The oldest Hebrew Bible sold Wednesday at Sotheby’s for $38.1 million. The price at which the Bible was purchased is one of the highest ever paid for a historical book or document. writing The New York Times.
The book that went under the hammer is the so-called “Sassoon Code”. The tome includes all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible. Only the first 10 chapters of Genesis are missing. Scholars date the book to the late ninth or early tenth century AD, making it the oldest existing Hebrew Bible.
The book derives its current title from its former owner, David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942), who amassed the largest private collection of Hebrew manuscripts in the world. Since 1989, the Sassoon Code has belonged to the Swiss financier and collector Jacqui Safra.
Contrary to its habit, the auction house Sotheby’s revealed the name of the purchaser of the lot. They became the organization “American Friends of the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv”. The purchase was made possible by a donation from Alfred H. Moses, an American lawyer and diplomat who was the former United States Ambassador to Romania. The Sassoon code will be given to the museum.
“The Hebrew Bible had an enormous impact on the course of history and became the cornerstone of Western civilization. I am happy that now this book has returned to the Jewish people,” Alfred Moses commented on the results of the auction.
The most expensive book ever sold at auction is the first edition of the US Constitution, bought by investor Ken Griffin in November 2021. He paid $43.2 million for the document, only the purchase made in 1994 by Bill Gates can compete with him. The Microsoft founder then purchased the so-called “Leicester Code”, a manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci. The contractor paid $30.8 million for this document, which in current realities would amount to $62.4 million.
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