World's oldest Hebrew Bible sells for $38 million

A leather-bound, handwritten Hebrew Bible believed to be around 1,100 years old sold for $38.1 million in New York, auction house Sotheby's said on Wednesday. The document offers a critical link bridging Jewish oral tradition to the modern Hebrew Bible Its price tag "reflects the profound power, influence, and significance of the Hebrew Bible, which is an indispensable pillar of humanity," said Sotheby's Judaica specialist Sharon Liberman Mintz. After his death, Sassoon's estate was broken up, and Sotheby's sold the codex in 1978 to the British Rail Pension Fund for around $320,000, or $1.4 million in today's dollars. According to Sotheby's, Safra had recently had the manuscript carbon dated to confirm it was older than the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, two other major early Hebrew Bibles.