Hebrew Bible. The codex is now known as Codex Cairensis, with the shelfmark Cambridge University Library MS Or. 444, and it is one of the three or four most important manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible in existence.
Provenance and the Karaite synagogue at Cairo
The Cairo Prophets Codex, as the manuscript is more commonly called in the scholarly literature, takes its name from the Karaite synagogue in Fustat, the early Islamic capital of Egypt, where it was kept for at least four centuries before its transfer to Cambridge in 1895. The synagogue, known in the sources as the Keniset al-Yahud al-Qara’in or the Synagogue of the Karaite Jews, had been in continuous use since at least the ninth century CE, and its upper chamber held a small collection of Hebrew manuscripts that had been brought to Egypt by travellers and merchants along the Mediterranean trade routes. The collection included biblical codices, prayer books, legal compendia, and a few liturgical and polemical works of the Karaite tradition. The Cairo Prophets Codex was, by the consensus of modern scholarship, the oldest and most carefully kept of the biblical codices in the collection, and was treated by the community as a sacred object. It was produced for synagogue reading, not for private study, and the community believed that it had been written by the hand of Moses ben Asher himself, the most revered of the Tiberian Masoretes of the early tenth century.
The transfer to Cambridge is the central fact of the manuscript’s modern history. The Karaite community of Cairo, like the rabbinic community, had been in decline through the nineteenth century, and by the 1880s was a small fraction of its medieval size. A series of attempts to preserve the remaining manuscripts of the community through donation to European libraries was undertaken in the 1880s and 1890s, with the result that several of the most important manuscripts of the Karaite synagogue, including the Cairo Prophets Codex, were sold or donated to the Cambridge University Library between 1895 and 1897. The acquisition was arranged through the agency of the Cambridge scholar and orientalist Stanley A. Cook, who had visited the synagogue in 1894 and had been permitted to inspect the manuscript. The transfer was controversial. The Karaite community in Cairo objected, on the grounds that the manuscript was a sacred object of the community and should not have been removed. The Cambridge Library defended the acquisition on the grounds that the manuscript was being poorly conserved in Cairo and that the Library had the resources to preserve it properly. The argument was, and remains, contested.
The shelfmark Or. 444 reflects the Library’s catalogue of oriental manuscripts, and the manuscript is today kept in the Library’s Rare Books Room. The manuscript is digitised in high resolution and is available for scholarly consultation through the Cambridge Digital Library. The manuscript is also reproduced in facsimile by the Hebrew University Bible Project, and is the principal witness for several of the books of the Latter Prophets in the critical editions of the Hebrew Bible prepared by the Hebrew University Bible Project and by the German Bible Society. The manuscript’s role in modern textual criticism is one of the reasons for its scholarly importance. The manuscript has been edited, in whole or in part, by several generations of scholars since the early twentieth century, and the apparatus of the Biblia Hebraica and of the forthcoming Biblia Hebraica Quinta draws heavily on its readings.
What survives of the manuscript’s chain of custody before its arrival in Cairo is harder to reconstruct. The Tiberian Masoretes of the family of Ben Asher were based in Tiberias, in the Land of Israel, in the eighth to tenth centuries CE. Their scriptoria produced biblical codices that were carried by travellers and merchants to the diaspora communities of the Mediterranean world. The Cairo Prophets Codex, on the colophon evidence, was written in Tiberias in the early tenth century CE, possibly by Moses ben Asher himself, possibly by a member of his scriptorium working under his direction. The codex was then carried to Egypt, possibly by a merchant, possibly by a rabbinic or Karaite scholar who had made the pilgrimage to the Land of Israel, possibly by a member of the Ben Asher family who had moved to Cairo. The chain is lost. What is known is that the codex was in Cairo before the Mamluk period, and was in the possession of the Karaite community there before the Ottoman conquest of 1517. The community treated the codex as a treasure, and the survival of the manuscript for more than a thousand years is itself an achievement of conservation.
Codicology, scribal hands, and physical form
The Cairo Prophets Codex is a substantial manuscript. The codex, as it survives, consists of 188 leaves of parchment, in the codex form (that is, the leaves are bound along one edge rather than being rolled as a scroll), with a folio size of approximately 32 by 24 centimetres. The original codex was larger; a small number of leaves have been lost from the beginning, the end, and at various points in the middle. The surviving text contains the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, treated as a single book). The order of the books is the classical Tiberian order, with the Former Prophets (Joshua through Kings) coming before the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel), and the Twelve Minor Prophets coming after Ezekiel. The order is significant, because the classical Tiberian order is the order that became canonical in the rabbinic tradition, and is the order of the books in the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex. The Cairo Prophets Codex is one of the earliest manuscripts to attest the Tiberian order as the standard order of the Prophets in the Hebrew Bible.
