Holy Scriptures! A 1,100-Year-Old Hebrew Bible Just Sold for $38.1 Million

One of the world’s oldest biblical manuscripts just raked in some major dough.

Dubbed the Codex Sassoon, the 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible sold for a staggering $38.1 million at Sotheby’s New York on Wednesday. The leather-bound, ancient book contains weathered parchment paper and page fulls of handwritten text that make up the oldest nearly complete edition of the Hebrew holy word.

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The historic text is named after the original owner, David Solomon Sassoon, who purchased the book in 1929. The Iraqi-Jewish businessman reportedly filled his London home with a number of Jewish manuscripts. After he died, Sassoon’s estate was broken up, and Sotheby’s Zurich outpost sold the codex in 1978 to the British Royal Pension Fund for $320,000, or $1.4 million in today’s currency. Eleven years later, the fund gave the manuscript to Jacqui Safra, a banker and art collector, for $3.2 million ($7.7 million today). Safra held the book in his possession for three decades before putting it up for auction this month.

The manuscript was exhibited at the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv in March as part of a global tour ahead of the auction. It was then purchased this week by the former U.S. ambassador to Romania, Alfred H. Moses, on behalf of the American Friends of ANU and then donated to the Israel-based museum, whose collection the text will soon join. Its $38.1 million price tag (which includes the auction house’s fee) is one of the highest prices paid for a manuscript sold at auction.

Similar sales include a rare copy of the U.S. Constitution that hedge-fund billionaire Ken Griffin splashed down $43.2 million for at a 2021 auction as well as Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Codex Leicester that sold for $31 million in 1994, which is about $60 million today. Unlike the Leicester edition, the Codex Sassoon may have been fabricated between 880 and 960. Sotheby’s Judaica specialist Sharon Liberman Mintz says in a statement that the closing offer for the book “reflects the profound power, influence, and significance of the Hebrew Bible, which is an Indispensable pillar of humanity.”

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