The majority of the manuscripts have survived in a fragmentary condition. Manuscripts earlier than the 13th century are very rare. Leningrad Codex is the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew. The largest organized collection of Hebrew Old Testament manuscripts in the world is housed in the Russian National Library ( 'Second Firkovitch Collection') in Saint Petersburg. 14 scroll manuscripts were discovered in Masada in 1963–1965. There are more than 200 biblical manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of them were written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

260,000 Hebrew manuscripts were discovered in an old synagogue in Cairo, 10,000 of which are biblical manuscripts. The main manuscript discoveries in modern times are those of the Cairo Geniza (c. Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822–1894) published a list of 731 manuscripts. The first list of the Old Testament manuscripts in Hebrew, made by Benjamin Kennicott (1718–1783) and published by Oxford in two volumes in 17, listed 615 manuscripts from libraries in England and on the continent. As a result, the lapse of time between the original manuscripts and their surviving copies is much longer than in the case of the New Testament manuscripts. The earliest sources (whether oral or written) of the Hebrew Bible disappeared over time because of the fragility of media, wars (especially the destruction of the First and Second Temple) and other intentional destructions. The important manuscripts are associated with Aaron ben Asher (especially Leningrad Codex). The late manuscripts written after the 9th century use the Masoretic Text. The oldest manuscripts were written in a form of scroll, the medieval manuscripts usually were written in a form of codex.

Leningrad Codex text sample, portions of Exodus 15:21-16:3Ī Hebrew Bible manuscript is a handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) made on papyrus, parchment, or paper, and written in the Hebrew language (some of the biblical text and notations may be in Aramaic).

Old testament manuscripts online