“Sassoon Codex: The Oldest and Most Complete Hebrew Bible Sells for $38.1 Million”

He “sassoon codex“, the copy of the The Bible oldest and most complete Hebrew of which there is evidence, was auctioned this Wednesday in New York for a final price of 38.1 million dollars (35.1 million euros).

Sotheby’s auction house, which valued it between 30 and 50 million, indicated that the price reached in the bid, which lasted about five minutes, is the highest for any manuscript document, although it did not reach the record for a historical document.

The buyer was known after the auction: ANU, the Museum of the Jewish People of Tel Aviv (Israel), whose representatives pointed out that it was a “historical moment” and with the purchase they get the the bible go back home”.

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Dated around the year 900 AD and coming from a territory between what is now Israel or Syria, the manuscript brings together, in the absence of about twelve pages, the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible including vowels, punctuation, accents and annotations.

Those 24 books, divided into three parts – the Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Writings – form the basis of Judaism, as well as the other monotheistic religions: Christianity (which calls it the “Old Testament”) and Islam.

Written on a sheepskin parchment

The 792-page copy was possibly copied by a scribe within one or two years on sheepskin parchment, which required significant resources that make it an “object of extreme luxury and rarity,” he says. Sotheby’s.

It passed from hand to hand until it was donated to the Makisian synagogue (northeast Syria) in the 13th century, but it was destroyed at the end of the following century and the manuscript was handed over to a member of the community to preserve it until the rebuilding of the temple, something that never happened.

The codex then remained unaccounted for for several centuries until it was released on the market in 1929 and was purchased by David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942), the greatest collector of Hebrew and Judaic manuscripts of the 21st century.

The copy is older and more complete than another copy of the Hebrew Bible that was already known, the Aleppo codex, but its date of origin had not been scientifically determined until recently, when its current owner -unknown- subjected it to scientific tests. and carbon.

Before its auction in New York, Sotheby’s The codex embarked on a world tour that began in Israel, where it aroused great interest.

The Sassoon Codex fills a gap between the current modern form of the Hebrew Bible and the most archaic testimony of its writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls or Qumran Scrolls, from 250 BC to AD 66, which after their discovery in 1947 are considered one of the great archaeological finds of the 20th century.