{"id":1570,"date":"2026-11-13T02:46:31","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T02:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-london-codex-and-the-scribe-who-hid-his-name\/"},"modified":"2026-11-14T01:16:43","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T01:16:43","slug":"the-london-codex-and-the-scribe-who-hid-his-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-london-codex-and-the-scribe-who-hid-his-name\/","title":{"rendered":"The London Codex and the Scribe Who Hid His Name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Somewhere in the Near East, early in the tenth century or perhaps before, a scribe finishing a large Torah codex decided to sign it without writing a colophon. He hid his name in the margins instead. Among the Masoretic notes that collect rare words, each list could be written in any order, so he arranged the entries so that their initial letters spelled out Nissi ben Daniel ha-Kohen<\/em>, followed by a blessing, \u201cmay God preserve him.\u201d Then he added, written out in full, the phrase \u201caccording to the name of the scribe, vocaliser and masoretic annotator.\u201d Kim Phillips, who has been \u201cexcavating\u201d the codex layer by layer, notes that the scribe did this three times.1<\/a><\/sup> The British Library\u2019s description lists the places where the name is inscribed in the Masoretic notes: folios 40r, 113v and 139r.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Centuries later the beginning and end of his codex were lost. In 1540 someone supplied the missing Genesis and Deuteronomy on paper, in a Yemenite square script, and an owner wrote a note in Persian, in Hebrew letters, on the last leaf. That note is now illegible.3<\/a><\/sup> On 9 May 1891 the British Museum bought the composite volume, and it received the shelfmark Oriental 4445.4<\/a><\/sup> Within a decade Robert K. Douglas, the Museum\u2019s Keeper of Oriental books, introduced its Hebrew catalogue by calling it \u201cthe earliest known copy of the Hebrew Pentateuch.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> It is often called the London Codex.6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That claim no longer stands in that form, and the codex\u2019s date and origin are still debated. What has not changed is the reason scholars keep returning to it. Or. 4445 preserves nearly two thirds of the Torah as it was first written, pointed and annotated in the age of the Tiberian Masoretes. Its margins carry a Masorah older in form than that of the great complete Bibles, and a note that seems to speak of Ben Asher as a living man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Pentateuch in Two Ages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The book is a composite. The British Library\u2019s description, based on George Margoliouth\u2019s catalogue, records 186 folios. Folios 1\u201328, 125, 128 and 159\u2013186 are paper and were added in 1540. A considerable number of leaves are mutilated, and some, such as folios 122\u201324 and 126\u201327, are badly damaged.7<\/a><\/sup> In Margoliouth\u2019s own description of 1899, the vellum leaves measure about 16\u00bd by 13 inches. The original arrangement of the quires was already uncertain then, because leaves had been cancelled in places and many folios had been joined together irregularly.8<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What survives of the ancient manuscript begins in the middle of the story of Joseph, at Genesis 39:20, on folio 29, and runs to Deuteronomy 1:33.9<\/a><\/sup> The books begin at folio 1v (Genesis), 42r (Exodus), 85r (Leviticus), 115r (Numbers) and 158v (Deuteronomy).10<\/a><\/sup> Christian David Ginsburg, who made the codex the first manuscript in his list of witnesses, described it as running \u201con continuously from Gen. XXXIX 20 to Deut. I 33,\u201d except for the two interior leaves that had been replaced.11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The later restoration has its own history. Phillips dates the replacement leaves to 1539 and describes their scribe as being of Yemenite or Persian origin. \u201cIt\u2019s OK, you can say it,\u201d he writes of a page from the sixteenth-century leaves: \u201cno, they are nowhere near as beautiful as the original pages.\u201d He distinguishes four, or four and a half, chronological stages in the book: the original codex, an interim phase, the replacement phase, which came in two parts, and the latest phase.12<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth printed the mutilated colophon of the newer part from folio 186v. He also noted, on folio 1r, a list of books in a Persian hand of the sixteenth or seventeenth century.13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/picture>
Illustration: the restoration of 1540, when the lost beginning and end of the codex were replaced on paper. An imagined scene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Three Columns Without Stretched Letters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The ancient pages are laid out in three columns of twenty-one lines each.14<\/a><\/sup> Ginsburg admired the script: \u201clarge, bold and beautiful characters,\u201d furnished with vowel points and accents.15<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth found the hand identical with the square script of the Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus, the dated manuscript of the Latter Prophets of 916. Both codices were written with a reed, \u201cand the ink used is thick and shiny.\u201d16<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several details of the writing caught both cataloguers\u2019 attention. The upper stroke of the letter lamed<\/em> is greatly lengthened in the first line of a page. The left edges of the columns are ragged, because, as Margoliouth put it, the scribe did not know \u201cthe use of (or not caring to employ) elongated letters.\u201d17<\/a><\/sup> Ginsburg made the same observation more emphatically: the dilated letters that later scribes stretched to fill out a line \u201cdid not then exist, and are indeed a modern device.