The Leningrad Codex is arguably the best copy of the entire Hebrew Bible still extant. As such, it is the logical choice for a universal base or starting point on the Internet for study of the Hebrew Scriptures. We offer this text with the intention of eventually making it a mirror image of the manuscript.

The text offered now is a pre-release or “alpha” version. Check back here often, for we are actively working on improving the text. Right now, the perl script which creates the UTF-8 encoding has known bugs, which will be immediately evident to the reader. We offer it only for testing purposes.

Here are the known errors, so far:

• Many vowels, particularly patach, are offset to the right
• Holem following lamed is nearly obscured by the upward stroke of lamed
• Some verse reference numbers are not handled properly, and the error causes the first word of the verse to be incorrectly rendered
• Applications do not automatically recognize the text's bi-directionality

• Determining where the error lies. The possibilities are
• an error in generating the UTF-8 text
• an error in the OpenType font (kerning tables, combining rules, etc.)
• an error in the rendering engine of the application: browser, word processor, etc.
• The Unicode™ specification is ambiguous. For example, how holem and waw are combined, or with the order of characters emitted for combining
• Resolving issues requires painstaking empirical tests--and many of them!

NOTE: the zip archive contains two files: the Leningrad Codex file with a simple XML wrapper and a stylesheet. Later versions will have more sophisticated markup. To view the file, simply extract the two files into the same directory, and open the file with your browser. Keep in mind that the file is about 5MB and browsers will take up to a minute or even two to load and render the text. You can edit the stylesheet to use any Unicode™ font. We recommend the SIL Ezra Unicode™ fonts as the best available at present.

Download: Biblia Hebraica Westmonasteriensis (alpha release)