Unknown time:

1. Inscription 1 (fol. 95): The inscription reads:

'סימן מכותאיס תהלה לאל כבר הבנתי לפי קוטן דעתי מרמזי הספר הקדוש'

"‘Syman from Kutais, Praise God, I have already understood, with my little knowledge, the implications of this Holy Book’".

This note contains a crucial reference to the largest Jewish settlement in West Georgia. The line does not record any kind of transaction or change of ownership of the manuscript, but it suggests that at some point in history, some work might have been done on the manuscript in Kutaisi.(copied from Gomelauri 2023, pp. 137- 138).

1. Inscription 2, folio 95r

The second vertical inscription is written below the first one in large letters, exceeding the script of the manuscript. The writing begins below the last line of the consonantal text, under the lower margin of the Masorah Magna, and extends in an upward direction, ending before the second line of the first column. This line quotes Job’s response to Bildad’s accusations (Job 19:27) and ends with a punctuation sign signifying the end of the verse:

אשר אני אחזה לי ועיני ראו ולא זר כלו כליתי בחקי:

'I myself, not another, would behold Him; Would see with my own eyes: My heart pines within me'.

1. Inscription 3, folio 76v

Fol. 76v contains the text of Exodus 39:17–32. It is one of the six leaves that were in the care of Chacham Moshe Khakhiashvili.

Unlike the two inscriptions mentioned before, the direction of the script on this fragment starts from the upper margin of the leaf and extends toward the lower margin. Unfortunately, this fragment is not fully legible. However, it clearly spells the Tetragrammaton, which suggests that it could be a citation of a biblical verse, as in the case of fol. 95r, but without further research, it is impossible to ascertain any claim. The fragment reads:

... מד יקוק (Tetragrammaton) אלמ...

(copied from Gomelauri 2023, p. 139).

1869, Elul

The first historical record of the Lailashi Codex was made by Joseph Judah Chorny (1835–1880), Jewish ethnographer from Minsk who mentions the Codex in his Diary of Caucasian and Trans-Caucasian Journey, in his report on the visit to the Lailashi Village (Gomelauri 2023, pp.16-18).

1938 - 1939:

Confiscation of the Lailashi Codex. It was taken from the Jewish Community in Lailashi into the Jewish Historic-Ethnographic Museum in Tbilisi, that was established about 5 years earlier on Nov. 1933 (Gomelauri 2023, pp. 25, 27).

During that time, It seems that Chacham Moshe Khakhiashvili who served as Rabbi of the Lailashi community at the time of the manuscript’s removal by the Communist regime, removed from the Codex six folios. When he moved to Oni, he took them with himsef. It is told that he got ill soon after handing the six leaves over to the Institute of Manuscripts. Weil indicated (without citing any source) that Chacham Moshe’s death was allegedly linked to his ‘abandoning sacred leaves in profane hands.’ Chacham Moshe got ill and a few months later he died in 1967. Following Tsereteli’s 1968 announcement regarding ‘finding six new leaves very recently’, one can safely assume that the new leaves arrived in the Institute of Manuscripts either in 1967, 1966 or, at the earliest, 1965, after which Tsereteli himself may have foliated the entire volume.[1]  However, these six leaves are already in their places a few years before Chacham Moshe's illness and death as evident by the  microfilm of the Lailashi Codex from 1960. This microfilm was brought by the Georgian delegation who, during their expedition in search of Rustaveli’s fresco in Jerusalem, in the autumn of 1960, presented a microfilm of the manuscript to the Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, which was then given to the Ben Zvi Institute and was then given to the Ben Zvi Institute, and can be seen in NLI’s ‘Ktiv’ project since 2019.[2]

1941: The Lailashi Codex was put on display in the historical section of the anti-religious exhibition (Gomelauri 2023, p. 34), after a while on the same year, the Jewish Historic-Ethnographic Museum in Tbilisi was liquidated.  The museum’s building, including the exhibition hall with its artefacts, was given to the cotton factory for storing cotton.

1951?- : The Lailashi Codex, together with the collections of the Jewish museum, was given to the State Museum of History of Georgia. (Gomelauri 2023, p. 38).

1958: the Soviet government formed the Institute of Manuscripts on the grounds of the Manuscript Department of the State Museum of History, and the Lailashi Codex changed formal owners. Over the years, the Institute of Manuscripts went through several institutional reorganizations.

1965?-1968: Tsereteli wrote that new leaves had surfaced ‘very recently’in Oni, a large Jewish settlement near the Lailashi village. Tsotne Kikvidze, an employee of the Institute of Manuscripts, brought folios 43, 63, 64, 67, 77, and 78 to Tbilisi, and inserted them into the codex.[3]

2006: The Laialshi Codex emerged as the National Centre of Manuscripts (NCM) which inherited the collections plundered by the Soviet regime after the liquidation of the Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Museum.