\u201d18<\/a><\/sup> When a word would not fit, the scribe filled the gap with dots or unfinished letters rather than abbreviating.19<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth noticed that parts of the letter alef<\/em> were usually used as fillers. He wondered whether this hinted that the scribe\u2019s name began with that letter, but found \u201cno sufficient certainty on the point.\u201d20<\/a><\/sup> The name, when it was found, began with nun<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillips, comparing the scribal habits of the great codices, describes the same filling technique. The original scribe of Or. 4445, which he calls B, \u201cpredominantly used raised dots at the end of the line, raised dots between the last words of a line, the first stroke(s) of the alef,\u201d and less often part of the first letter of the next line.21<\/a><\/sup> The same scribe, he adds, \u201cwas very diligent in marking virtually all spirantized begadkfat letters with rafe,\u201d and \u201cassiduous in marking non-consonantal final he with rafe.\u201d22<\/a><\/sup> Ginsburg recorded other peculiarities of letter form. The left leg of he<\/em> is closed at the top like that of \u1e25et<\/em>, yod<\/em> has a longer shaft than usual, and final nun<\/em> is hardly longer than zayin<\/em>. The vowel qame\u1e63<\/em> still has its primitive form, a pata\u1e25<\/em> with a dot beneath it.23<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the Verse Divider<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One feature in particular persuaded the early cataloguers that the codex was very old. Every later manuscript Ginsburg collated marked the end of a verse with a sign like a colon, the sof pasuq<\/em>. In Or. 4445 that sign \u201cwas originally entirely absent.\u201d The end of a verse was marked only by the silluq<\/em> accent under its last word, followed closely by the first word of the next verse. When a later Masoretic annotator added the two dots, Ginsburg wrote, \u201cthey are frequently forced in between the verses for want of space.\u201d24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margoliouth drew the same conclusion from the same evidence. He noted that verse divisions were regularly used in the St Petersburg manuscript of 916 but were originally absent from Or. 4445. That fact, \u201ctogether with the stiffer and somewhat less formed type of writing used in the MS., appears unmistakably to point to its greater antiquity.\u201d25<\/a><\/sup> He added a third consideration in a footnote: the three-column layout. William Wright had observed that Syriac manuscripts in three columns \u201care scarcely to be met with after the seventh century.\u201d26<\/a><\/sup> Ginsburg, describing the Petersburg codex, made the comparison directly. Its letters were \u201calmost identical\u201d with those of Or. 4445, but it had \u201calready the verse-divider or SophPasuk (:) which is still absent in Orient. 4445.\u201d27<\/a><\/sup> The journal\u2019s essay on Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus<\/a> describes that dated partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Pointing Without Fixed Rules<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The vowels and accents of Or. 4445 follow the Tiberian system, not the superlinear Babylonian pointing of the 916 Prophets. Margoliouth thought the pointing was \u201cin all probability contemporary with the consonantal text.\u201d28<\/a><\/sup> Its most noticeable feature is the scarce and irregular use of the meteg<\/em> and ga\u02bfya<\/em>, the small vertical strokes that mark secondary stress. Margoliouth gave examples. On folio 120a the same word appears with a meteg<\/em> in one column, without it in the next, and with a ga\u02bfya<\/em> lower down. The manuscript, he concluded, \u201cappears to have been punctuated at a time when no fixed rules for the use of either \u2018metheg\u2019 or \u2018ga\u2019ya\u2019 had yet been established.\u201d29<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ginsburg reached the same verdict, and stated it in a sentence that sums up the codex\u2019s value for the history of pointing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As this is a most accurately written MS. and as the accuracy extends both to the vowel-points and accents, it is evident that it belongs to a period when the superfine speculations about the Metheg and the Gaya had not as yet asserted themselves.<\/p>Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible, 189730<\/a><\/sup><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The point mattered to him because, as he wrote elsewhere, the presence or absence of the meteg<\/em> or ga\u02bfya<\/em> \u201cconstitutes fully nine-tenths of the differences\u201d between Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali, the two redactors whose disagreements fill the medieval lists. Yet \u201cthe oldest and most beautifully written Codex of the Pentateuch\u201d very rarely used either sign.31<\/a><\/sup> The journal\u2019s essay on Mishael ben Uzziel and the Book of Differences<\/a> describes the lists in which those disagreements were recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only full-length study of the codex, a 1983 doctoral thesis at the School of Oriental and African Studies by David Lloyd Lyons, refined the picture. Lyons found the vocalization and accents \u201caccurately marked, reflecting in the main the norms and tendencies of Aaron Ben-Aser in the model Aleppo Codex,\u201d with only sporadic errors. Its particular character lay in \u201ccertain features of the metheg-marking\u201d and in its economy with one of the accent signs. In one class of meteg<\/em>, Or. 4445 was actually more regular than the Aleppo Codex. Overall, he concluded, the codex reflected \u201ca slightly less-developed stage than that reflected in the Aleppo and Leningrad Codices.