Introduction

What exactly do we mean when we speak of “the Masoretic Text” of the Hebrew Bible?

The phrase can easily suggest that there exists—or once existed—a single manuscript called the Masoretic Text, from which modern editions simply reproduce the consonants, vowels, and accents. In actual scholarly usage, “Masoretic Text” can refer in somewhat different ways to the received Hebrew textual tradition, to its Tiberian form, or to particular medieval witnesses that transmit it. No single surviving codex, however, is simply identical with the Masoretic tradition as a whole.

For the purposes of Miqra According to the Masorah (Miqra ʿal pi ha-Masorah, מקרא על פי המסורה), commonly abbreviated MAM, the Masoretic Text is best approached as the mature product of a tradition of textual and oral transmission. This conception reflects above all the research and editorial work of Seth (Avi) Kadish, the principal scholar behind MAM and its extensive Introduction. Kadish and Ben Denckla present many aspects of this conception together in their jointly authored Ḥakirah article, but Denckla has emphasized that the great majority of the underlying research in MAM, its Introduction, and that article is Kadish’s work.[25]

Denckla’s contribution to MAM has been concentrated primarily in its computational development during roughly the past six years: programming, data processing, and computational analyses that have at times revealed places requiring correction or refinement. He has also contributed to particular scholarly questions, including aspects of the Introduction’s treatment of the secondary merkha in the poetic accentuation system, and has helped sharpen the conception of MAM as a dataset that can have editions, rather than simply being a single edition.[25]

In the account developed by Kadish and presented in MAM and the joint Ḥakirah article, the Masoretic tradition includes the consonantal text copied by scribes, the vocalization and accentuation that give written expression to the received reading, textual divisions and poetic arrangement, and the extensive body of Masoretic notes intended to describe, regulate, and safeguard the text.[1]

This conception is important because MAM is not simply a transcription of a medieval manuscript. It describes itself as an open digital reader’s edition, based primarily on the Aleppo Codex and related manuscripts and accompanied by unusually extensive documentation of its editorial decisions.[2]

The difference may be expressed in terms of editorial purpose. A strictly diplomatic edition asks:

What is written in this particular manuscript?

MAM asks a broader question:

What form of the mature Masoretic written-and-reading tradition is best supported by the Aleppo Codex, related manuscripts, the Masorah, and the history of transmission—and how can that tradition be represented clearly for modern readers?

These questions frequently produce the same result. But they are not identical. The distinction explains why MAM can depart from the Leningrad Codex and, in a very small number of cases, make an editorial judgment about a physical mark in the surviving Aleppo Codex itself.

Miqra: Written Text and Reading Tradition

Kadish’s account of the transmission of the Hebrew Bible distinguishes between two parallel but interacting traditions: the tradition of the scribes and the tradition of the readers. Kadish and Denckla present this framework in their jointly authored Ḥakirah article.[3]

The scribal tradition concerned the written form of the biblical books: consonantal letters, orthography, word division, sections, and other features proper to written scrolls.

The reading tradition concerned the vocal realization of that text: pronunciation, vowels, stress, cantillation, and related features conveyed by trained readers.

The Masoretic codex brought these traditions together. A consonantal text representing the scribal tradition could be supplied with graphic signs that recorded aspects of an inherited oral reading tradition, together with notes describing exceptional or easily corrupted details.

This is central to Kadish’s interpretation of the word miqra itself, presented jointly with Denckla in their Ḥakirah article. The ancient sense of the Hebrew root q-r-ʾ, they argue, involved calling out or vocalizing a text rather than merely inspecting it silently. Whatever qualifications may be required in a broader history of ancient reading practices, their point for the Masoretic project is clear: biblical miqra cannot be reduced to consonants alone. It involves the received way in which those consonants are read.[4]

MAM therefore concerns itself not only with letters but also with niqqud, teʿamim, gaʿayot or meteg, textual divisions, poetic layout, qere and ketiv phenomena, and other details relevant to the reading tradition.

From this perspective, the mature Tiberian Masoretic text is not simply a sequence of consonants. It is a highly structured system in which written text, reading tradition, and Masoretic description interact.

The Aleppo Codex as MAM’s Principal Witness

Where the Aleppo Codex survives, it is MAM’s principal manuscript witness for the Prophets and Writings.

