JERUSALEM — On May 16, when Sotheby’s in Manhattan auctions off the oldest and most complete Masoretic Hebrew Bible currently held in private hands, the Israel Museum here will not be bidding, Hagit Maoz told ReligionUnplugged.com.

It would be unethical for the museum to encourage the trade in antiquities and its ancillary business of grave looting, said Maoz, the curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, on Thursday during a tour of the Shrine of the Book for experts in the field — part of a symposium marking the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Great Isaiah Scroll at Jerusalem’s venerable Albright Institute of Archaeology.

But then Maoz coolly added the Israel Museum would not be averse to accepting the more than 1,000-year-old manuscript, known as Codex Sassoon 1053, for long-term display or as a bequest from a wealthy benefactor.

Where does the codex belong?

Were the medieval Hebrew parchment to go on exhibit in Jerusalem, it would join the Dead Sea Scrolls — the world’s oldest Bible manuscripts — and the equally old Codex Aleppo from circa 920. It’s a unique assemblage that has made the Israel Museum one of the world’s 20 leading polythematic museums, said Adolfo Roitman, the Buenos Aires-born director of the Shrine of the Book — who refers to the iconic pavilion as his “kingdom.”

Though conceived as separate institutions during Israel’s nascent years, the Shrine of the Book and Israel Museum have shared their Givat Ram hilltop since 1965. Roitman pointedly said the cultural complex is not the national museum, and by implication, government funds should not be used to purchase the Sassoon Codex. 

Maoz and Roitman reflect a sea change in museums today as they grapple with the legacy of colonialism and imperialism by which institutions like the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris and the Altes Museum in Berlin built up their unparalleled collections. Where does a country’s patrimony belong? Should Britain return the Rosetta Stone to Egypt and the Elgin Marbles to Greece?

And what of the Codex Sassoon? Where does it belong?

A manuscript’s wild journey

With an estimated hammer price of between $30 million and $50 million, the question assumes a special gravitas for Geneva investor and collector Jacqui Eli Safra, who purchased the treasure in 1989 for $4.16 million.

Called a codex and not a book because it was written on parchment before the invention of paper, the manuscript’s name comes from David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942). The Mumbai, India-born bibliophile and collector of Judaica and Hebraica, backed by the vast fortune his family made selling opium grown by the British Raj to China, purchased the manuscript in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. It was artifact No. 1,053 in his catalogue, called “Ohel David” (The Tent of David), and the last entry in Sassoon’s vast collection.

Sassoon’s lifelong passion and deep pockets took him to Iraq, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East to rescue endangered Hebraica. By 1915, he had amassed some 500 manuscripts and incunabula. By 1932, when he issued the two-volume “Ohel David,” his collection had more than doubled to encompass 1,220 works.

Sassoon died in London, where he and much of his extended family settled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To settle British estate taxes, some of the collection began to be auctioned off and/or donated to British institutions between 1975 and the mid-1990s, which is how the British Library in London acquired its chunk of Sassoon manuscripts. Similarly, in 1975 the National Library of Israel — across the street from the Israel Museum here — obtained the priceless 10th century Damascus Pentateuch (Sassoon 507).

Sotheby’s has been selling Sassoon’s treasures in recent decades.

The scion of the prominent Indian Jewish family and namesake grandson of the renowned businessman David Sassoon (1792-1864) of Baghdad and Mumbai, David Solomon Sassoon’s collecting took place primarily in the late Victorian Middle East, bridging up to and past World War I.

A rare piece of antiquity

The earliest known writings of the Hebrew Bible are in the 230 fragments that constitute the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written from the third century B.C. until the end of the first century A.D. These holy texts were created in a scroll format rather than bound.

There is no record over the next 700 years of a written Bible. “Nobody knows why,” said Sharon Liberman Mintz, a senior Judaica specialist at Sotheby's who is also curator of Jewish art at the library of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary.

“Presumably, there must have been books earlier. But the earliest examples we have, and certainly the earliest biblical codices we have, are from the late ninth and early 10th century. And there are only two.”

The other known early Hebrew Bible is the Aleppo Codex, which Sotheby’s describes as another “exceptionally accurate version of the biblical text” that was written circa 920. But that codex is missing nearly all of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

The Codex Sassoon has 24 books divided into the Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Writings, abbreviated as TaNaKH in Hebrew. 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, Sotheby’s said.

This all means the Codex Sassoon is a “crucial bridge” for Jewish biblical history to the Dead Sea Scrolls and “foundational to civilization itself,” as Sotheby’s said on its website. “It standardized and stabilized the Hebrew text of the Bible,” Mintz said.

The history of the Codex Sassoon holds several mysteries, including where it was written and the scribe’s name. Notes within the text include an entry of an 11th century sale of the Bible by Khalaf ben Abraham, who Sotheby’s said was possibly a businessman active in Israel and Syria, to Isaac ben Ezekiel al-Attar. Al-Attar then gifted it to his sons, Ezekiel and Maimon.

About 200 years later, Sotheby’s said the Bible was dedicated to a synagogue in Makisin (today Markada) in Syrian Kurdistan. But the manuscript was removed from the synagogue as the town was destroyed, possibly during the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. It was then given to a member of the community, Salama bin Abi al-Fakhr, who was to return it to the synagogue if it was rebuilt, Sotheby’s said.

Nobody knows what happened after the late 1400s until 1929, when Sassoon learned of it from Aron Freimann (1871-1948), a renowned librarian and historian of Hebrew manuscripts in Frankfurt, Germany. Freimann couldn’t afford to purchase the Bible, so he contacted Sassoon, who he knew as a major Hebraica collector.

Sassoon paid £350 for the manuscript, which at the time was more expensive than all but four other manuscripts in his superb collection of more than 1,200 items, Mintz noted. But the chain of provenance is murky. The person who offered it to Freimann and who might have held some clue as to where it was for centuries is unknown, as the scholar’s personal papers were lost after he fled Nazi Germany in 1938, Mintz said.

“Its survival is astonishing,” she added.

The British Rail Pension Fund, which had bought the Bible from Sassoon’s heirs for $320,000 in 1978, put it up for auction at Sotheby’s in 1989. Safra thought his uncle Edmond would bid on it and so held back; another bidder instead bought it for $3.19 million. Safra went to this buyer and offered $4.19 million to secure it for himself, Mintz said.

Verifying a masterpiece

During his stewardship of the manuscript, Safra arranged for radiocarbon dating. The analysis confirmed it was written in the late ninth or early 10th century. Safra, who recently also sold important works by Old Masters at both Sotheby’s and Christie’s, has arranged a world tour for his codex. It went on display in London from Feb. 22 until Feb. 28. It will then be exhibited in Tel Aviv, Dallas and Los Angeles before returning to New York on May 7.

“He enjoyed it, he studied it, he has allowed scholars to study it — this touches him deeply and he’s looking forward to sharing it and finding a new caretaker,” she said.

The estimated price being offered today for the Codex Sassoon is consistent with other important manuscripts recently up for auction at Sotheby’s, such as the November 2021 sale of the U.S. Constitution for a record $43 million. However, Mintz noted that there are multiple copies of the American Constitution but only one of the Codex Sassoon.

“This is one of the world’s greatest treasures,” Mintz said. “We looked at other items that have sold recently and priced it according to how highly we value it and how highly the world will value it. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

Gil Zohar was born in Toronto, Canada and moved to Jerusalem, Israel in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine, and other publications. He’s also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Land’s multiple narratives.