By Benjamin Balint<\/p>\n
In Jerusalem, a gleaming white dome and a black basalt wall shield Israel’s greatest treasures\u2014not bejeweled crowns or scepters but unadorned texts. Visitors to the Shrine of the Book, a wing of the Israel Museum, can descend a steep flight of stairs from the main hall, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are on display, and arrive at a small chamber that houses the oldest and most authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible.<\/p>\n
Or so it appears. In fact, the full Aleppo Codex, as the copy is called\u2014a bound volume of vellum pages also known as the Crown of Aleppo\u2014is stored in a nearby vault. Only its topmost leaf, the one that viewers see, is from the codex itself. The rest is a dummy, cleverly arranged by the curators to appear real. As Matti Friedman observes in “The Aleppo Codex,” a superb work of investigative journalism that reads like a detective thriller, this illusion is but the first sign that not everything about the codex is as it seems.<\/p>\n