Its importance is not merely a consequence of its fame. The surviving codex exhibits an extraordinary level of consistency and sophistication in its consonantal text, vocalization, accentuation, and Masorah. Israel Yeivin’s foundational study documented its system of vocalization and accentuation in extraordinary detail, while Mordecai Breuer showed how the regularity of the surviving portions could be used, together with independent Masoretic evidence, to reconstruct much of what has been lost.[5]

MAM states its policy directly: where the Aleppo Codex is extant in the Prophets and Writings, the edition bases its paragraph divisions and poetic forms, letters and words, vocalization, accents, and gaʿayot upon the codex.[6]

This does not mean that MAM assumes every physical mark in Aleppo to be incapable of error.

MAM’s documentation notes that, among more than a million relevant letters and signs in the surviving portions of the Prophets and Writings, fewer than two hundred places require comment concerning the establishment of a particular sign or reading. Only some of those require an actual editorial judgment about an ambiguous mark or a possible error.[7]

The distinction is conceptually important:

The Aleppo Codex is an exceptionally authoritative witness to the Masoretic tradition, but the physical manuscript and the tradition to which it bears witness are not logically identical.

Even an outstanding scribe or Masorete could occasionally omit a point, misplace a sign, or leave an ambiguous form. Recognizing such a possibility does not diminish the codex’s authority; rather, it distinguishes the historical artifact from the textual and reading tradition it was intended to preserve.

Why Not Simply Use the Leningrad Codex?

The Leningrad Codex is indispensable to modern biblical scholarship. Produced in the early eleventh century, it is the oldest complete surviving codex of the Hebrew Bible in the Tiberian Masoretic tradition. Paul Kahle used it as the manuscript base for the third edition of Biblia Hebraica; it subsequently underlay Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the Leningrad-based Biblia Hebraica Quinta project.[8]

It has also stood behind many modern electronic Hebrew Bible texts.

For many purposes this is entirely appropriate. If the editorial objective is to reproduce the text of Leningrad B19a, the manuscript itself should naturally govern the edition.

MAM has a different objective.

A manuscript can contain a copying error or anomalous spelling. More significantly for the present discussion, the biblical text in the main column of a Masoretic codex can sometimes conflict with the Masoretic notes attached to that same manuscript.

In such a case, mechanically reproducing the biblical column may preserve the error of a particular scribe rather than the form of the text described by the Masoretic apparatus surrounding it.

This is one reason the Masorah matters.

Yosef Ofer has memorably described one function of the Masoretic apparatus as analogous to an “error correcting code.” Through lists, counts, classifications, and observations about exceptional forms, the Masorah could expose an erroneous spelling or other defect even when that defect had entered the biblical text of an otherwise excellent manuscript.[9]

The text in the main column and the Masoretic notes surrounding it are therefore related bodies of evidence, but they need not agree in every instance.

Where Aleppo Is Missing

Large portions of the Aleppo Codex are no longer extant, including almost the entire Torah and substantial portions elsewhere.

MAM therefore cannot simply “follow Aleppo” throughout the Bible.

For the portions of the Prophets and Writings where Aleppo is missing, MAM takes the Leningrad Codex as its base text or point of departure, but it does not accept Leningrad mechanically. The consonantal text is evaluated in light of the Masorah and related Tiberian manuscripts, while anomalies in such areas as vocalization and accentuation may be corrected toward the system established by the surviving Aleppo Codex.[10]

Leningrad is particularly valuable for vocalization because its system is remarkably close to that of Aleppo. The relevant scholarship, summarized in the jointly authored Ḥakirah article, shows that when Leningrad is used critically it provides a strong basis for reconstructing the vocalization of Aleppo’s missing portions. Its occasional anomalies are often identifiable precisely because they stand against the greater regularity visible in Aleppo and related Tiberian sources.[11]

The procedure is therefore comparative rather than simply substitutive. Depending upon the feature being reconstructed, relevant evidence may include the Leningrad Codex, Masoretic notes, related Tiberian manuscripts, testimony concerning the lost portions of Aleppo, patterns visible in Aleppo’s surviving portions, and the reconstructional work of scholars such as Yeivin, Breuer, Jordan Penkower, and Yosef Ofer.

This approach owes a great deal to Mordecai Breuer.

