The Codex Sassoon, the world’s oldest and most complete Hebrew Bible, sold for $38.1 million at Sotheby’s on Wednesday. The document, estimated to be from the late 9th or early 10th century, was acquired by former U.S. ambassador and president of the American Jewish Committee, Alfred H. Moses, who is donating it to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Codex Sassoon offers a critical link bridging Jewish oral tradition to the modern Hebrew Bible and contains almost the entirety of the Bible. It is the oldest copy of Biblical text since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 and is foundational to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
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