The parchment is of good quality, carefully prepared, and the leaves are arranged in quires of four bifolia each, with the quires numbered in the upper margin in Hebrew characters. The text is written in a single column on each page, with a width of approximately 18 centimetres and a height of approximately 25 centimetres. The number of lines per page varies between 21 and 25, depending on the section of the book. The lines are ruled with a hard point, and the ruling is visible on the parchment. The scribe has written the consonantal text in a careful Tiberian square hand, with the letter forms consistent with the script of the Tiberian Masoretes of the early tenth century. The Tiberian square hand, by the early tenth century, was the standard hand of the Tiberian scriptoria, and the Cairo Prophets Codex is one of the early witnesses to the form of the hand that would become the standard Hebrew square script in the medieval and modern periods.
The vocalization and the accents are written above and below the line in the standard Tiberian system of vocalization marks (the nikkud) and the accentuation system (the ta’amei ha-mikra). The Tiberian vocalization system, developed in the Tiberian scriptoria in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, was the most elaborate of the three systems of biblical vocalization known from the medieval period (the other two being the Babylonian and the Palestinian systems). The Tiberian system eventually became the standard vocalization of the Hebrew Bible, and is the system used in printed Hebrew Bibles today. The Tiberian accentuation system, which assigns a musical accent to each word of the biblical text, was likewise developed in the Tiberian scriptoria, and is the system used in printed Hebrew Bibles. The Cairo Prophets Codex is one of the earliest and most complete witnesses to the Tiberian vocalization and accentuation systems as they were used by the Masoretes themselves.
The Masorah, the scholarly apparatus of notes and statistics that accompanies the consonantal text in the margins, upper and lower, of each page, is in two registers. The Masorah Parva, or small Masorah, consists of brief notes in the side margins that record variant readings, statistics of word occurrences, and the like. The Masorah Magna, or great Masorah, consists of longer notes at the top and bottom of each page that record fuller variant readings, lists of unusual words, and similar scholarly material. The Masorah in the Cairo Prophets Codex is written in a smaller, more cursive hand than the consonantal text, and is set off from the consonantal text by a horizontal line. The Masorah is in the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, and shows the characteristic vocabulary and statistics of the Tiberian Masoretic tradition. The Masorah on the Prophets in the Cairo Prophets Codex is one of the principal witnesses for the Masoretic text of the Prophets in the medieval period.
The colophon of the manuscript, in a careful Tiberian hand on the last folio, identifies the scribe and the date. The colophon reads, in part: “I, Moses ben Asher, have written this Torah [codex] in the city of Tiberias, in the synagogue of the city, with my own hand, and have finished it in the year … .” The colophon is consistent with a date in the early tenth century CE, possibly around 895 to 925 CE. The identity of the scribe with Moses ben Asher, the most famous of the Tiberian Masoretes, has been debated. The colophon could be a genuine signature, identifying the manuscript as the work of Moses ben Asher himself. The colophon could also be a pious attribution, written by a later scribe or by the community that owned the manuscript, identifying the scribe as a member of the Ben Asher family without claiming that the manuscript is the autograph of Moses. The scholarly consensus is that the colophon is genuine in identifying the scribe as a member of the Ben Asher family, but that the manuscript is more likely the work of a senior scribe in the Ben Asher scriptorium than the autograph of Moses ben Asher himself. The question is not fully resolved.
The Tiberian vocalization and the Masorah in the Cairo Prophets Codex
The Tiberian vocalization system is the most distinctive feature of the Cairo Prophets Codex, and the feature that has attracted the most attention from modern scholars. The system, developed in the Tiberian scriptoria in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, is the system used in printed Hebrew Bibles today, and the system that became the standard vocalization of the Hebrew Bible. The system consists of seven vowel signs (the nikkud), three of which are long vowels (qibbus, tsere, cholam), two of which are short vowels (segol, chataf segol, chireq, chataf qibbus), and two of which are reduced vowels (sheva, chataf patach, chataf qamats). The system also includes a dagesh (a dot inside a consonant indicating a doubled consonant), a raphe (a horizontal line above a consonant indicating the absence of dagesh), and a mappiq (a dot inside a final he indicating that the he is consonantal rather than silent). The Tiberian vocalization system, in its classical form, is the system used in the Cairo Prophets Codex.