Breuer argued that the text associated with the Aleppo Codex could often be reconstructed with a very high degree of confidence by comparing independent Masoretic witnesses and identifying the reading toward which their evidence converged. Reconstruction, in this sense, is not simply a matter of choosing a “second-best manuscript” when Aleppo is unavailable. It attempts to recover the underlying Masoretic form through the convergence of multiple kinds of evidence.[12]

MAM works broadly within this reconstructional tradition, while documenting its own decisions independently.

The Torah Presents a Special Problem

The Torah requires special treatment because almost its entire text is missing from the Aleppo Codex.

MAM therefore distinguishes carefully between the evidence used for the consonantal text and the evidence used for vocalization and accentuation.

For the Torah, MAM states that its letter-text and section divisions are determined from Torah scrolls, while its orthography follows the Yemenite Torah-scroll tradition. By contrast, the Leningrad Codex provides the principal base for vowels, accents, and gaʿayot, subject to corrections intended to bring anomalous readings into conformity with the Masoretic system represented by Aleppo and related evidence.[13]

This policy requires careful interpretation.

MAM is not arguing that a tradition deserves priority merely because it is geographically or ethnically Yemenite. The argument is textual. Breuer’s investigations indicated that Yemenite Torah scrolls preserve an extraordinarily close correspondence to the consonantal text demanded by Masoretic evidence. Kadish’s treatment of the evidence in MAM, also summarized in the joint Ḥakirah article, accordingly regards the Yemenite scribal tradition as preserving exceptionally strong evidence for the Masoretic letter-text of the Torah.[14]

The history may be even more interesting than simple preservation.

Kadish, drawing on Breuer, Ofer, and Penkower, notes the possibility—also presented in the joint Ḥakirah article—that Yemenite scribes occasionally corrected the inherited letter-text by means of explicit Masoretic information. If so, their Torah text could in a very small number of cases preserve the Masoretic target slightly more accurately than the actual spelling once written in the Aleppo Codex itself.[15]

MAM’s own Torah documentation discusses a handful of cases in which evidence points in precisely this direction.

The governing principle is therefore not automatic fidelity to one physical manuscript. It is fidelity to the Masoretic textual tradition as reconstructed from the available evidence.

The Approximately 127 Differences between Leningrad and the Yemenite Torah Tradition

MAM’s detailed comparison of Leningrad with the Yemenite Torah-scroll tradition provides an unusually concrete illustration of this principle.

Its documentation identifies about 127 places in the Torah—one of them uncertain—where the orthography in the main biblical text of the Leningrad Codex differs from the Yemenite Torah-scroll tradition, which MAM regards in these cases as reflecting the Masoretic evidence and the dominant manuscript tradition.[16]

Even more strikingly, MAM states that in the overwhelming majority of these locations the spelling in Leningrad’s main text contradicts Masoretic notes contained in Leningrad itself.[17]

There are exceptions and complications. In a few places Leningrad’s unusual spelling receives some support from its own Masorah, and occasionally its Masoretic notes themselves are internally divided. The point is therefore not that Leningrad is careless or textually worthless. On the contrary, its Masorah remains an extremely important witness.

The significance is methodological.

“The Leningrad Codex” and “the Masoretic Text” should not simply be treated as interchangeable expressions.

Leningrad is a manuscript witness to the Masoretic tradition—an extraordinarily important one—but it remains a manuscript produced and transmitted by human agents.

Exodus 14:22: חומה or חמה?

One particularly clear example occurs in Exodus 14:22, in the account of Israel’s passage through the sea:

וְהַמַּיִם לָהֶם חוֹמָה
“and the waters were a wall for them.”

The issue is the consonantal spelling of חוֹמָה, “wall.”

MAM and the Torah-scroll tradition represented here write the word plene:

חומה

with vav.

The Leningrad Codex has the defective spelling:

חמה

without vav, vocalized חֹמָה.

MAM explicitly lists Exod 14:22 among the places where Leningrad’s spelling differs from the Torah-scroll/Masoretic form, and it marks the Leningrad form as conflicting with its own Masoretic evidence.[18]

No semantic difference depends upon the additional letter. Both spellings represent the same word and the same traditional reading.

Precisely for that reason, however, the example neatly illustrates the nature of Masoretic textual work.

