The sale of the oldest near-complete Hebrew Bible, over 1,000 years old, took place in New York on Wednesday, fetching a staggering $38.1 million. The document, known as the Codex Sassoon, had a pre-sale estimate ranging from $30 million to $50 million and was auctioned for the first time in over three decades.
Sotheby’s, the auction house, declared that the sale set a new record for the most valuable manuscript ever sold at auction. The Codex Sassoon dates back to the late ninth to early tenth century and was sold after a four-minute bidding war between two participants.
The Moses family and Ambassador Alfred H. Moses from Washington, DC acquired the Codex Sassoon on behalf of the American Friends of ANU and generously donated it to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Sotheby’s highlighted the Bible’s significance, describing it as one of the world’s “greatest treasures” with profound meaning for the three major monotheistic religions and their numerous followers.
The auction price surpassed the 1994 sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester manuscript, which achieved $30.8 million, making it the most valuable historical document ever auctioned. However, the highest-priced historical document to date is one of the first prints of the US Constitution, sold for $43 million in November 2021.
Sotheby’s emphasized that the sacred words of the Hebrew Bible have been the subject of study, contemplation, and analysis for thousands of years. The Hebrew Bible comprises twenty-four books divided into three sections: the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. Christians refer to these texts as the Old Testament, and they are included in the canons of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches. The Bible has been copied, printed, and translated into numerous languages worldwide.
The Codex Sassoon is named after its previous owner, David Solomon Sassoon, who acquired it in 1929 and built one of the most significant private collections of Judaica and Hebraica manuscripts in the twentieth century. David Solomon Sassoon was a distinguished scholar and bibliophile.
According to Sotheby’s senior consultant of Judaica and Hebraica in the book and manuscript department, the Codex Sassoon, written around the year 900, contains all the books of the Hebrew Bible in a single format. It represents one of the earliest almost complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible.
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