This might top the list of 100 most precious Jewish artefacts

the difficulties incurred in doing so. The Codex, a bundle of stacked handwritten sheets, bound on one side, overcame this difficulty and was, therefore, a huge technological advance, compared by some to the invention of printing.

Nevertheless, the Codex was not popular among Jews, possibly because it was associated with the spread of Christianity whose followers used codices to promote the spread of the gospels.

towards the end of the ninth century and the beginning of the tenth century CE. The Codex was written in Syria or Israel.

The Jews in these countries, alongside almost 90 per cent of world Jewry, lived under Muslim rule.

The books of the bible were first written on scrolls of parchment, rather like the Torah scrolls from which we read in Shule every Shabbat, except that they were