List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts


A Hebrew Bible manuscript is a handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Hebrew Bible made on papyrus, parchment, or paper, and written in the Hebrew language. The oldest manuscripts were written in a form of scroll, the medieval manuscripts usually were written in a form of codex. The late manuscripts written after the 9th century use the Masoretic Text. The important manuscripts are associated with Aaron ben Asher.
The earliest sources of the Hebrew Bible disappeared over time because of the fragility of media, wars and other intentional destructions. As a result, the lapse of time between the original manuscripts and their surviving copies is much longer than in the case of the New Testament manuscripts.
The first list of the Old Testament manuscripts in Hebrew, made by Benjamin Kennicott and published by Oxford in two volumes in 1776 and 1780, listed 615 manuscripts from libraries in England and on the continent. Giovanni Bernardo de Rossi published a list of 731 manuscripts. The main manuscript discoveries in modern times are those of the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea/Qumran Caves Scrolls. 260,000 Hebrew manuscripts were discovered in an old synagogue in Cairo, 10,000 of which are biblical manuscripts. There are more than 200 biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea/Qumran Caves Scrolls, some of them were written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. They were written before 70 CE. 14 scroll manuscripts were discovered in Masada in 1963–1965.
The largest organized collection of Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts in the world is housed in the Russian National Library in Saint Petersburg.
The Leningrad/Petrograd Codex is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. The Leningrad/Petrograd codex is the manuscript upon which the Old Testament of most modern English translations of the Bible are based. Manuscripts earlier than the 13th century are very rare. The majority of the manuscripts have survived in a fragmentary condition.
The oldest complete Torah scroll still in use has been carbon-dated to around 1250 and is owned by the Jewish community of the northern Italian town of Biella.

Masorah manuscripts

Proto-Masoretic from Second Temple period (1st century)

Proto-Masoretic from "Silent Period" (2nd–10th century)

  • Codex Hilleli, a lost manuscript of circa 600 CE, destroyed in 1197 in Spain, only a few sentences are preserved by Rabbinic literature
  • Codex Muggeh, lost, cited as a source in Masoretic notations.

Masoretic (8th–10th century)

Later (11th–17th century)

Modern discoveries

  • Ketef Hinnom scrolls, late 7th or early 6th century BCE, placing them in the First Temple period. Found containing material from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, including the Priestly Blessing, alongside other otherwise unknown material on small rolled silver scrolls
  • Nash Papyrus, dated to the 2nd BCE – 1st CE. A liturgy, potentially a Mezuzah, found with the 10 Commandments followed by the Shema; it is most similar to the LXX
  • A wine-jar seal held in the Chicago University’s collection quotes Jeremiah 48:11 as a reference to the quality of the wine contained therein. It likely dates to between the Dead Sea/Qumran Caves Scrolls and the major Masoretic texts
  • En-Gedi Scroll, fragment of Hebrew parchment dated to 2nd century CE, discovered in 1970 containing portions of the first two chapters of Leviticus
  • Cairo Geniza fragments contains portions of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew and Aramaic, discovered in Cairo synagogue, which date from about 4th century CE on

Dead Sea Scrolls

Dated Between 250 BCE and 70 CE.