MTB-01 The Washington Pentateuch

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart… Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:6-9, NRSV).

Every book has a history. But of all the books in the world, the Bible is unique. Not only is its history rich and fascinating, but from its very first words, the Bible has changed the world. Almost nowhere do we see this rich history more clearly than in the first five writings, the books of Moses. Known in Judaism as the Torah and in Christianity as the Pentateuch, the impact of this part of the Bible cannot be overstated. Today, we will get a glimpse of an example of this extraordinary text in an amazing and ancient manuscript that we now call the Washington Pentateuch.

While examining the Washington Pentateuch, we’ll consider four related topics, beginning with the artifact itself. Where did the Washington Pentateuch come from, what makes it unique, and how was it used?

The Washington Pentateuch was created around the year 1000 by the Masoretes, a group of Jewish scribe-scholars, probably in or near Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was acquired by a Karaite Jewish community in Yevpatoria, Ukraine, and in 1835, it was gifted to Gabriel, Archbishop of Kherson, in southern Ukraine. By 1876, a Russian theological academy near Moscow had acquired the manuscript, and according to a German publication, manuscript “No. 121” — as it was called at the time — was still with the academy in 1882. Sometime before 1990, an Israeli rabbi acquired it, and in 1990, David Sofer of London, England, purchased the manuscript for his private collection. The Green Collection in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, acquired the manuscript in 2017. And in 2018, the Green family donated it to The Signatry under the curatorial care of Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., where it came to be known as the Washington Pentateuch.

As the name suggests, it is a Pentateuch, that is, it consists of the five books of Moses, also known as the Torah. The text of this manuscript is very much like that of the Leningrad Codex, a Masoretic codex on which most translations and editions of the Hebrew Bible are based. But while the Leningrad Codex is a complete Hebrew Bible — or what modern Christians call the Old Testament — the Washington Pentateuch contains only the Torah.