The Leningrad Codex (ca. AD 1008) is the oldest known complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, based on the Masoretic Text, which defines the Jewish canon.
The Masoretes were a Rabbinic scribal school, primarily in Tiberias and Babylonia, who preserved the Hebrew Scriptures through a copying process renowned for meticulous integrity.
In this folio, the leaf contains Masorah Parva (tiny notes between columns), Masorah Magna (long notes in the top and bottom margins), tight column structure, clear vowel points, vocalization and cantillation marks, and marginal statistical notes. It preserves Deuteronomy 31:24-26, explicitly about writing, completion, and preservation of the Torah.
“When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book to the very end, Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, ‘Take this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.’”
The zenith of textual fidelity, the Masoretic sedulosity developed from the ancient presbyterial system, its strict transmission rules passed down as a sacred custody of ecclesial records and covenantal memory.
And that was in the 6th to 10th centuries — the technology on hand was scribes and parchment.
image: National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg (https://archive.org/details/Leningrad_Codex_Color_Images/page/n223/mode/1up)