Hello everyone! Psalm 119:48 says, in the Message version, “I cherish your commandments—oh, how I love them!—relishing every fragment of your counsel.”
My question to you today is: Do you have a fragment of the Bible in your heart today? As you think about that, I want to tell you a story from the chronicles of the transmission of the Bible—especially the Hebrew Scriptures—as it came to us through history.
We have a great variety of editions and versions of the Bible today. Some Bibles are expensive leather-bound study books, others are little tattered paperback versions. And of course, many people now read their Bibles using their phones or tablets.
But if I were to ask you, “What is the most valuable copy of the Bible in the entire world today,” what would you say?
If you are an Old Testament scholar, you might say the Aleppo Codex. The Aleppo Codex, which is now displayed at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, is the oldest extant copy of the entire Old Testament in Hebrew and it dates from about the AD 900s. It was copied by hand in the city of Tiberius on the Sea of Galilee by a scribe named Shlomo Ben Buya’a. The word Codex is a manuscript that is in the form of a book, not a scroll.
It was purchased by the Jewish community in Jerusalem about a hundred years after it was made. But when the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, the synagogue was plundered and the Codex was held for ransom. A group of Jews in Egypt paid the ransom and it was housed in a synagogue in Old Cairo until sometime in the late 1300s it was transferred to Aleppo, Syria.
The Jews in Aleppo protected and revered it for hundreds of years. It was kept in a special cupboard and later in an iron safe in the basement of the Central Synagogue of Aleppo. From time to time, scholars were allowed to study it and it helped confirm the accuracy of later copies.
But in 1947, when the modern state of Israel was established, there was anti-Jewish rioting throughout the Middle East, and an extremist mob set the synagogue on fire. The Aleppo Bible disappeared. Some believed it had been destroyed in the fire. But about 10 years later, in the late 1950s, it was smuggled into Israel inside an old washing machine, and today it’s on display in the museum in Jerusalem in the section devoted to the Dead Sea Scrolls called the Shrine of the Book.
Many pages of this Codex were thought to have been destroyed in the fire in Syria, but a good portion of the manuscript survived; and it is the Number One manuscript for the Jewish people. Recently scholars are questioning whether the missing pages were actually destroyed. Some believe they are housed in private collections. Currently 40 percent of the manuscript, including the majority of the Torah, is missing.
Just recently a story was published in the newspapers. In the synagogue in Syria that day in 1947 was a man named Sam Sabbagh. As he was trying to make his escape, he saw a fragment of parchment on the floor and reached down and picked it up. It was a little fragment from the Aleppo Codex, and it was from Exodus 8, when Moses said to Pharaoh, “let my people go, that they may serve me.” Sam Sabbagh reached down and picked up that fragment and escaped out of the burning building and through the mob. He then put that fragment in a small piece of transparent plastic and kept it with him wherever he was. He was convinced that it had saved him from death that day, for he believed that he was going to be slaughtered by the Muslims. From that day, this little fragment—over 1000 years old—was on his person continually for six decades. He would not let it out of his sight. It was, to him, a super-charged, supernatural good luck charm. Now Mr. Sabbaugh has died, and at his direction the little fragment has been returned to the Israel Museum to be reunited with the manuscript.
As I read that story, I thought to myself that I revere the Word of God, too. It’s not a good luck charm, of course, but it is the most precious possession I own. I’ve read it almost since I’ve been old enough to read. I want to study it every day, memorize its words, and carry it in my hands and in my heart.
I think it’s a good idea to study the Bible every morning, select a verse or truth, and carry it into the day with us, trying to retain that truth in our minds throughout the morning, afternoon, and evening. I’ve been reading through the Gospel of Luke in the mornings, and this morning I came to the verse in chapter 19 that said, “Jesus went on to tell a parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and they supposed that the Kingdom of God was going to appear immediately.” The twelve disciples and the crowds were tremendously excited because they thought they were only a short time away from the Millennium, when Christ would reign. They had one word wrong—the word immediately. They had everything right except the timing. And I thought to myself that I often don’t fully understand the timing of what God is doing in my life and in the things about which I am concerned. He will keep His promises and bring about His will for our good, but I do not always know His exact timing, and so I have to trust Him with seeming delays.
Another way of keeping God’s Word in our heart is to memorize it. Years ago I memorized Psalm 121, which is made up of eight short verses. Recently I tried to quote it at a graveside service and didn’t get it right. I don’t think the mourners knew, but as I drove away I told myself I needed to review it again. Then I was speaking at another function and I tried to quote it. The same thing happened. So now I’ve printed it out and am saying it aloud every day to get it back into my memory.
Often when I awaken in the night, this is the Psalm I begin quoting.
The most valuable Scripture in the world is not the Aleppo Codex, my friends. It’s the passage you are studying right now, the words God is speaking into your life today. Make sure there’s always a fresh fragment of the Bible in your mind and heart.
The Lord be with you until we meet again.