1,100-Year-Old Bible, Sold for $38 Million, Set for Display in Israel

One of the world’s oldest surviving biblical manuscripts, which sold for $38 million at auction in New York this week, is set to join the permanent collection of a museum in Israel. The 1,100-year-old Hebrew work—known as the Codex Sassoon—was sold to former US Ambassador to Romania Alfred H. Moses at Sotheby’s on Wednesday. It was recently exhibited at the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv and will now join the museum’s collection. Moses made the purchase on behalf of the “American Friends” organization that supports the museum. Sharon Liberman Mintz, Judaica specialist at Sotheby’s, said she is “absolutely delighted by today’s monumental result and that Codex Sassoon will shortly be making its grand and permanent return to Israel, on display for the world to see.” The leather-bound work is named after David Solomon Sassoon, the son of an Iraqi business magnate who bought it in 1929 and kept it in his home in London. When Sassoon died, the ancient text changed ownership twice. It was owned the British Rail Pension Fund, which bought it in 1978 at Sotheby’s in Zurich; and in 1989, art collector and banker Jacqui Safra purchased the codex for $3.19 million. The sale of the manuscript on Wednesday fetched one of the highest prices ever paid for a book sold at auction. A copy of the American Constitution sold for $43 million in 2021.