The Bible, called the Codex Sassoon, is an impressive artifact:
- It was written around 900 A.D. in traditional Hebrew.
- It’s considered a codex rather than a book, as it was written before the invention of paper.
- The only other Bible of this kind is the Codex Aleppo, which is missing nearly all of the Torah.
- This makes the Codex Sassoon the oldest and most complete Masoretic Hebrew Bible currently held in private hands.
Manhattan art auction house Sotheby’s expects the Bible to bring in $30-$50 million during its May 16 auction.
The Codex Aleppo has a home at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls.
But the museum won’t be bidding on the Codex Sassoon, even though the museum would seem a natural home for such an artifact.
Curators believe national funds should not be used to purchase the book because the institution is not a national museum.
The Codex Sassoon has 24 books divided into the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings. About 15 chapters are missing, including 10 from Genesis, but it is far more complete than the Aleppo Codex. Another medieval Bible text, the Leningrad Codex, is “entirely complete,” but is more than a century younger than Sassoon 1053.