The oldest complete Hebrew codex?

EXHIBITION: World's oldest Jewish text debuts exhibit at Museum of the Bible The exhibit, titled Sacred Words: Revealing the Earliest Hebrew Book, features the book from the 700s which was discovered in Afghanistan (Jerusalem Post).

The exhibit, Sacred Words: Revealing the Earliest Hebrew Book, showcases the book, which was discovered in Afghanistan and dates back roughly 1,300 years.

The book, referred to as the ALQ, is comprised of prayers, poems, and pages of the oldest discovered Passover Haggadah, which was mysteriously written upside down. The prayers and poetry in the book draw on texts from the Hebrew Bible.

The article correctly states that this is (arguably) the oldest surviving complete Hebrew "book," that is, codex - pages with a binding. It is by no means the oldest Jewish text. The headline writer got carried away.

You can read a bit more about the manuscript in the first part of an article in the Free Press by Matti Friedman: Is This Mysterious Text the Most Ancient Hebrew Book Ever Discovered? Found in a cave in Afghanistan, the parchment dates to between 660 and 780 CE. Soon, it will be on display at the Museum of the Bible. The rest of the article is behind a subscription wall. Aish.com also has an article on it, with more information about the whole exhibition: The Oldest Hebrew Book Ever Discovered.

It sounds as though this codex could be the same one that was in the news some years ago (first in 2013). That one was an early Hebrew codex, also owned by the Museum of the Bible, but called a Hebrew siddur or prayer book, and reportedly C-14 dated to the ninth century. Matti Friedman's comments about the one currently in the news makes them sound the same to me. But from the photos it looks like the "Hebrew prayer book" had a different layout (fewer lines) than the one on exhibit now. And the back stories sound different.

For PaleoJudica posts, see the links collected here in 2021. There I also discuss the question of the oldest Hebrew manuscript vs. book.

Rather than sitting on this story any longer, I pass it to you as is. Are they the same codex? Or does the Museum of the Bible have two early Hebrew codices from Afghanistan? If you can shed light on the question, please drop me a note.

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