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Most complete Hebrew Bible sold for $38.1m at auction

A book believed to be the earliest and most complete copy of the Hebrew Bible, Codex Sassoon, was sold for $38.1 million on Wednesday, May 17, in New York, United States, becoming the most valuable manuscript sold at auction.

The Codex Sassoon “contains all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible missing only 12 leaves and precedes the earliest entirely complete Hebrew Bible, the Leningrad Codex, by nearly a century,” the auction house, Sotheby’s said.

The Bible, dating to the late ninth or early 10th century, has become the most expensive auctioned manuscript and the most expensive religious Jewish artefact auctioned in history, Sotheby’s added.

The Codex Sassoon is thought to have been written about 1,100 years ago.

It is the earliest surviving example of a single manuscript containing all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible with punctuation, vowels, and accents.

U.S. lawyer and former ambassador, Alfred Moses, bought it for the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel.

“The Hebrew Bible is the most influential in history and constitutes the bedrock of Western civilization.

“I rejoice in knowing that it belongs to the Jewish people. It was my mission, realising the historic significance of Codex Sassoon, to see it resides in a place with global access to all people,” Moses said in a statement.

The winning bid exceeded the $30.8 million paid by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 1994 for the Codex Leicester, Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific notebook.

But it fell short of the record for a historical document sold at auction set by hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who bought a first-edition printed copy of the U.S. constitution for $43.2 million two years ago.

The text of the Hebrew Bible – whose 24 books make up what Christians call the Old Testament – remained in flux until the early Middle Ages, when Jewish scholars known as Masoretes began to create a body of notes that standardised it.

The Aleppo Codex, which was assembled around 930, is considered the most authoritative Masoretic text. However, damage from a fire in the Syrian city of Aleppo in 1947 means that only 295 of the original 487 pages survive today.

The Codex Sassoon, which carbon dating shows was created around 900, is missing only 12 pages, according to Sotheby’s.

The Codex Sassoon is named after a previous owner, David Solomon Sassoon, who acquired it in 1929 and assembled the largest and most important private collection of Hebrew manuscripts in the world at his home in London.

The Codex Sassoon’s most recent owner was Swiss investor Jacqui Safra, who bought it for £2 million ($2.5 million) at auction in London in 1989.

The Star