Israel: Oldest known near-complete Hebrew Bible displayed in Tel Aviv before sale

The oldest known near-complete Hebrew Bible was presented in Israel's Tel Aviv city on Wednesday (March 22), where it will be displayed for a week before being sold at an auction. The Codex Sassoon, which is estimated to be 1,100 years old, is one of the only two codices, or manuscripts, containing all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible. According to a report by the news agency AFP on Wednesday, Sharon Mintz, a specialist in Jewish texts at Sotheby's, the auction house selling the codex in May, said that carbon dating and other forms of the analysis showed the Codex Sassoon was written around the year 900 either in Israel or Syria.

As per Sotheby, the codex is significantly more complete than the Aleppo Codex, dated to the same era. Its pre-sales estimates put the manuscript's value at between $30 million and $50 million.

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Mintz said a deed showed that the book was sold in 1000 AD, adding the codex was then held in a synagogue in what is now northeastern Syria until around 1400. "The manuscript then disappears for about 500 years, and re-emerges in 1929 when it was offered for sale to David Solomon Sassoon, one of the greatest collectors of Hebrew manuscripts," she said.

"What you see here is an accurate, stabilised standard text of the Hebrew Bible, written over 1,000 years ago, as accurate as it is today," the Sotheby specialist told the news agency.

The Hebrew Bible will be displayed at the ANU Museum of the Jewish People. Speaking to the news agency, the museum's curator Orit Shaham Gover said the ANU expected to draw the museum's full capacity of 10,000 visitors for the week.

The manuscript bridges the Dead Sea Scrolls -- which date back as early as the third century BC -- and today's standard texts of the Hebrew Bible. Gover said that the Codex Sassoon bears a cultural significance beyond its linguistic and historic value.

"The Bible plays a central role for any person with even a fleeting connection to Western culture, and this is the first Bible that survived history," Gover added.

"The Bible wandered in all kinds of places throughout history, and was displayed only once to the public in 1982 at the British Library, and since then was always in private hands," the curator further said. Gover also pointed out that it is very important that Israelis will get to see his highly important Bible.

(With inputs from agencies)

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