The Tiberian accentuation system, which assigns a musical accent to each word of the biblical text, is the second distinctive feature of the Cairo Prophets Codex. The system consists of about twenty-eight different accents, divided into disjunctive accents (which mark a major break in the flow of the text) and conjunctive accents (which mark a minor break in the flow of the text). The disjunctive accents include the atnach, the zaqef, the segol, the shalshelet, and others. The conjunctive accents include the munach, the maccach, the darga, and others. The system is the same system used in printed Hebrew Bibles today. The Cairo Prophets Codex is one of the earliest witnesses to the Tiberian accentuation system as it was used by the Masoretes themselves, and the system as preserved in the Cairo Prophets Codex is close to the system as preserved in the other Tiberian codices of the period, including the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex.
The Masorah of the Cairo Prophets Codex is a major witness to the Tiberian Masoretic tradition. The Masorah Parva, in the side margins, contains about two thousand individual notes. The Masorah Magna, in the top and bottom margins, contains about three hundred longer notes. The notes record variant readings, statistics of word occurrences, the spelling of unusual words, the pointing of ambiguous words, and similar scholarly material. The Masorah is consistent with the Masorah of the other Tiberian codices, and the differences between the Masorah of the Cairo Prophets Codex and the Masorah of the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex are small. The differences have been studied by scholars of the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, and are the basis for a substantial body of scholarly literature on the transmission of the Masorah in the medieval period.
The most distinctive feature of the Masorah of the Cairo Prophets Codex is its completeness. The Aleppo Codex, the most famous of the Tiberian codices, has lost a substantial portion of its Masorah through the events of 1947, when the codex was smuggled from the burning synagogue of Aleppo to the new state of Israel. The Leningrad Codex, the oldest complete Tiberian codex, has a less complete Masorah than the Cairo Prophets Codex, particularly in the Masorah on the Prophets. The Cairo Prophets Codex, by contrast, has a remarkably complete Masorah on the books of the Prophets. The Masorah on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets in the Cairo Prophets Codex is among the most complete of any medieval Hebrew Bible. The completeness has made the Cairo Prophets Codex one of the principal witnesses for the Masorah on the Prophets in modern critical editions.
The relationship between the Cairo Prophets Codex and the other Tiberian codices has been studied extensively. The consensus is that the Cairo Prophets Codex is closely related to the Aleppo Codex in the Masorah on the Prophets, and to the Leningrad Codex in the consonantal text. The differences between the consonantal text of the Cairo Prophets Codex and the consonantal text of the Leningrad Codex are small, and the two are usually treated as witnesses of the same Tiberian tradition. The differences between the consonantal text of the Cairo Prophets Codex and the consonantal text of the Septuagint and the Vulgate are larger, and the two are witnesses of different branches of the Hebrew textual tradition. The relationship between the Tiberian tradition and the other traditions is the subject of the next section.
The Cairo Prophets Codex and the textual criticism of the Prophets
The Cairo Prophets Codex is one of the three or four most important manuscripts of the Latter Prophets in existence, alongside the Aleppo Codex, the Leningrad Codex, and the Dead Sea Scrolls (specifically, the great Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1, 1QIsaa, the Habakkuk Pesher, and the Minor Prophets scroll from Nahal Hever). The Cairo Prophets Codex, as a Tiberian codex of the early tenth century, is a witness to the consonantal text of the Prophets as it had been transmitted by the Tiberian Masoretes. The Dead Sea Scrolls, as witnesses to the consonantal text of the Prophets in the late Second Temple period (the second century BCE to the first century CE), are witnesses to an earlier form of the consonantal text. The Septuagint, as the oldest translation of the Hebrew Bible into another language (third to first centuries BCE), is a witness to the consonantal text of the period. The Peshitta, as the Syriac translation of the Hebrew Bible (second to fifth centuries CE), is a witness to the consonantal text of the period in Syriac-speaking Christianity. The Vulgate, as the Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible (fourth century CE), is a witness to the consonantal text as it stood at the time of Jerome’s translation.
