Codex Sassoon Sells for $38m

We wrote earlier about the sale of Codex Sassoon which was billed, with some exaggeration, as the earliest, most complete copy of the Hebrew Bible. Less exaggerated, as it turns out, was the claim that it could be the most expensive book sold at auction. As of today, it can officially claim that title. 

JNS reports that it sold today for $38.1 million to the Tel Aviv ANU–Museum of the Jewish People. For comparison, the most expensive book sold at auction before today was da Vinci’s Codex Leicester which Bill Gates bought for almost $31m. I should note that this is at the short end of Sotheby’s original projection which put it at $30–50m.

From JNS:

Alfred H. Moses, a former U.S. ambassador to Romania and active member of the Georgetown Jewish community, and his family purchased the Hebrew manuscript on behalf of the American Friends of ANU and gifted it to the museum, according to a press release from the auction house. Moses is chair of the museum’s international board of governors.

“The hammer fell after a four-minute bidding battle between two determined bidders,” Sotheby’s stated.

Read the rest here. 

Update (5/18/23): JNS updated its story after I wrote this to correct the amount the codex sold for. They had originally said 33.5m but it was apparently 38.1.

Codex Sassoon Heads to Auction

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Earliest, Most Complete Hebrew Bible” and anticipating that, at $30–50m, it could be “the highest valued manuscript or historical document ever offered at auction.”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.