Matti Friedman’s The Aleppo Codex is a book lover’s dream: Not only is it a book about a book, it’s a page-turning thriller. History dishes up some pretty compelling tales, and Friedman uncovered a spellbinder. “I expected to write a heartening story about the rescue of this book,” Friedman writes, “but instead found myself like a person who innocently opens …

The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman First line: “In the summer of 2008, in a dark underground room at Israel’s national museum in Jerusalem, I encountered one of the most important books on earth.” This may look like a sequel to The Da Vinci Code, but in reality it’s something far more exciting. Both an ode to the power of …

‘The Aleppo Codex’ traces the history of perhaps most authoritative manuscript of Jewish Bible Matti Friedman, an Associated Press reporter, thought he’d found the perfect human interest story. Perhaps the most authoritative manuscript of the Jewish Bible, the Aleppo Codex, called the Crown, had been annotated by Maimonides himself and safeguarded by the Jewish diaspora for millennia. Nearly destroyed when …

An ancient and priceless book, a murky history of evasions and coverups, an underground of sinister and possibly violent dealers, a former spy who drops tantalizing hints and a wily 84-year-old millionaire who says stuff like, “The problem with this story is that it could damage your health”: Are these the ingredients for a cheesy, improbable historical thriller? Yet “The Aleppo …

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Matti Friedman’s The Aleppo Codex is not, by his own admission, the book he set out to write. What began as a glimmering of interest evolved quickly into a web of mystery, intrigue, and unanswered questions as Friedman mined the story behind the legendary “Crown of Aleppo”—the oldest authoritative manuscript of the canonized Hebrew Bible, written in the tenth century …

Matti Friedman, author of ‘The Aleppo Codex,’ explains how he got drawn into a search for the truth about the most revered version of the Hebrew Bible By Jessica Steinberg May 10, 2012 Times of Israel writer Matti Friedman publishes his first book next week: ”The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible” …

Theft, espionage, corruption and a cover-up lasting decades — a new book by a Times of Israel reporter exposes the extraordinary saga of the uniquely revered, 1,100-year-old Aleppo Codex By Times of Israel staff May 10, 2012, 3:52 pm A new book by a Times of Israel reporter reveals dramatic new information about the fate of a manuscript many consider Judaism’s …

Written in the tenth century, the Aleppo Codex is the most accurate copy of the Hebrew Bible. Named for the Syrian city in which it was kept, the codex is also known as the Crown of Aleppo and was said to protect those who cared for it and curse those who defiled it. Friedman, a Jerusalem journalist, came across part …