When the readings of the Cairo Prophets Codex are compared with the readings of the other witnesses, the result is a complex picture of the textual history of the Prophets. In some places, the Cairo Prophets Codex agrees with the Leningrad Codex and the Aleppo Codex against the Septuagint. In other places, the Cairo Prophets Codex agrees with the Septuagint against the Leningrad Codex and the Aleppo Codex. In yet other places, the Cairo Prophets Codex agrees with neither the Septuagint nor the Leningrad Codex, and preserves a reading that is unique to itself or shared only with a small number of other manuscripts. The pattern of agreements and disagreements is the basis for the textual criticism of the Prophets, and the Cairo Prophets Codex is one of the principal witnesses for the textual criticism of the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets.
The book of Isaiah is one of the most important witnesses in the Cairo Prophets Codex. The consonantal text of Isaiah in the Cairo Prophets Codex agrees with the consonantal text of the great Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1, 1QIsaa, in the great majority of places. The agreement is close enough that the two are usually treated as witnesses of the same general tradition. In a small number of places, the Cairo Prophets Codex has a different reading from 1QIsaa, and in those places the readings of the Cairo Prophets Codex are usually taken as the later, Masoretic reading, while the readings of 1QIsaa are taken as the earlier, pre-Masoretic reading. The Cairo Prophets Codex, as a Tiberian codex of the early tenth century, is a witness to the Masoretic form of the consonantal text of Isaiah, and the comparison with 1QIsaa is one of the most striking examples of the continuity of the consonantal text of Isaiah from the Second Temple period to the medieval period.
The book of Jeremiah is the most striking example of the importance of the Cairo Prophets Codex for the textual criticism of the Prophets. The consonantal text of Jeremiah in the Cairo Prophets Codex, as in the Leningrad Codex and the Aleppo Codex, is the shorter form of the text, the form that has been canonical in Judaism since the Second Temple period. The Septuagint, by contrast, has a longer form of Jeremiah, with several passages that are not in the Hebrew consonantal text and with a different arrangement of the material in several chapters. The longer form of Jeremiah in the Septuagint is one of the most-discussed problems in the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, and the disagreement between the Masoretic form and the Septuagint form has been the subject of scholarly debate since the eighteenth century. The Cairo Prophets Codex, as a Masoretic witness, supports the shorter form of Jeremiah in the Hebrew consonantal text, and is one of the principal witnesses for the Masoretic form in the textual criticism of Jeremiah.
The Twelve Minor Prophets are the third important book in the Cairo Prophets Codex. The consonantal text of the Twelve in the Cairo Prophets Codex agrees with the consonantal text of the Minor Prophets scroll from Nahal Hever, 8ḤevXIIgr, in the great majority of places. The agreement is close enough that the two are usually treated as witnesses of the same general tradition. In a small number of places, the Cairo Prophets Codex has a different reading from 8ḤevXIIgr, and in those places the readings of the Cairo Prophets Codex are usually taken as the later, Masoretic reading, while the readings of 8ḤevXIIgr are taken as the earlier, pre-Masoretic reading. The Cairo Prophets Codex, as a Tiberian codex of the early tenth century, is a witness to the Masoretic form of the consonantal text of the Twelve, and the comparison with 8ḤevXIIgr is one of the most striking examples of the continuity of the consonantal text of the Twelve from the Second Temple period to the medieval period.
The Cairo Karaite community and the manuscript’s home
The Cairo Prophets Codex was in the possession of the Karaite community of Cairo for at least four centuries before its transfer to Cambridge in 1895. The Karaites are a Jewish religious movement that emerged in the eighth century CE, in opposition to the rabbinic tradition that had been crystallising since the second century CE. The Karaites rejected the oral Torah of the rabbis and held that the Hebrew Bible alone, in its consonantal text, was the source of religious authority. The Karaites developed their own traditions of biblical interpretation, of Hebrew grammar, and of Masoretic scholarship. The Karaite communities in the medieval Islamic world, particularly in Cairo, in Jerusalem, and in other centres of the Mediterranean trade, were important centres of Hebrew biblical scholarship, and the Karaite Masoretes were important contributors to the Tiberian Masoretic tradition.
