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The Codex’s journey back to Israel began after it sold for $38.1 million in May 2023, becoming the most expensive Jewish manuscript ever purchased.
Tel Aviv’s Anu-Museum of the Jewish People welcomed home the world’s oldest known complete Bible.
What makes the “Codex Sassoon” extraordinary isn’t just its age, dating to 900 CE, but its completeness.
Unlike the older but fragmentary Dead Sea Scrolls, this manuscript contains virtually all 24 books of the Tanach written in Biblical Hebrew using a proto-Masoretic text.
Unveiled on Thursday, President Isaac Herzog called the Codex “a bridge between generations and a light for the future”.
At the same time, other notable speakers, including Israeli media personalities Kobi Arieli, Natalie Marcus, and Yair Sharki hailed the Bible’s cultural impact, personal significance, and role as a unifying foundation of Jewish life.
Once part of the private collection of David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942), a bibliophile from a prominent Iraqi-Jewish family, the Codex’s journey back to Israel began after it sold for $38.1 million in May 2023, becoming the most expensive Jewish manuscript ever purchased.
For context, only a handful of civilization’s most important documents have reached comparable heights: a U.S. Constitution first printing at $43.2 million (2021), Leonardo da Vinci’s journal at $30.8 million (1994), and a Magna Carta copy at $21.1 million (2007).
But rather than keep the holy treasure in private hands, former US ambassador to Romania Alfred Moses chose to donate it to the Anu-Museum in Tel Aviv.
“This is a very important document. It’s the oldest complete Bible, and I thought it would be a source of enormous interest and pride and education for Jews worldwide,” Moses told RNS News after winning the auction.
“This, I think, will be the centerpiece of the museum in Tel Aviv. Scholars will have access to it. People will see it and, I think, have a renewed respect for our traditions. It’s quite inspiring.”
Though Moses couldn’t attend last week’s ceremony, his message was clear when read to the audience:
“This Bible belongs to the Jewish people. It is fitting that it be displayed in Israel, the heart of Jewish history and identity.”
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