Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) Manuscripts
The Aleppo Codex (c. 920 CE) and Leningrad Codex (c. 1008 CE) were the oldest Hebrew language manuscripts of the Tanakh. The 1947 find at Qumran of the Dead Sea scrolls pushed the manuscript history of the Tanakh back a millennium from the two earliest complete codices (see Tanakh at Qumran). Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were in Greek in manuscripts such as Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Out of the roughly 800 manuscripts found at Qumran, 220 are from the Tanakh. Every book of the Tanakh is represented except for the Book of Esther; however, most are fragmentary. Notably, there are two scrolls of the Book of Isaiah, one complete (1QIsa), and one around 75% complete (1QIsb). These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE to 70 CE.
Ancient Jewish scribes developed many practices to protect copies of their scriptures from error.
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