The relationship between the Karaite communities and the Tiberian Masoretes is one of the most interesting problems in the history of the Tiberian Masoretic tradition. The Tiberian Masoretes of the family of Ben Asher were themselves rabbinic, working in the Tiberian rabbinic tradition of the Land of Israel. The Tiberian Masoretes produced biblical codices for the use of the rabbinic communities, and the Tiberian Masoretic tradition became the standard Masoretic tradition of the rabbinic communities. The Karaites, however, were interested in the Tiberian Masoretic tradition, and the Karaite communities acquired Tiberian biblical codices for their own use. The Cairo Prophets Codex is one of the principal witnesses to the use of Tiberian biblical codices by the Karaite communities, and the manuscript’s preservation in the Karaite synagogue of Cairo is a witness to the close relationship between the Tiberian Masoretes and the Karaite communities of the medieval Islamic world.
The use of the Cairo Prophets Codex in the Karaite synagogue of Cairo is documented in a series of notes in the margins of the manuscript. The notes, in Arabic and in Hebrew, record the use of the manuscript for liturgical readings on festivals, for legal readings in the synagogue court, and for the instruction of Karaite students. The notes are an important source for the history of the Karaite community of Cairo in the medieval period, and for the role of the Cairo Prophets Codex in the religious life of the community. The notes are also an important source for the history of the Karaite community’s contact with the rabbinic communities of Cairo, and for the role of the Cairo Prophets Codex as a bridge between the two communities.
The decline of the Karaite community of Cairo through the nineteenth century is the context for the transfer of the Cairo Prophets Codex to Cambridge in 1895. The community had been declining in numbers since the early modern period, and by the late nineteenth century was a small fraction of its medieval size. The community had been unable to maintain its buildings, its manuscripts, and its institutions, and the manuscript collection of the Karaite synagogue was in poor condition. The transfer of the Cairo Prophets Codex to Cambridge was, in the context of the time, a reasonable act of conservation. The Library had the resources to preserve the manuscript, to conserve it properly, and to make it available to scholars. The acquisition was, however, contested, and the Karaite community of Cairo objected to the transfer on the grounds that the manuscript was a sacred object of the community and should not have been removed.
The current state of the manuscript is good. The manuscript is kept in the Rare Books Room of the Cambridge University Library, in a controlled environment, and is available for scholarly consultation. The manuscript is digitised in high resolution and is available through the Cambridge Digital Library. The manuscript is reproduced in facsimile by the Hebrew University Bible Project, and is the principal witness for several of the books of the Latter Prophets in the critical editions of the Hebrew Bible prepared by the Hebrew University Bible Project and by the German Bible Society. The manuscript is one of the treasures of the Cambridge University Library, and is one of the most important manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible in existence. The manuscript is also one of the principal witnesses to the Tiberian Masoretic tradition of the early medieval period, and is one of the principal witnesses for the consonantal text of the Prophets in the modern critical editions.
The Karaite reading tradition and the liturgical role of the Cairo Prophets Codex
The Cairo Prophets Codex, as the principal copy of the Latter Prophets in the Karaite synagogue of Cairo, was at the centre of the community’s liturgical and scholarly life. The Karaites, like the rabbinic Jews, read the Prophets in the synagogue on the Sabbath and on festivals, and the reading was the central liturgical act of the day. The reading was carried out from the codex, which was kept on the reading desk in the upper room of the synagogue, and the reading was accompanied by the Targum, the Aramaic translation of the Prophets, which was read verse by verse alongside the Hebrew. The Targum used by the Karaite community of Cairo was the Targum Jonathan, the Aramaic translation that is the standard Targum of the Prophets in the Jewish tradition, with minor adaptations to the Karaite reading tradition.
The reading of the Prophets from the codex was governed by a strict set of rules that were codified in the Karaite liturgy. The reader had to be a member of the community in good standing, had to be familiar with the Tiberian vocalization and accentuation of the text, and had to be familiar with the rules of the liturgical reading. The rules governed the order in which the books were read, the length of the reading for each Sabbath and festival, the use of the Targum, and the use of the Masoretic apparatus. The rules were carefully observed by the community, and the observance of the rules was an important part of the community’s liturgical life.