If the question is:

“What consonants stand in the biblical column of Codex Leningrad at Exod 14:22?”

the answer is חמה.

If the question is:

“What spelling should an edition representing the Masoretic Torah-scroll tradition print here?”

MAM answers חומה.

Those are distinct editorial questions.

Numbers 1:17: When the Evidence Is Genuinely Divided

Not every disagreement can be classified so easily as the scribal error of a single manuscript.

Numbers 1:17 provides an important counterexample:

אֲשֶׁר נִקְּבוּ בְּשֵׁמֹת
“who were designated by name.”

MAM prints:

בְּשֵׁמֹת

without vav in the consonantal text.

This agrees with Yemenite Torah scrolls.

Leningrad instead has:

בְּשֵׁמוֹת

with vav, agreeing here with the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Torah-scroll traditions.[19]

MAM’s documentation treats this example much more cautiously than Exod 14:22.

It belongs to the small group of places where Breuer’s usual reconstructional method does not produce a wholly unambiguous result. In MAM’s discussion, these difficult cases may reflect not a simple inattentive copying error but a genuine difference between inherited traditions.[20]

That qualification matters.

MAM is an edited text, and an edited text must occasionally choose among competing forms. Its scholarly value therefore does not depend upon pretending that all uncertainty has disappeared. On the contrary, one of its strengths is its attempt to document the uncertainty and make the editorial judgment inspectable.

Breuer as Method, Not Merely Authority

It would therefore be misleading to summarize MAM’s editorial procedure as a permanent hierarchy such as:

Aleppo → Breuer → Leningrad → Yemenite manuscripts.

Breuer is not another manuscript witness.

His importance lies primarily in method: determining which kinds of evidence bear most directly upon a particular Masoretic feature and asking where independent evidence converges.

For surviving portions of the Prophets and Writings, the Aleppo Codex is the principal witness.

For reconstruction of vocalization where Aleppo is missing, Leningrad is exceptionally valuable.

For the consonantal orthography of the Torah, the received Torah-scroll tradition—and especially its Yemenite form—becomes crucial.

Masoretic notes can sometimes reveal an error in the main biblical text of a codex.

Closely related Tiberian manuscripts can confirm patterns or individual readings.

Historical testimony concerning lost portions of Aleppo can supplement the physical manuscript.

The editor’s task is therefore not to devise one immutable ranking of manuscripts but to determine which evidence is most relevant to the Masoretic feature being established.

That is one of the most important methodological legacies of Breuer’s work.

MAM Is Not a Diplomatic Edition

This distinction also explains why MAM should not be confused with projects whose primary purpose is to transcribe the Leningrad Codex—or any other single manuscript—as faithfully as possible.

A diplomatic edition preserves manuscript phenomena because those phenomena are themselves the object of study. If the exemplar contains an anomalous spelling, unusual mark, or probable scribal error, a diplomatic transcription normally has good reason to preserve it.

MAM has another objective.

It describes itself as a reader’s edition, a tiqqun qorʾim in a broad sense, and intentionally makes certain distinctions more systematic or more visually transparent than they are in individual medieval codices.[21] At the same time, it attempts to document the editorial decisions by which its text has been established.

That documentation reaches remarkably fine levels of detail. MAM provides local notes for decisions concerning letters, vowel signs, accents, and even individual occurrences of gaʿya or meteg.[22]

The underlying principle is transparency.

Any printed or digital Hebrew Bible necessarily embodies many editorial decisions: which manuscript to follow, how to normalize or preserve anomalous forms, how to encode accents, how to represent qere and ketiv, how to distinguish similar signs, and what to do when witnesses disagree. Most readers rarely see the reasoning behind those decisions.

MAM attempts to make that process open to inspection.

From Masoretic Codex to Digital Dataset

MAM’s digital form is therefore more than a convenient means of distributing a Hebrew Bible.

