In 1975 the
Jewish National and University Library,
Jerusalem, now the National Library of Israel, acquired the
Damascus Pentateuch, a 10th century
Hebrew Bible codex, consisting of the almost complete
Pentateuch. The codex is defective in its beginning, as it starts with
Genesis 9:26; it is also
Exodus 18:1–23. It is written on parchment, in three columns to the page, in large oriental square script typical of writing scripts used in the 9th century.
The bibliophile and scholar
David Solomon Sassoon, bought the codex in Damascus in 1915. It is one of the oldest extant Bible codices, ranking along with the
Aleppo Codex and
Leningrad Codex.In September 2020 a digital facsimile of the Damascus Pentateuch was available online
at this link.
