Bible Treasures From the Crimea

Another scholar searching for Bible treasures was mentioned at the outset. Who was he? A few years before Tischendorf returned to Russia, The Imperial Library received a proposal so unbelievable that it drew the czar’s interest and brought scholars to Russia from all over Europe. They could hardly believe their eyes. Before them was an enormous collection of manuscripts and other material. It numbered a staggering 2,412 items, including 975 manuscripts and scrolls. Among these were 45 Bible manuscripts dating earlier than the tenth century. As incredible as it seemed, all these manuscripts had been collected almost single-handedly by a man named Abraham Firkovich, a Karaite scholar who was then more than 70 years old! But who were the Karaites?b

This question was of great interest to the czar. Russia had extended its borders to encompass territory previously held by other states. This had brought new ethnic groups into the empire. The picturesque Crimea region, on the shores of the Black Sea, was populated by a people who seemed to be Jewish but who had Turkish customs and spoke a language related to Tatar. These Karaites traced their descent from Jews exiled to Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E. Unlike rabbinic Jews, however, they rejected the Talmud and emphasized the reading of the Scriptures. The Crimean Karaites were eager to present to the czar evidence of their distinctness from rabbinic Jews, thereby giving them a separate status. By presenting ancient manuscripts owned by Karaites, they hoped to prove that they had descended from Jews who had immigrated to the Crimea after the Babylonian exile.

When Firkovich undertook his search for ancient records and manuscripts, he started with the Crimean cliff dwellings of Chufut-Kale. Generations of Karaites had lived and worshipped in these small houses built from the stones carved out of cliffs. The Karaites never destroyed worn-out copies of the Scriptures where the divine name, Jehovah, appeared because they considered such action sacrilege. The manuscripts were carefully placed in a small storehouse called a genizah, meaning “hiding place” in Hebrew. Because the Karaites had deep respect for the divine name, such parchments were seldom disturbed.

Undeterred by the dust of centuries, Firkovich searched the genizah sites carefully. In one, he found the famous manuscript of 916 C.E. Called the Petersburg Codex of the Latter Prophets, it is one of the oldest copies of the Hebrew Scriptures in existence.

Firkovich managed to amass great numbers of manuscripts, and in 1859 he decided to offer his vast collection to The Imperial Library. In 1862, Alexander II helped to purchase the collection for the library for the then enormous sum of 125,000 rubles. At that time, the entire library budget was no more than 10,000 rubles a year! This acquisition included the renowned Leningrad Codex (B 19^A). It dates from 1008 and is the world’s oldest complete copy of the Hebrew Scriptures. One scholar noted that it is “probably the single most important manuscript of the Bible, for it established the text of most modern critical editions of the Hebrew Bible.”

[Picture on page 12]

Abraham Firkovich