Sotheby’s has announced the upcoming auction of Codex Sassoon. They are dubbing it “The Earliest, Most Complete Hebrew Bible” and anticipating that, at $30–50m, it could be “the highest valued manuscript or historical document ever offered at auction.” From their description:
The earliest, most complete copy of the Hebrew Bible is actually a book known as Codex Sassoon, named for its most prominent modern owner: David Solomon Sassoon (1880–1942), a passionate collector of Judaica and Hebraic manuscripts. Dating to the late 9th or early 10th century, 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.
It all sounds quite impressive, but that’s what you would expect from someone about to make money off of it. I wonder if our readers could say more about this manuscript. I admit this is the first I’ve ever heard of it. (Wikipedia seems to have it confused with the Damascus Pentateuch.)
Update (2/22/23): Kim Phillips addresses some of the exaggeration about Codex Sassoon over at the TCI website and points to some other helpful sources here.
Here I found some previous mentions of codex Sassoon. At least there are more than one if them.
ReplyDeletehttps://books.google.nl/books?id=BwWwCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA123&lpg=PA123&dq=codex+sassoon&source=bl&ots=W2WfQ1QPU0&sig=ACfU3U0pyBaQj6hf-lE_bM0772Jw63nQ-g&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwidt9uqoJr9AhVx8LsIHQXsBms4KBDoAXoECB4QAw#v=onepage&q=codex%20sassoon&f=false
https://books.google.nl/books?id=n-MmEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=codex+sassoon&source=bl&ots=CC_TVX60DT&sig=ACfU3U35m2J2gQEKOnL89uWL4zlSxl5uKw&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjK7YygoZr9AhVugP0HHXE2D284RhDoAXoECB4QAw#v=onepage&q=codex%20sassoon&f=false
Jean Putmans
The manuscript is Sassoon 1053, and according to Brotzman it is the "least carefully written" of the tenth-century texts.
ReplyDelete"Two early Tiberian manuscripts are both dated in more general terms to the tenth century CE. The first of these is a manuscript of most of the Torah, formerly known as Sassoon 507 (S; now known as Jerusalem, National and University Library, Heb. 24°5702). It is less closely aligned with the Ben Asher tradition than the previously mentioned manuscripts, and in some instances it agrees with the Ben Naphtali tradition. The second contains the whole OT except for a few missing pages and is known as Sassoon 1053 (S1). This manuscript is less carefully written than the others mentioned."
Ellis R. Brotzman and Eric J. Tully, Old Testament Textual Criticism: A Practical Introduction, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: 2016), 58.
Some (poor quality) images are available here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tanakh-MS-Sassoon-1053
Matt W
Millar College of the Bible
Winnipeg, MB
I should add that Tov briefly mentions 1053 on p. 46 of his second edition (2012), and then only to say it reflects "the vocalization of the Ben Asher tradition." -MW
DeleteYou can get a higher resolution of the Sassoon 1053 microfilm here - https://archive.org/details/Sassoon_1053_Tanakh/page/n439/
Delete(I was interested in comparing it with the Leningrad Codex at Job 1-3, but unfortunately Job 1:13-3:8 seems to be missing from the images)
WH Chong,
Theology Postgrad, University of Otago, New Zealand
One of the running themes I've been seeing from friends online in response to this story has been surprise to learn that there's a manuscript touted as the oldest nearly complete Hebrew Bible in existence (or in some stories, more sensational and less factual claims to the effect that it is both the oldest and most complete) and they had not heard of it before.
ReplyDeleteFrom the perspective of someone whose specialty is not Hebrew Bible, it does seem like this manuscript has been neglected.
From what little I can learn about it online, it looks like it probably was not known to Kennicott or De Rossi, and so their collations, which are the basis of the citations of Masoretic variants in BHS, would not have included it.
Is there a published collation of this against the Leningrad Codex out there somewhere?
Israel Yevin's “Introduction to the Tiberian Masorah,” (translated by Revell) discusses on p. 21 the two Sassoon mss, one in Jerusalem and the other the one now to be sold. On the same page, paragraph 34, the latter is described as “less carefully written than the other MSS described,” here referring to Leningrad B19A, the Aleppo Codex, the Cairo Codex to Prophets and British Museum MS Or. 4445.
ReplyDeleteFrom Ernst Würthwein, _The Text of the Old Testament_, third edition (Eerdmans, 2014), 42.
ReplyDelete"Codex Sassoon 1053 (M-S1). This codex from the private collection of David Salomon Sassoon (1880–1942) contains (except for a few lacunae) the complete biblical text and the Mp. The Mm, in contrast, is on only a few pages. The scribe and place of writing are unknown and its date is about the 10th century. The manuscript is not so carefully copied, agree with Masoretic authorities other than Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali in 40 percent of instances of difference. Another manuscript from the Sassoon library is the Damascus Pentateuch from the 10th century known as Codex Sassoon 507 (M-S5). Its text is closer to the Ben Naphtali tradition, while its Masorah follows Ben Asher."
Würthwein cites H. Rabinowicz, "The Sasson Treasures," JQR 57 (1966): 136–53.
In vol. 1 of Geoffrey Khan's book on Tiberian Pronunciation (open access, link below), Khan can find space in his 765 pages only for a brief mention of the Torah manuscript (p. 30), not the full-Bible manuscript.
https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0163
I just re-read this blog post and noticed that it opens: "Sotheby’s has announced the upcoming auction of Codex Sassoon aka The Damascus Pentateuch."
ReplyDeleteAnd then it closes with this parenthesis: "(Wikipedia seems to have it confused with the Damascus Pentateuch.)"
Fixed. Thanks.
DeleteSomeone just recently uploaded high resolution (full color) photos of Codex Sassoon 1053 to Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/tanakh-ms-sassoon-1053-color-images
ReplyDeleteIs the Museum of the Bible in the market for it?
ReplyDeleteCodex Sassoon should be returned to the Jewish people and put in a museum in isra'el, not auctioned of to the highest bidder at some auction only to go into someone's private collection never to be seen again.
ReplyDelete