Aleppo and Leningrad Codices on the Web

Electronic versions of both the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex (the base text for BHS) are available on the Web. Of the two, the online version of the Aleppo Codex is a high quality graphical reproduction, while the electronic Leningrad Codex is well-executed textual version, that may be very useful for document preparation (although it is probably superceded by current versions of Accordance's BHS).

Aleppo Codex     Using the online Aleppo Codex Leningrad Codex     Using the online Leningrad Codex

Aleppo Codex

A complete and visually accurate version of the Aleppo Codex can be found at http://www.aleppocodex.org. This is an electronic publication of the facsimile edition of the Codex, that had been previously published in a very limited (only 500 copies) and very expensive edition (the hard-copy edition is available by appointment in Goldfarb Library in the Special Collections section at Brandeis University).

The electronic publication is implemented as a set of Flash animations, so the Macromedia Flash browser plug-in is required on your Mac or PC. Note that these animations are quite large, and will be appropriate for use only on a broadband connection.

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Here are some notes based on Bruce Rosen's experience in using this site:

  1. You'll find that if you search for a particular psalm, it will turn to the folio before the one that actually contains the psalm you are looking for. So, you'll need to hit the "Next" button to get to the correct page.
  2. You'll notice that each folio has a "View PDF" button associated with it; you'll want to do this if you want to print up a particular folio.However, they have so far only created PDFs for the first chunk of the Codex. In any case, the PDF does not exist for Psalms. However, I was doing a web search and someone had discovered that JPEG files exist and are accessible for (I think) the entire codex. There are JPEG files at both 2x magnification and 4x magnification.
    Here's how to find a JPEG file:
    1. Turn (or search) to the particular folio you want.
    2. Press the "View PDF" button.
    3. You'll get a "Page Not Found" error, for example, for the case of the folio containing Ps 105, "http://aleppocodex.org/pdf/507.pdf". It's that number (507) that you need to find the JPEG.
    4. For a 2x magnification, type in
      http://aleppocodex.org/images/x2/507.jpg
      (continuing with our example).
    5. For a 4x magnification, type in
      http://aleppocodex.org/images/x4/507.jpg
  3. I've had marginal results printing this. Printing directly from my browser (I use Firefox) and downloading the JPEG, embedding it in a Word document, and printing it, looked about the same on my laser printer at home (not too great). Downloading and printing from Photoshop didn't work at all (due the screen resoluation vs. printer resolution thing ... the image was tiny). But the JPEGs looked great in the browser.
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Leningrad Codex

A useful electronic publication of the Leningrad Codex was recently (beginning in the Fall of 2004) published on the web at http://www.cvkimball.com/Tanach/Tanach.xml. This version is an XML encoding of the Westminster Leningrad Codex from the Westminster Bible Institute (also available in a less-useful PDF format from http://www.bibles.org.uk/pdf/bibles/Hebrew/WLC-B19A.pdf). The XML encoding enables searches at a word-level granularity. The author has furthermore encoded the results of Richard Elliott Friedman's work in the Documentary Hypothesis, allowing the display by color of the various Pentateuchal sources. This on-line version uses the SBL Hebrew Unicode font and it supports copy-and-paste of Unicode text from the browser into an appropriate word processor; this is potentially a very useful tool for those doing document preparation in Bible studies, especially for those researchers who do not own Accordance.

Successful display and navigation of this site requires installation of the SBL Hebrew font (available from http://www.sbl-site.org/Fonts/SBLHebrew-Distributionv107.zip) and use of one from a short list of browsers; see the author's "Installation" page. I have tested the site using Firefox on both the PC and the Mac with excellent results.

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