Here it is useful to distinguish the respective contributions of Kadish and Denckla. The textual scholarship, editorial methodology, manuscript research, and great majority of the research embodied in MAM and its Introduction are principally Kadish’s work. Denckla’s contribution during roughly the past six years has been primarily computational: writing software, structuring and processing the data, and using programmatic analysis to test the text. Such analyses have occasionally led to corrections in MAM itself.[25]

Denckla has also influenced particular aspects of the underlying scholarship. One example is the Introduction’s treatment of the relatively obscure phenomenon of the secondary merkha in the poetic accentuation system. More broadly, he has helped sharpen the conceptual distinction between MAM as a single edition and MAM as an underlying dataset capable of supporting editions.[25]

That distinction is important. A dataset is not identical with any one visual or editorial realization of it. MAM may be presented as a particular reader’s edition, but its structured digital representation can also underlie other displays and editions designed for different purposes.

The joint Ḥakirah article develops the broader claim that the mature Masoretic tradition is especially suited to representation as a structured dataset because it contains multiple interacting categories of information: written forms, vocalization, accentuation, textual structure, exceptional phenomena, and relationships among them.[23]

The claim is deliberately stronger than the assertion that digital text is convenient. An effective dataset can in some respects express the mature Masoretic product more systematically and completely than the fixed typography of an ordinary printed Bible.

A digital representation can, for example, distinguish data from presentation. The same underlying textual information can be rendered differently for a scholar, a synagogue reader, a student of cantillation, or a computer program. Features that were represented inconsistently or only sporadically in medieval manuscripts can be encoded explicitly and then displayed according to the needs of a particular edition.

MAM is therefore best understood not simply as an edition that happens to exist digitally, but as a structured body of Masoretic data from which different editions and presentations can be generated.

MAM is maintained not only as displayed text but also through structured digital resources, including spreadsheet-based data and parsed machine-readable files. Its open licensing has allowed the text to be reused and corrected cooperatively. It has been adopted as the Hebrew Tanakh text in major digital Torah-study environments, including Sefaria and AlHaTorah.[24]

This openness is consistent with Kadish’s larger conception of the Masoretic project and with the digital distinction sharpened by Denckla. Preservation is not merely the freezing of one artifact. It is an ongoing process of copying, comparing, correcting, documenting, and transmitting.

Digital technology changes the medium, but not necessarily the underlying impulse.

What, Then, Is “the Masoretic Text”?

MAM ultimately forces a useful clarification of what an editor means by “the Masoretic Text.”

The following alternatives are editorial objectives rather than mutually exclusive definitions accepted by every scholar.

If the purpose is to reproduce:

the text physically written in the Leningrad Codex,

then a diplomatic transcription of Leningrad is the appropriate kind of edition.

If the purpose is to reproduce:

the form of the Aleppo Codex wherever that manuscript survives,

then an Aleppo-based diplomatic or near-diplomatic edition is appropriate.

But if the editorial purpose is to represent:

the mature Tiberian textual and reading tradition preserved through the combined evidence of scribes, readers, Masoretes, codices, Torah scrolls, and Masoretic annotations,

then no single surviving manuscript necessarily exhausts the evidence.

MAM belongs principally to this third category.

It treats manuscripts as witnesses to a tradition, rather than simply identifying the tradition with one manuscript.

That is why a Masoretic note can occasionally outweigh the main text of Leningrad.

It is why an omitted vowel point or accent need not become normative merely because it occurs in an excellent codex.

It is why the Yemenite Torah-scroll tradition becomes particularly important when reconstructing the Torah’s consonantal spelling.

And it is why seemingly microscopic distinctions—a vav present or absent, a vowel point, an accent, a gaʿya, an open or closed section—can become editorially significant.

Such details were among the very objects that the Masoretic enterprise sought to preserve and describe.

Conclusion

The title Miqra According to the Masorah should therefore be taken seriously.

It is not Miqra According to the Leningrad Codex.

Nor, despite the extraordinary authority assigned to Aleppo, is it simply Miqra According to the Aleppo Codex.

Its governing concern is the Masorah in the broad sense of a transmitted textual and reading tradition, reconstructed and represented through the witnesses that preserve it.

A diplomatic edition of Leningrad asks:

What does Leningrad B19a contain?

Breuer’s reconstructional project asks:

What form of the Masoretic text associated with the Ben Asher/Aleppo tradition can be recovered from the surviving codex and the larger body of Masoretic evidence?

MAM adopts much of that reconstructional logic while adding a further editorial problem:

How can the complete written-and-reading tradition of the Masoretes be represented transparently and usefully in a modern digital text?

