Oldest Hebrew Bible could be auctioned for $50 million

The oldest and nearly complete version of the Hebrew Bible, The Codex Sassoon, will be sold at auction in the coming days, according to British-founded American multinational corporation Sotheby’s.

As reported by CNET, a more than one thousand-year-old book is estimated to sell $30 million to $50 million on May 16.

"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," said Richard Austin, Sotheby's global head of books and manuscripts.

"With such eminence, the codex has an incomparable presence and gravitas that can only be borne from more than one thousand years of history."

The Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings are the three divisions of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible found in the Codex Sassoon, which also includes accent marks that serve as musical notes and vowels that appear as points under Hebrew letters to indicate how the words should be pronounced and understood.

"Their work enabled the creation of an accurate and authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible that is used across the globe still today," Sharon Liberman Mintz, a senior Judaica specialist in Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, told CNET.

More about "Codex Sassoon"

Codex Sassoon contains authentic annotations of the Masorah, commentary that ensures appropriate inscription and recitation of the biblical text. One such note mentions "the great teacher, Aaron ben Moses ben Asher" and his work on al-taj, the traditional honorific of the Aleppo Codex, implying that the Masorete scribe who copied Codex Sassoon's Masorah may have consulted the revered volume when it was in Tiberias or Jerusalem in the 10th or 11th century.

The book's travels and sale from Khalaf ben Abraham to Isaac ben Ezekiel al-Attar, who eventually transferred possession to his two sons, Ezekiel and Maimon, are documented in early notes. The Codex was likely to rebound for the first time in the 13th century when it was dedicated to the synagogue of Makisin in modern-day Syria.