One of the earliest surviving ancient manuscripts, a virtually complete Hebrew Bible dating back 1,100 years, will soon be available for $30 million.
In May, Sotheby’s in New York is scheduled to auction off the Codex Sassoon, a leather-bound, handwritten parchment book containing nearly the whole Hebrew Bible. Even amid a global recession, the projected sale demonstrates that the market for art, antiques, and ancient texts remains robust.
Sotheby’s is generating interest in order to attract institutions and collectors. It has estimated a staggering $30 million to $50 million price tag.
Tel Aviv’s National Museum of the Jewish People began a week-long display of the document on Wednesday, as part of a frenzied globe tour of the relic in the United Kingdom, Israel, and the United States prior to its projected auction on Wednesday.
Yosef Ofer, a professor of Bible studies at Israel’s Bar Ilan University, stated that there are three ancient Hebrew Bibles from this time period: the Codex Sassoon and Aleppo Codex from the 10th century, and the Leningrad Codex from the early 11th century.
Only the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few fragmented early medieval writings are older, and “a complete Hebrew Bible is uncommon,” he stated.