\u201d32<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben Asher Without a Blessing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the outer margin of folio 40b, beside Genesis 49:20, the Masoretic annotator wrote a note that both nineteenth-century scholars found remarkable. It records how \u201cthe great teacher Ben-Asher,\u201d as Ginsburg translated the title, accented a pair of words in four verses. Ben Asher used the conjunctive accent merkha<\/em> in all four places, while others joined the words with a maqqef<\/em>.33<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth noted that the note \u201cis not at present known to exist anywhere else,\u201d and that the received Masoretic text does not follow Ben Asher\u2019s reading in this instance.34<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What struck them most was what the note left out. Medieval writers normally followed the name of a dead scholar with a blessing, such as \u201chis rest is in Paradise.\u201d Here there is none. Ginsburg took this as \u201cadditional evidence that the Massorah in question was written in the life-time of Ben-Asher.\u201d35<\/a><\/sup> He found a second mention of Ben Asher without the formula, in the annotator\u2019s note on Leviticus 20:17, on folio 106a. Margoliouth drew the same conclusion: \u201cno euphemism for the dead is used after Ben Asher\u2019s name, thus apparently showing that he was alive at the time.\u201d36<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The note does not identify which Ben Asher is meant. Ginsburg dated the Masorah of the codex to \u201cthe life-time of the Ben-Ashers circa A. D. 900\u2013940,\u201d using the plural for the family of Masoretes to which Aaron ben Asher belonged.37<\/a><\/sup> If the annotator was writing while a Ben Asher still lived, then the margins of Or. 4445 come from the lifetime of the Ben Asher family itself. The journal\u2019s essay on the schools of Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali<\/a> follows that family and its rivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Masorah in the Margins<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Masoretic apparatus is laid out with great regularity. Two lines of the Masorah Magna generally run along the upper margin of each page and four along the lower. The outer margins and the spaces between the columns hold the Masorah Parva.38<\/a><\/sup> Ginsburg believed both had been added about a century after the text was written, by the annotator or naqdan<\/em> who revised it. \u201cThe Massorah which is here exhibited in its oldest form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cfrequently uses a terminology different from that employed in MSS. of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.\u201d39<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth agreed, though more cautiously, that the Masorah was written \u201cabout a century (?) later than the text.\u201d40<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lyons described the Masorah as \u201cprofuse.\u201d Masorah Parva, enumerative Masorah Magna and cumulative Masorah are recorded throughout. Some notes resemble the Babylonian Masorah in style and form, \u201cbut no direct influence can be assumed,\u201d while the cumulative lists are specifically Tiberian. The apparatus is relatively accurate. Its counts and descriptions \u201capparently surpass (somewhat) those of the Leningrad Codex,\u201d but fall short of the Aleppo Codex in precision.41<\/a><\/sup> Lyons compared the cumulative lists with the Masoretic compendium Okhlah ve-Okhlah<\/em> and concluded that the two collections \u201ccannot be treated as variant recensions of a single compendium.\u201d42<\/a><\/sup> That compendium is the subject of the journal\u2019s essay on the lists of Okhlah ve-Okhlah<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ginsburg chose a page of Or. 4445 to show students what the Masorah looked like at its beginnings. In his introduction he printed the Masorah of folio 94b, covering Leviticus 11:4\u201321, in parallel with the notes on the same verses from nine other manuscripts and the first edition of the rabbinic Bible.43<\/a><\/sup> He also reproduced the page as a collotype facsimile, which, the caption records, was presented to the Trinitarian Bible Society by the Rev. William Bramley-Moore.44<\/a><\/sup> One of its notes, on Leviticus 11:21, gives what Ginsburg called \u201cthe oldest form of the List\u201d of places where the written text has lo<\/em>, \u201cnot,\u201d and the reading is lo<\/em>, \u201cto him.\u201d The note counts fifteen instances, and then adds that \u201cthere are two other passages outside this Massorah,\u201d Isaiah 49:5 and 1 Chronicles 11:20.45<\/a><\/sup> For Ginsburg this showed that the Masoretes of different schools supplemented one another\u2019s lists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another note shows the Masoretes guarding the smallest particles of the text. In Exodus 39:33\u201343, where the object marker et<\/em> appears many times, sometimes with the conjunction \u201cand\u201d and sometimes without, the Masorah of Or. 4445 records the exact pattern verse by verse. It ends: \u201cThis is according to the Codex Mugah.\u201d Ginsburg called this \u201cthe earliest Codex quoted by the Massorites, as far as I can trace it.