The oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible is the Leningrad codex, written by an Egyptian Jewish scribe in 1008 CE. (The Aleppo codex, written around 930, is missing nearly 200 pages.) Older still are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include extensive fragments of the Bible and date to before 68 CE. Only one manuscript of the Bible exists from the intervening period, and Jennifer Drummond tells its story:

The Ashkar-Gilson manuscript was purchased by Fuad Ashkar and Albert Gilson (hence its name) from an antiquities dealer in Beirut in 1972, and some years later they donated it to Duke University in North Carolina. Based on carbon-14 dating and paleographic analysis, the Ashkar-Gilson manuscript was dated to sometime between the 7th and 8th centuries CE, right at the tail end of the so-called “silent era”—an almost 600-year period from the 3rd through the 8th centuries, or the time between the oldest Hebrew Bible fragments (the Dead Sea Scrolls) and the oldest complete authoritative Masoretic codices.

The Biden administration’s apparent abandonment of Israel is matched by the White House’s feckless handling of rising anti-Semitism. Seth Mandel explains:

On Thursday, May 2, Biden made public remarks condemning the campus pro-Hamas protests. The very next day, major Jewish groups pulled out of a White House meeting on anti-Semitism with [the domestic policy adviser Neera] Tanden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. The reason? Jewish activists who have spent their careers opposing Israel, attacking the Jewish community, and now supporting the very anti-Semitic demonstrations [the meeting was called to address] were added to the meeting after the mainstream groups had already accepted.

When Joe Biden speaks about anti-Semitism, he usually says the right words. But in charge of his deeds, he has put political incompetents manifestly unqualified for this responsibility. He should fix that immediately, because his speeches won’t much matter without a way to implement the ideas animating them.