Oldest complete Hebrew Bible worth $50,000,000 goes on display in Israel
The oldest complete Hebrew Bible is set to go on public display in Israel before being auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York for an estimated $30-50 million.
The Codex Sassoon was only presented once to the public, decades ago, and will now go on display at ANU-Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, for one week only from March 23.
If the 1,000-year-old holy book sells for near its estimated value, the Codex Sassoon would become the most valuable printed text or historical document ever sold at auction, Sotheby’s said.
Billionaire investor Kenneth Griffin set the record in 2021 when he paid $43.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for a first-edition copy of the US Constitution.
The Codex Sassoon is named after previous owner David Solomon Sassoon, who acquired the Bible in 1929 and assembled one of the most significant private collections of Judaica and Hebraica manuscripts in the 20th century.
The document offers a critical link bridging Jewish oral tradition to the modern Hebrew Bible.
It was not until recently that the current owner, collector Jacqui Safra, had the Codex Sassoon carbon dated, confirming it was older than the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, two other major early Hebrew Bibles, according to Sotheby’s.
Sotheby’s said the Codex Sassoon had been dated to either the late 9th or early 10th century on both scientific and paleographic grounds and contains almost the entirety of the Bible.
The oldest copies of Biblical text ever found were the Dead Sea Scrolls that were discovered in caves in 1947.
The manuscript was previously available for public viewing for the first time in 40 years at Sotheby’s London in February.
After the exhibition in Tel Aviv, it is set to tour Dallas, Los Angeles and finally New York in May.
The Hebrew Bible contains 24 separate books organized into three parts — the Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Writings. Starting with the book of Genesis and ending with Chronicles, the Hebrew Bible is foundational to Judaism, as well as Christianity and Islam.
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