The oldest near-complete Hebrew Bible more than 1,000 years old was sold for a whopping $38.1 million in New York on Wednesday (May 17). With a pre-sale estimate of between $30 million and $50 million, the document was auctioned for the first time in more than 30 years.
Sotheby’s said that the sale has set a record for the most valuable manuscript ever sold at auction. The Codex Sassoon dates to the late ninth to early 10th century. The hammer was reportedly dropped after a four-minute bidding war between two bidders.
Ambassador Alfred H. Moses of Washington, DC and the Moses family purchased the Codex Sassoon on behalf of the American Friends of ANU and donated it to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel.
On its website, Sotheby’s stated that the Bible is one of the world’s “greatest treasures” and holds powerful resonance for the three monotheistic religions and their billions of adherents.
Sotheby’s, which is a multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City, noted that the price of the auction has surpassed the 1994 sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester manuscript, which achieved $30.8 million. So far, the most expensive historical document remains one of the first prints of the US Constitution, which was sold for $43 million in November 2021.
Sotheby’s said that the sacred words of the bible have been studied, contemplated, and analysed for thousands of years. The Hebrew Bible is made up of twenty-four books that are separated into three sections: the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. These texts are known as the Old Testament by Christians, and they are included in the canons of the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches. It has been copied, printed, and translated into scores of languages the world over.
Who was David Solomon Sassoon?
News agency Reuters reported that the Codex Sassoon is named for the previous owner, David Solomon Sassoon, who purchased the Bible in 1929 and amassed one of the twentieth century’s most significant private collections of Judaica and Hebraica manuscripts. According to Sotheby’s, Sassoon was a prominent scholar and bibliophile.
In an interview with Reuters earlier this year, Sotheby’s book and manuscript department’s senior consultant of Judaica and Hebraica said: “This manuscript, Codex Sassoon, written around the year 900, contains all the books of the Hebrew Bible in one single format. It is the earliest time that we have an almost complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible.”
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