\u201d He read the note as \u201cmanifestly a protest against these variants,\u201d since manuscripts and ancient versions disagree in almost every verse of the passage.46<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth noticed another authority quoted on folios 30b and 31b, which he took to be \u201can ancient lost codex\u201d like the others the Masoretes named.47<\/a><\/sup> The journal\u2019s essay on the lost model codices of the Masorah<\/a> gathers what is known of those books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margoliouth observed two more habits of the annotator. Some rubrics of the Masorah Magna carry vowel points. The Masorah Parva, as a rule, does not mark a qere<\/em> in the margin where there is no audible difference between the written form and the form read aloud.48<\/a><\/sup> Compared with Ginsburg\u2019s great edition of the Masorah, the Masorah Magna of Or. 4445 contained only one or two rubrics not found there. It frequently expressed them differently, however, and in many cases less fully.49<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open and Closed Sections<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The text of Or. 4445, both cataloguers agreed, belongs to the Western or Palestinian recension on which the received text is based.50<\/a><\/sup> In one respect, however, it differs constantly from later Masoretic Bibles: the division of the text into open and closed sections, the paragraph breaks of the Torah. Ginsburg counted the differences book by book. In the surviving chapters of Genesis and in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, the codex shows \u201cno fewer than 116 variations\u201d from the received text.51<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remarkable thing, in Ginsburg\u2019s view, was how few of these the later annotator corrected. Out of 116 variations he altered only six, and in one of those six he changed a break that already agreed with the received text so that it no longer did. At Exodus 9:13, where the codex has a closed section as later Bibles do, the annotator wrote that it ought to be open.52<\/a><\/sup> In places where he wanted no break at all, Margoliouth noted, the annotator wrote a term meaning \u201cstraight on.\u201d Margoliouth found one form of the expression on folio 48b \u201cthus testifying to the Persian affinities of the MS.\u201d53<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The codex also records the older divisions of the Torah. The sedarim<\/em>, the units of the triennial reading cycle, are marked only twice, at Genesis 43:14 and 46:8. Ginsburg remarked that the second does not appear in the official lists or in any other manuscript he collated.54<\/a><\/sup> The annual weekly portions match the received text. The number of verses in each portion is written in the space at its end, and the word parasha<\/em> stands in the margin.55<\/a><\/sup> The journal\u2019s essay on the sedarim<\/a> explains the Palestinian cycle those two marks belong to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The verse counts sometimes depart from the later tradition. For the last portion of Genesis, Or. 4445 gives 84 verses where the received text has 85, which Ginsburg thought probably reflected a different recension. At the end of Numbers it states that the book contains 1,285 verses rather than 1,288. Since its figures for the separate portions agree with the other manuscripts in every case but one, Ginsburg concluded that the scribe \u201ccommitted an error in the summing up.\u201d56<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Slip at Leviticus 21<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The codex also preserves an ordinary copying error. On folio 107a the whole of Leviticus 21:24 was at first left out. Both that verse and the first verse of the next chapter begin with the same Hebrew word, \u201cand he spoke,\u201d and the scribe\u2019s eye skipped from one to the other. Ginsburg cited it as the first example in his chronological survey of this kind of error, a mistake \u201cin operation in all ages and in all countries.\u201d The missing verse was added by a later hand.57<\/a><\/sup> The annotator then had to deal with the paragraph break that the inserted verse now occupied. Ginsburg notes that he rightly marked that an open section belonged there.58<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of a Whole Bible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A note on folio 40a suggests that Or. 4445 was once more than a Pentateuch. Among the Masorah\u2019s lists of unique words is the statement, in Margoliouth\u2019s translation, that \u201con the authority of the scribe and the punctuator,\u201d a particular word occurs only once in the Bible. Margoliouth pointed out that the word occurs in Isaiah 10:15, and a similar form in Daniel 11:37. A list that counted it as unique across the whole Bible, on the authority of this scribe and punctuator, implied that they had produced a whole Bible. He concluded that \u201cone is justified in assuming that Or. 4445 is but a small portion of a complete Bible written and punctuated in exactly the same ancient manner.\u201d59<\/a><\/sup> He added that the scribe and the punctuator were possibly the same person.60<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name in the margins later answered that question. In the acrostics Phillips describes, Nissi ben Daniel names himself as scribe, vocaliser and Masoretic annotator.61<\/a><\/sup> The British Library\u2019s description takes the same view: Nissi ben Daniel, \u201cprobably also the punctuator of the manuscript.\u201d62<\/a><\/sup> Lyons summarized the codex as a Tiberian Pentateuch \u201cvocalized and annotated by a certain Nissi B. Daniel at the beginning of the 10th century C.E.\u201d63<\/a><\/sup> That sits uneasily with Ginsburg and Margoliouth, who both thought the Masorah had been added about a century after the text.64<\/a><\/sup> The acrostic formula claims all three tasks for one man, and the question of who wrote which layer of the margins is one of the things Phillips\u2019s layer-by-layer study sets out to answer.65<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nissi ben Daniel and the Road to Persia<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Where Nissi worked is less certain. The British Library dates the codex between 920 and 950 and gives its place of origin as Egypt or Palestine.66<\/a><\/sup> Phillips has gathered evidence that points east instead. One scholar, he writes, suggested a Persian origin because the name Nissi or Nissim was very common in and around modern Iran at the time. More recently Yosef Ofer proposed that a place name is hidden in one of the acrostics. On folio 139r, after the name and the formula about the scribe, eight further list entries follow. Read as an acrostic, their