An ancient Hebrew Bible, known as the Codex Sassoon and over a millennium old, was auctioned off in New York for an unprecedented $38.1 million. This sale sets a new benchmark for the highest price garnered by a manuscript at an auction.
Dating back to the late 800s to early 900s AD, the Codex Sassoon is one of the earliest, almost complete versions of the Hebrew Bible. Sotheby’s auction house narrated an intense four-minute bidding war, concluding with the Bible’s purchase by former US envoy Alfred Moses on behalf of a US nonprofit entity.
The ex-diplomat, who served under the administration of President Bill Clinton, underscored the Hebrew Bible’s unparalleled historical influence and its pivotal role in shaping Western civilization. The transaction exceeded the prior record from 1994 when Bill Gates bought Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester manuscript for $30.8 million.
However, the Codex Sassoon’s auction win didn’t manage to dethrone the most expensive historical document to date, a first print of the US Constitution, which sold for $43 million in November 2021.
The Codex Sassoon is one of only two extant codices featuring all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, surpassing renowned early Hebrew Bibles, the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, incompleteness. The manuscript also predates these versions. Acting as a historical link between the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls and the accepted modern form of the Hebrew Bible, this document has immense cultural and historical value.
The manuscript is named after its former custodian, David Solomon Sassoon, recognized for creating one of the world’s most prominent private collections of ancient Jewish texts. The auction signaled the Codex Sassoon’s first public display in over three decades.
The manuscript has changed hands across numerous locations throughout its existence. However, it was publicly exhibited only once in 1982 at the British Library in London. Carbon-14 dating has established that the Codex Sassoon is older than the Aleppo Codex, penned in Galilee in the 10th century. It predates the Leningrad Codex, the earliest complete Hebrew Bible text copy thought to originate from the early 11th century.