The digital form adds a further distinction. MAM is not merely one electronic edition of the Tanakh. It is also a dataset from which editions can be produced. That conception allows the underlying textual information to be separated from any single presentation of it and makes possible multiple renderings, computational analyses, and future corrections without reducing MAM to one fixed digital page.

Seen in this way, MAM embodies a particular—and explicitly articulated—theory of what it means to edit the Masoretic Text.

The Masoretic Text is not, in this conception, merely a manuscript.

It is a transmitted system: written, read, annotated, checked, corrected, and preserved across generations.

MAM is an attempt to make that system visible, usable, and inspectable in digital form.

---

Bibliography

Breuer, Mordecai. Keter Aram Tsovah veha-Nusaḥ ha-Mequbbal shel ha-Miqra [The Aleppo Codex and the Accepted Text of the Bible]. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1976. Hebrew.

Denckla, Ben. “The Encoding of MAM for Sefaria.” Revised June 26, 2025.

Jerusalem Crown: The Bible of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings according to the text and Masorah of the Aleppo Codex and related manuscripts, following the method of Mordecai Breuer. Scientific supervision by Yosef Ofer. Jerusalem: N. Ben-Zvi Printing Enterprises, 2000.

Kadish, Seth (Avi), and Ben Denckla. “Miqra as Oral Torah, Written Torah, and Digital Torah.” Ḥakirah: The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought 36 (2025): 39–77.

Miqra According to the Masorah (מקרא על פי המסורה). Hebrew Wikisource. Continuously revised digital edition. Especially introduction, chap. 3, “Establishing the Text of the Torah”; chap. 4, “Establishing the Text of Neviʾim and Ketuvim: Places Missing in the Aleppo Codex”; chap. 5, “Establishing the Text of Neviʾim and Ketuvim: Places Extant in the Aleppo Codex”; and “About This Edition: English Abstract.” Accessed September 14, 2026.

Ofer, Yosef. The Masora on Scripture and Its Methods. Translated by Michael Glatzer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019.

Penkower, Jordan S. Nusaḥ ha-Torah be-Keter Aram Tsovah: ʿEdut Ḥadashah [New Evidence for the Pentateuch Text in the Aleppo Codex]. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1992. Hebrew.

Yeivin, Israel. Keter Aram Tsovah: Niqqudo u-Teʿamav [The Aleppo Codex of the Bible: A Study of Its Vocalization and Accentuation]. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1968. Hebrew.