letters give a word that Ofer interprets as \u201cfrom Shaqabad,\u201d a place Phillips identifies with modern Shaqlawa in north-eastern Iraq.67<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth, as noted above, had already seen Persian affinities in the annotator\u2019s vocabulary.68<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second part of his study Phillips adds a piece of evidence of his own. Hardly any early Hebrew Bible manuscripts can be placed securely in the Persian region, he notes: only four, of which two are inaccessible and one too fragmentary to help. The remaining one is National Library of Israel Heb. 8\u00b0 2238, a manuscript containing a single Torah portion, Numbers 13\u201315, dated by its colophon to 1107.69<\/a><\/sup> At Numbers 13:22, where a singular verb appears among plurals in the story of the spies, both manuscripts carry the same Masoretic note in the same very unusual terminology. Where the standard Masorah uses the technical words sevirin<\/em> and rabbim<\/em>, these notes use Aramaic terms that Phillips calls \u201cvery, very unusual indeed.\u201d In Ginsburg\u2019s Masorah, a work of over 2,500 pages, one of these terms appears only three times. Phillips found it nowhere in the Masorah of the Aleppo or Leningrad codices, or in about ten other early manuscripts he checked.70<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phillips is careful about what this proves. \u201cWith just one note we can\u2019t say anything with certainty,\u201d he writes, but \u201cit\u2019s another intriguing connection between Or. 4445 and Persia.\u201d71<\/a><\/sup> He also has a firm view on one older claim. Scholarship on the codex, he notes, has focused on its unusually plentiful Masoretic notes and on \u201cthe text itself as a potentially pre-Ben Asher witness to the Tiberian biblical text (spoiler: it isn\u2019t).\u201d72<\/a><\/sup> The later history of the codex, in any case, is Persian. Its ownership colophon is written in Judaeo-Persian, and Phillips thinks a continuing Persian location best explains the interim periods.73<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Old Is It<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The date has moved more than once. Ginsburg was not consistent. In his chapter on the Masorah he called the codex \u201cnot later than the middle of the eighth century,\u201d with a Masorah about a century later, \u201cabout the middle of the ninth century.\u201d74<\/a><\/sup> In his chapter on Ben Asher he called it \u201cundoubtedly of the early part of the ninth century.\u201d75<\/a><\/sup> In his formal description he wrote that \u201cthough not dated, the original MS. was probably written about A. D. 820\u2013850,\u201d with the Masorah added around 900\u2013940.76<\/a><\/sup> Describing the dated Petersburg codex of 916, he called Or. 4445 \u201cat least half a century earlier.\u201d77<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth judged that it \u201cmay safely be looked upon as older\u201d than the Petersburg codex and was \u201cprobably written about the middle of the ninth century.\u201d78<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The arguments behind those dates were palaeographical and typological: the missing verse dividers, the irregular meteg<\/em>, the three columns, the older terminology of the Masorah. They placed Or. 4445 at the very beginning of the age of pointed codices. Later scholarship moved the date forward. The British Library now gives 920\u2013950.79<\/a><\/sup> Lyons placed Nissi\u2019s work \u201cat the beginning of the 10th century.\u201d80<\/a><\/sup> Phillips writes only that the original codex \u201cappears to have been produced in the 10th century (maybe).\u201d81<\/a><\/sup> On any of these dates the codex is among the oldest surviving pointed Torah manuscripts, but no longer the earliest of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the British Museum to the Screen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The British Library records the acquisition simply: \u201cMrs C. D. Sassoon & Co.: purchased by the British Museum on 09 May 1891.\u201d82<\/a><\/sup> Margoliouth described some features of the manuscript in The Academy<\/em> in April 1892, as Ginsburg noted.83<\/a><\/sup> Ginsburg made it the first manuscript in his account of the witnesses to his edition. He departed from his usual order by country and library so that \u201cthe oldest two Codices, viz. Orient. 4445 in the British Museum and the St. Petersburg Codex dated A. D. 916\u201d could stand at the head of the list.84<\/a><\/sup> The journal\u2019s essay on Christian David Ginsburg<\/a> follows the collator who described it. In 1899 Margoliouth\u2019s catalogue included a photographic plate of the codex, chosen, Douglas explained, as one of the \u201cspecially famous MSS.\u201d85<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the twentieth century Or. 4445 became one of a small group of codices that every student of the Masorah cites. Phillips writes that \u201cfor the past century or so, Or. 4445 has served as one of the six major biblical codices for the discussion of the Masoretic Text.\u201d86<\/a><\/sup> In the conventional sigla, A is the Aleppo Codex and B is Or. 4445, beside C for the Cairo Codex of the Prophets, L for the Leningrad Codex, and S and S1 for the two Sassoon manuscripts. For details of all of them Phillips refers readers to Israel Yeivin\u2019s Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah<\/em>.87<\/a><\/sup> The journal\u2019s essay on Israel Yeivin<\/a> describes that handbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The codex is also now easy to see. It was digitised by the British Library\u2019s Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project, funded by the Polonsky Foundation. Its images and description are in the public domain and are published on OPenn by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.88<\/a><\/sup> The Library\u2019s own catalogue currently notes that its digital images are \u201ccurrently unavailable\u201d in its viewer.89<\/a><\/sup> Phillips\u2019s essay on Hebrew codicology, written while he was working on the codex, reproduces the codex\u2019s quire numbers, many of which were worn or cropped away in the margins when the manuscript was bound.90<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/picture>
