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Sotheby’s New York unveils the Codex Sassoon for auction in February. It sold for US$38 million. Photo: AP

World’s oldest Hebrew Bible - missing for 600 years - sells for US$38 million

  • The ancient text, known as the Codex Sassoon and written around 900 AD, is the most complete early copy of the Hebrew Bible. It was sold at Sotheby’s in New York
  • Buyer Alfred Moses, an American lawyer and former ambassador, will donate the Bible to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel

The oldest Hebrew Bible in the world has sold at Sotheby’s auction house in New York for US$38 million.

The ancient leather-bound, handwritten parchment volume, which dates from around 900 AD, “contains almost the entirety of the Hebrew Bible,” making it the most complete early copy to exist, according to Sotheby’s.

It is known as the Codex Sassoon – named after its former owner, David Solomon Sassoon, a collector who amassed a significant collection of Judaica and Hebraica manuscripts in the 20th century, Business Insider’s Lakshmi Varanasi previously reported.

It was sold on Wednesday following 10 minutes of bidding to Alfred Moses, an American lawyer and former ambassador, who will donate it to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Sotheby’s sold the Codex Sassoon at auction in New York. The 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible, one of the oldest surviving biblical manuscripts, sold for US$38.1 million. Photo: AP

The sum was a record for a manuscript, as reported by The Financial Times newspaper, surpassing the US$31 million Microsoft’s Bill Gates paid for Da Vinci’s Codex Leicester in 1994.

Billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin set the record for a historical document in 2021 when he paid US$43 million for an original printed copy of the US Constitution.

The Codex Sassoon was written by an unknown master scribe over a period of two years, according to the website of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, which displayed the prized Bible in its Bridwell Library last month.

A second scholar added notes in the 13th century when it was housed in a synagogue in Syria. When invaders destroyed the synagogue, a member of the Jewish community hid it away for safekeeping to be returned when it was rebuilt. It never was, and the Codex officially disappeared for 600 years until it appeared in 1929 and was bought by David Sassoon, said the SMU website.

Sotheby’s hopes for record US$30 million sale of ancient Hebrew Bible

The only other nearly complete Hebrew Bible to survive from the tenth century is known as the Aleppo Codex, which was created in around 930 AD, per Sotheby’s. However, around two-fifths of the manuscript were lost between the late 1940s and late 1950s, under what the auction house describes as “mysterious circumstances.”

Hence, the auction house says the nearly 800-page Codex Sassoon is “definitively the most significant early biblical manuscript in private hands.”

It includes 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, divided into the Torah, or “Pentateuch,” the Nevi’im, or “prophets,” and the Ketuvim, or “writings.” The Hebrew Bible is the basis for what Christians call the Old Testament.

Sharon Liberman Mintz, Sotheby’s Judaica specialist, said the massive US$38 million price tag “reflects the profound power, influence, and significance of the Hebrew Bible, which is an indispensable pillar of humanity,” reported Associated Press.

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