The Codex Sassoon could break auction records, becoming the most valuable historical document ever sold
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Posted on 02/20/2023 7:23:09 AM PST by Postel
World’s Oldest Near-Complete Hebrew Bible Goes to Auction
The Codex Sassoon could break auction records, becoming the most valuable historical document ever sold
Sarah Kuta
Daily Correspondent
February 17, 2023
Bible open to a page in the middle, set against a black backdrop
The Codex Sassoon, which measures 12 by 14 inches, dates to the late ninth or early tenth century.
At more than 1,000 years old, the Codex Sassoon is the world’s earliest near-complete Hebrew Bible. Soon, it could also become the “most valuable historical document ever sold at auction,” according to a statement from Sotheby’s. The auction house expects to sell it for between $30 and $50 million in May.
Historians say a scribe wrote out the text on roughly 400 sheets of parchment in the late ninth or early tenth century. Eventually, the book landed at a synagogue in present-day Syria, which was then destroyed around the 13th or 14th century.
Notes in the codex indicate that its next steward was Salama bin Abi al-Fakhr, who was supposed to keep it safe until the synagogue was rebuilt. It wasn’t rebuilt—and the codex disappeared for the next 600 years.
It resurfaced in 1929, when British collector David Solomon Sassoon purchased it for £350, per the New York Times’ Jennifer Schuessler. The document, now named for the collector, remained with Sassoon’s heirs until 1978, when the British Rail Pension Fund purchased it for $320,000. It was sold for $3.19 million in 1989.
Woman reading the Codex Sassoon Written around 1,100 years ago, the Codex Sassoon contains the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible on roughly 400 pages of parchment. Sotheby's Today, Swiss collector Jacqui Safra owns it. Sotheby’s didn’t reveal why Safra has chosen to sell it now.
The Codex Sassoon has long held a “revered and fabled place in the pantheon of surviving historic documents and is undeniably one of the most important and singular texts in human history,” says Richard Austin, Sotheby’s global head of books and manuscripts, in the auction house’s statement.
Protected in a simple brown leather binding added during the 20th century, the book weighs 26 pounds and measures 12 by 14 inches.
In addition to the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, the Codex Sassoon’s pages also include ownership records and detailed notes on how words should be written and recited.
“It’s a masterpiece of scribal art,” says Sharon Mintz, Sotheby’s senior Judaica specialist, to the Times. The book, she adds, “radiates both history and holiness.”
The Codex Sassoon is roughly a century older than the Leningrad Codex, the oldest entirely complete Hebrew Bible, per Sotheby’s. It’s closer in age to the Aleppo Codex, which dates to around 930—but it’s missing nearly two-fifths of its pages.
Open Bible
The auction house expects it to sell for between $30 and $50 million. Sotheby's Sotheby’s experts landed on the $30 million to $50 million pre-auction estimate after two years of discussion that factored in the Codex Sassoon’s historical value, as well as the production and labor costs involved with putting it together, according to the Times. If its price hits the upper end of that range, it could become the most valuable historical document ever sold at auction.
The current record is $43.2 million, which art collector Ken Griffin paid for a first printing of the United States Constitution in November 2021. The next most expensive historical document behind that is the Codex Leicester, a collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific writings that Bill Gates bought for $30.8 million in 1994.
The Codex Sassoon has only been exhibited publicly once, as part of a 1982 show at the British Museum. Ahead of the auction on May 16, it will tour around the world, going on display in London, Tel Aviv, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York City.
Thanks Postel. I understand some 12 pages are missing.
“Thanks Postel. I understand some 12 pages are missing.”
__
Yes. An exciting piece.
Codex Sassoon? Ooh-la-la! (Was that Sassoon or Jordache?)
Watch out for the Green Family of Hobby Lobby fame. They are buying everything that they can for the Museum.
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Historians say a scribe wrote out the text on roughly 400 sheets of parchment in the late ninth or early tenth century. Eventually, the book landed at a synagogue in present-day Syria, which was then destroyed around the 13th or 14th century.
Thanks Postel.
Codex Sassoon: The Earliest Most Complete Hebrew Bible
Live Auction: 16 May 2023 10:00 EDT
New York
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2023/codex-sassoon-the-earliest-most-complete-hebrew-bible?locale=en
You welcome.
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Ahead of the auction on May 16, it will tour around the world, going on display in London, Tel Aviv, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York City.
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
25 Iyar, 5783
Omer: Day 40 - Hod sheb'Yesod
Tonight Count 41
Chumash Parshat Bamidbar, 3rd Portion (Bamidbar - Numbers 2:1-2:34)
Psalms Chapter 119, Verses 1-96
https://www.chabad.org/calendar/view/day.asp?tdate=5/16/2023
(119:1-96, the alef-to-lamed verses)
The auction house expects it to sell for between $30 and $50 million... If its price hits the upper end of that range, it could become the most valuable historical document ever sold at auction.
How high will it go?
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
In New Testament times (regardless of anyone's beliefs in these matters, I'm just pointing it out), 25 Iyar was "Ascension Day", as Easter Sunday was 16 Nisan -- Omer Day 1. (This year Easter Sunday is April 9th, so the Christian feast day date for 2023 is Thursday, May 18th.)
On auction day, 25 Iyar, the Chumash portion is Numbers 2:1-2:34, which is a key location concerning the rightful place of the 85-letter text that is framed by the inverted nuns:
R. Shimon Ben Gamliel says: This section will be uprooted from its place and written in its rightful place in the future (but for now it is in its correct location). Why is it written here? So as to separate between first and second retribution [3]. Second retribution is "and the people grumbled". First retribution is "and they traveled from the mountain of G-d (i.e., they eagerly run away from G-d's presence)". Where is it its appropriate place? Rav Ashi says: "In the section dealing with the disposition of the Israelites according to their banners and their travelling arrangements" (Numbers 1:52-2:34, Shabbath 116a).
Numbers 10:35-36
Located on scan page 12 of file 4 (Numbers), 3rd column from the right, lines 10-14.
Main page:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tanakh-MS-Sassoon-1053
Lots of interesting details in there. Yinon appears to be written with a vav, for example (Psalm 72:17).
Num 1035. And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, Lord, and let your enemies be scattered; and let them who hate you flee before you:
36. And when it rested, he said, Return, O Lord, to the many thousands of Israel:
How high will it go?
Be interesting if the Codex sold for $85 mil, same as for Ingenuity, on day where that text would be in its proposed "rightful place", along with the flags and traveling arrangements.
A related data point is that these are the opening verses for the reading on the day Donald Trump was born -- June 14, 1946 which was Flag Day and Sivan 15, the traditional date for the birth and passing of Judah.
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