Illustration: a reader in a museum manuscript room of the 1890s, the decade in which Or. 4445 entered the British Museum and was first described. An imagined scene, not a portrait.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Layers of a Single Book<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Or. 4445 is a book made in layers. A scribe wrote, pointed and annotated a Torah, and perhaps a whole Bible, in the generation of the Ben Ashers, and hid his name in his own Masorah. A later hand forced verse dividers into the narrow spaces between his verses, and an annotator corrected six of his paragraph breaks and left more than a hundred alone. Five centuries after that, a copyist on paper replaced the lost beginning and end so that the book could be read again from Genesis to Deuteronomy, and a Persian owner signed the last leaf. In 1891 it entered the British Museum, and scholars spent the next century arguing about its age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each layer is still visible on the page. The hub page on Codex Orientales 4445<\/a> places it among the great codices of the Masoretic tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n\n
  1. Kim L. Phillips, \u201cManuscript Archaeology. Oriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I),\u201d Kim\u2019s Substack<\/em>, 19 May 2026, at kimlphillips.substack.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  2. British Library, \u201cOr 4445 \u05ea\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4<\/span> (Torah),\u201d manuscript description and images, Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project, published on OPenn, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, at openn.library.upenn.edu<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  3. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  4. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  5. G. Margoliouth, Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the British Museum<\/em>, part 1 (London: British Museum, 1899), no. 64, at archive.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  6. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  7. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  8. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 36. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  9. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 37. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  10. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  11. Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible<\/em> (London: Trinitarian Bible Society, 1897), at archive.org<\/a>, 469. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  12. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  13. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 39. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  14. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn; Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  15. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 469\u2013470. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  16. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 36\u201337. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  17. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 37. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  18. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  19. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 165. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  20. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 37. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  21. Kim Phillips, \u201cA New Codex from the Scribe behind the Leningrad Codex. L17,\u201d Tyndale Bulletin<\/em> 68.1 (2017), 1\u201329, at tyndalebulletin.org<\/a>, 14. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  22. Phillips, \u201cL17\u201d, 17. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  23. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 473\u2013474. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  24. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 473. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  25. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 37. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  26. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 37. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  27. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 475. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  28. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 37. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  29. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 37. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  30. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 474. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  31. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 278. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  32. David Lloyd Lyons, \u201cThe Vocalization, Accentuation and Masora of Codex Or. 4445 (Brit. Mus.) and Their Place in the Development of the Tiberian Masora\u201d (PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1983), abstract at openalex.org<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  33. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 249. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  34. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  35. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 249\u2013250. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  36. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470; Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  37. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  38. