Editing Aleppo Codex (section)

==Authoritative text==
The consonants in the codex were copied by the scribe Shlomo ben Buya'a in Palestine circa 920. The text was then verified, vocalized, and provided with Masoretic notes by [[Aaron ben Moses ben Asher]], the last and most prominent member of the ben Asher dynasty of grammarians from [[Tiberias]], rivals to the [[ben Naphtali]] school. The tradition of ben Asher has become the one accepted for the [[Hebrew Bible]].<ref name="ej2-ben-asher">{{citation | author=Zeev Ben-Hayyim | contribution=BEN-ASHER, AARON BEN MOSES | title=[[Encyclopaedia Judaica]] | edition=2nd | volume=3 | year=2007 | publisher=Gale | pages=319–321}}</ref> The ben Asher vocalization is late and in many respects artificial, compared to other traditions and tendencies reaching back closer to the period of spoken Biblical Hebrew.<ref name="nce2-bible">{{citation | author=P. W. Skehan | contribution=BIBLE (TEXTS) | title=[[New Catholic Encyclopedia]] | edition=2nd | volume=2 | publisher=Gale | year=2003 | pages=355–362}}</ref>

The ''[[Leningrad Codex]]'', which dates to approximately the same time as the Aleppo codex, has been claimed by Paul E. Kahle to be a product of the ben Asher [[scriptorium]]. However, its [[Colophon (publishing)|colophon]] says only that it was corrected from manuscripts written by ben Asher; there is no evidence that ben Asher himself ever saw it. However, the same holds true for the Aleppo Codex, which was apparently not vocalized by ben Asher himself, although a later colophon, which was added to the manuscript after his death, attributes the vocalization to him.<ref name="ej2-masorah">{{citation | author=Aron Dotan | author-link=Aron Dotan | contribution=MASORAH | title=[[Encyclopaedia Judaica]] | edition=2nd | volume=13 | year=2007 | publisher=Gale | pages=603–656}}</ref>

The community of Damascus possessed a counterpart of the Aleppo Codex, known as the [[Damascus Pentateuch]] in academic circles and as the "Damascus Keter", or "Crown of Damascus", in traditional Jewish circles. It was also written in Israel in the tenth century, and is now kept at the [[National Library of Israel]] as "ms. Heb 5702". It is available online here [https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.wdl/wdl.11364]. (This should not be confused with another Damascus Keter, of medieval Spanish origin.)

The Aleppo Codex was the manuscript used by Maimonides when he set down the exact rules for writing scrolls of the [[Torah]], ''Hilkhot Sefer Torah'' ("Laws of the [[Torah Scroll]]") in his ''[[Mishneh Torah]]''.<ref name=codex/> This [[halakha|halachic]] ruling gave the Aleppo Codex the seal of supreme textual authority, albeit only concerning the type of space preceding sections ([[:wikt:petuhah|petuhot]] and [[:wikt:setumah|setumot]]) and the manner of the writing of the songs in the Pentateuch.<ref name="ej2-masorah" /> "The codex which we used in these works is the codex known in Egypt, which includes 24 books, which was in Jerusalem," he wrote. [[David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra]] testifies to this being the same codex that was later transferred to Aleppo.{{citation needed|date=May 2016}}