Footnotes

1. Seth (Avi) Kadish and Ben Denckla, “Miqra as Oral Torah, Written Torah, and Digital Torah,” Ḥakirah: The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought 36 (2025): 39–43. The article is jointly authored; the attribution of the underlying MAM research principally to Kadish follows Denckla’s own clarification; see n. 25.
2. Miqra According to the Masorah (hereafter MAM), “About This Edition: English Abstract,” Hebrew Wikisource, accessed September 14, 2026.
3. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 39–47. The framework is presented jointly in the article; on the division of research responsibility, see n. 25.
4. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 40–44. Their argument connects the older sense of q-r-ʾ as “calling out” with the professional and communal role of the reader (qoreʾ). Their broader statement concerning the absence of silent reading as an independent cultural activity should be understood as part of their historical framing rather than as a premise required by MAM’s editorial method.
5. Israel Yeivin, Keter Aram Tsovah: Niqqudo u-Teʿamav [The Aleppo Codex of the Bible: A Study of Its Vocalization and Accentuation] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1968), Hebrew; Mordecai Breuer, Keter Aram Tsovah veha-Nusaḥ ha-Mequbbal shel ha-Miqra [The Aleppo Codex and the Accepted Text of the Bible] (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1976), Hebrew. See also Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 52–56.
6. MAM, “Establishing the Text of Neviʾim and Ketuvim: Places Extant in the Aleppo Codex,” introduction, chap. 5, Hebrew Wikisource, accessed September 14, 2026.
7. MAM, “Places Extant in the Aleppo Codex,” chap. 5. MAM describes fewer than two hundred locations, out of more than a million relevant letters and signs, as requiring comment in connection with establishing a particular sign; only a portion of these involve a genuine editorial decision.
8. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 54–55. On the relationship between Leningrad, BHK3, BHS, and BHQ, see esp. 55 and n. 34.
9. Yosef Ofer, The Masora on Scripture and Its Methods, trans. Michael Glatzer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 108–30, esp. chap. 7, “The Masora on Scripture as an ‘Error Correcting Code.’”
10. MAM, “Establishing the Text of Neviʾim and Ketuvim: Places Missing in the Aleppo Codex,” introduction, chap. 4, Hebrew Wikisource, accessed September 14, 2026. The chapter summarizes the missing portions as based on Leningrad while describing the consonantal reconstruction as proceeding through the Masorah and the majority evidence of relevant Tiberian manuscripts.
11. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 55 n. 34; see also Breuer, Keter Aram Tsovah, 46–51, 67, 91–94.
12. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 55–56; Breuer, Keter Aram Tsovah, 46–51, 67, 91–94.
13. MAM, “Establishing the Text of the Torah,” introduction, chap. 3, Hebrew Wikisource, accessed September 14, 2026. MAM states explicitly that the Torah’s letters and section divisions are determined according to Torah scrolls, its orthography according to Yemenite scrolls, and its vocalization, accents, and gaʿayot from a Leningrad base subject to correction.
14. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 52–53; Breuer, Keter Aram Tsovah, 87–89. The joint article presents this conclusion; the underlying MAM research is principally Kadish’s according to Denckla’s clarification.
15. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 53 n. 29; Jordan S. Penkower, Nusaḥ ha-Torah be-Keter Aram Tsovah: ʿEdut Ḥadashah [New Evidence for the Pentateuch Text in the Aleppo Codex] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1992), 67–71, 77–80, 90, Hebrew. The article raises the possibility that Yemenite scribes corrected the Torah’s letter-text through Masoretic notes and thereby reached a text “slightly more accurate” in a few details than Aleppo itself.
16. MAM, “Establishing the Text of the Torah,” chap. 3. MAM gives the figure as “about 127,” with one case doubtful.
17. MAM, “Establishing the Text of the Torah,” chap. 3. Its wording is that in the “overwhelming majority” of these places, the spelling in Leningrad’s main text contradicts Masoretic notes in Leningrad itself.
18. MAM, “Establishing the Text of the Torah,” chap. 3, entry for Exod 14:22. MAM gives חוֹמָה against Leningrad חֹמָה and marks the Leningrad reading as conflicting with Masoretic evidence.
19. MAM, “Establishing the Text of the Torah,” chap. 3, entry for Num 1:17. MAM records בְּשֵׁמֹת for the Yemenite tradition and בְּשֵׁמוֹת for Leningrad and the Sephardi-Ashkenazi scroll tradition.
20. MAM, “Establishing the Text of the Torah,” chap. 3. In its discussion of the six letters for which Breuer’s general method does not independently yield a fully decisive result, MAM suggests that the problem may reflect a disagreement between traditions rather than an ordinary inattentive scribal error.
21. MAM, “About This Edition: English Abstract.” MAM describes itself as a reader’s edition and explains that it uses formatting and reading aids not always represented systematically in the manuscripts.
22. MAM, “About This Edition: English Abstract.” The project specifically describes local documentation for decisions involving letters, vowels, accents, and individual gaʿayot.
23. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 64–74, esp. 68–74. Their abstract states the stronger thesis that the mature Masoretic product can be fully expressed only through an effective dataset. On Denckla’s role in sharpening the distinction between MAM as a dataset and its particular editions, see n. 25.
24. Kadish and Denckla, “Miqra,” 73–75; Ben Denckla, “The Encoding of MAM for Sefaria,” rev. June 26, 2025; see also MAM, “About This Edition: English Abstract.” Denckla describes MAM as Sefaria’s default Tanakh text and explains the structured data used for its Sefaria implementation.
25. Ben Denckla, personal communication to the author. Denckla emphasized that Seth (Avi) Kadish deserves credit for the great majority of the research underlying MAM, MAM’s Introduction, and their jointly authored Ḥakirah article. He described his own contribution to MAM as primarily the computer programming of roughly the past six years, including programmatic analyses that have sometimes resulted in corrections; he also identified contributions to particular topics, including the treatment of the secondary merkha in the poetic system, and to the conception of MAM as a dataset that has editions rather than merely constituting a single edition.