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  39. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  40. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  41. Lyons, \u201cCodex Or. 4445,\u201d abstract. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  42. Lyons, \u201cCodex Or. 4445,\u201d abstract. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  43. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 423\u2013424. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  44. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, plate before 469. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  45. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 428. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  46. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 429\u2013430. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  47. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  48. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  49. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  50. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470; Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 37. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  51. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470\u2013472. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  52. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 472. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  53. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  54. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 472; Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  55. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 473; Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  56. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 74, 82. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  57. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 169. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  58. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 472. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  59. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38\u201339. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  60. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  61. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  62. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  63. Lyons, \u201cCodex Or. 4445,\u201d abstract. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  64. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 470; Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  65. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  66. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn; British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue, \u201cOr 4445. Pentateuch,\u201d record 032-003376314, at searcharchives.bl.uk<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  67. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  68. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 38. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  69. Kim L. Phillips, \u201cManuscript Archaeology. Oriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part II),\u201d Kim\u2019s Substack<\/em>, 26 May 2026, at kimlphillips.substack.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  70. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part II)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  71. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part II)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  72. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  73. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  74. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 423. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  75. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 249. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  76. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 469\u2013470. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  77. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 475. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  78. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1, 36. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  79. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn; British Library catalogue, \u201cOr 4445\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  80. Lyons, \u201cCodex Or. 4445,\u201d abstract. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  81. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  82. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  83. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 474. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  84. Ginsburg, Introduction<\/em>, 469. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  85. Margoliouth, Catalogue<\/em>, part 1. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  86. Phillips, \u201cOriental 4445, Layer by Layer (Part I)\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  87. Phillips, \u201cL17\u201d, 2. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  88. British Library, \u201cOr 4445,\u201d OPenn. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  89. British Library catalogue, \u201cOr 4445\u201d. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n
  90. Kim L. Phillips, \u201cPreaching to the Quire,\u201d Kim\u2019s Substack<\/em>, 4 September 2026, at kimlphillips.substack.com<\/a>. *<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    British Library Or. 4445 preserves nearly two thirds of the Torah as a scribe named Nissi ben Daniel wrote, pointed and annotated it in the age of the Ben Ashers, with a margin that seems to speak of Ben Asher as a living man. Restored on paper in 1540 and bought by the British Museum in 1891, it is still debated for its date and its Persian connections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1664,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions\/1664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}