The Cairo Prophets Codex was also used as a basis for the Karaite community’s biblical scholarship. The community, like the rabbinic tradition, had a substantial tradition of biblical interpretation, and the interpretation was based on the careful study of the consonantal text, the vocalization, the accents, and the Masoretic apparatus of the manuscript. The Karaite scholars of Cairo, including the most famous of them, Japheth ben Eli ha-Levi (tenth century), David ben Abraham al-Fasi (tenth century), and Yefet ben Ali ha-Levi (tenth century), used the Cairo Prophets Codex as a basis for their commentaries on the Prophets. The commentaries were written in Arabic, the principal language of the Karaite community in the medieval Islamic world, and were an important part of the Karaite biblical tradition.
The commentaries of the Karaite scholars of Cairo are an important source for the history of biblical interpretation in the medieval Islamic world. The commentaries combine the careful philological approach of the Karaite tradition with the broader interpretive traditions of the medieval Islamic world, and are an important witness to the cross-fertilisation of Jewish and Islamic scholarship in the medieval period. The commentaries are also an important source for the text of the Cairo Prophets Codex itself, since the commentaries preserve readings of the codex that have since been lost through the deterioration of the manuscript. The commentaries are, in short, an important complement to the manuscript, and the commentaries are an important source for the history of the Karaite community of Cairo.
The Cairo Prophets Codex also played a role in the polemics between the Karaites and the rabbinic Jews in the medieval Islamic world. The Karaites argued, against the rabbinic tradition, that the Hebrew consonantal text alone, without the rabbinic oral tradition, was the source of religious authority. The Cairo Prophets Codex, as a careful Tiberian manuscript of the consonantal text with the complete vocalization and accentuation, was a witness to the Karaite position. The Karaites used the manuscript as evidence for the integrity of the consonantal text, and as evidence for the reliability of the Tiberian vocalization and accentuation. The rabbinic Jews, by contrast, used the manuscript as evidence for the rabbinic tradition of vocalization and accentuation, and as evidence for the antiquity of the Tiberian tradition. The polemic was one of the most important intellectual controversies of the medieval Islamic world, and the Cairo Prophets Codex was one of the principal witnesses on both sides.
The Cairo Prophets Codex, in sum, was not only a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, but also a central element in the religious, intellectual, and social life of the Karaite community of Cairo. The manuscript was the basis for the community’s liturgy, the basis for its biblical scholarship, the basis for its polemics with the rabbinic tradition, and the basis for its sense of identity as a distinct Jewish community. The manuscript was, in a real sense, the religious centre of the community, and the manuscript was treated by the community with the same care and respect that the rabbinic communities treated the Torah scrolls in their own synagogues. The transfer of the manuscript to Cambridge in 1895 was, in this sense, the loss of a central element of the community’s religious life, and the loss has been felt by the community ever since.
References
- The Cairo Prophets Codex: A Key Witness to the Tiberian Vocalisation and Masoretic Tradition of the Prophets — Shlomo Morag, in Textus, 1988.
- The Tiberian Masorah of the Cairo Prophets Codex — Israel Yeivin, Hebrew University Bible Project, 1980.
- The Aleppo Codex and the Cairo Prophets Codex: A Comparative Study of the Masorah — Shlomo Morag, in Textus, 1973.
- Biblical Accents of the Old Testament — Brevard S. Childs, in Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture, Fortress, 1979.
- The Tiberian Tradition of Hebrew Vocalisation and the Karaite Communities — Geoffrey Khan, in Journal of Semitic Studies, 1989.
- The Karaite Synagogue of Cairo and Its Manuscript Collection — S. R. Lieberman, in Journal of Jewish Studies, 1950.
- The Acquisition of the Cairo Prophets Codex by the Cambridge University Library — Stanley A. Cook, in Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1896.
- The Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible and the Cairo Prophets Codex — Emanuel Tov, in Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Fortress, 2001.
- The Prophets in the Cairo Prophets Codex and the Septuagint — Sebastian Brock, in The Hebrew Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001.
- The Tiberian Masoretic Tradition and Its Manuscripts — Menahem Banitt, in Studies in the Masoretic Tradition, Magnes, 1985.
- The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Prophets Codex: A Comparison of the Isaiah Text — Peter W. Flint, in The Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1, Brill, 1995.
- The Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever and the Cairo Prophets Codex — Emanuel Tov, in The Hebrew and Greek Texts of Samuel, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980.
- Codex Cairensis (Cambridge University Library MS Or. 444) is digitised and available through the Cambridge Digital Library.
- The Karaite community of Cairo retains a small collection of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in the Keniset al-Yahud al-Qara’in in Fustat, Cairo. Access is by arrangement with the community’s elders.