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Leningrad Codex

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “oldest surviving complete copy of the masoretic text of the hebrew bible”. Today it says “oldest known complete manuscript of the hebrew bible in hebrew”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2005

Leningrad codex is the oldest surviving complete copy of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible , dated 1008 . (The Aleppo Codex is presumably a few decades older, but parts are missing.) The Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (the edition of the Hebrew Bible most widely referred to by scholars and Bible translators) is an almost exact transcript. It contains the complete text of the Hebrew Bible (though the order differs slightly from most published Hebrew Bibles in that Chronicles precedes Psalms and Job comes before Proverbs). It also has extensive Masoretic notes . According to its colophon , it was copied from manuscripts written by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher . It has been claimed to be a product of the Ben-Asher scriptorium. However, there is no evidence that ben Asher ever saw it. Unusually for a masoretic codex, the same man ( Samuel ben Jacob ) wrote the consonants, the vowels and the Masoretic notes. It is believed to be the manuscript most faithful to ben Asher's tradition apart from the Aleppo Codex itself. There are numerous alterations and erasures, and it was suggested by Moshe Goshen-Gottstein that an existing text not following ben Asher's rules was heavily amended so as to make it conform to these rules. The Leningrad Codex also provides an example of medieval Jewish art. Sixteen of the pages contain decorative geometric paterns that illuminate passages from the text. The Signature Page shows a star with the names of the scribes on the edges and a blessing written in the middle.1

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 16916789.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “oldest surviving complete copy of the masoretic text of the hebrew bible”. Today it says “oldest known complete manuscript of the hebrew bible in hebrew”. Read the current article and compare.
2005201020152020Oct '232025
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What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

oldest surviving complete copy of the masoretic text of the hebrew bible

Now

oldest known complete manuscript of the hebrew bible in hebrew

Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

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