If the target price is realized, the Codex Sassoon could not only eclipse the most expensive Jewish document ever sold - the 2021 sale of the Luzzatto Machzor, a 14th-century prayerbook, for $8.3 million. Its whereabouts for the next 500 years remain uncertain until it resurfaced in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929, and was bought by a legendary collector of Jewish manuscripts whose name it still bears.ĭavid Solomon Sassoon was a Bombay-born son of an Iraqi Jewish business magnate who filled his London home with a massive collection of Jewish manuscripts. Photo by Ariel Schalit / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Codex Sassoon is a nearly complete 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible. It never was rebuilt, but the book survived. Sometime in the following decades, the synagogue was destroyed and the codex entrusted to Salama ibn Abi al-Fakhr until the synagogue was rebuilt. It later migrated east to the town of Makisin in what’s today northeast Syria, where it was dedicated to a synagogue in the 13th century. He said the scribal quality was “surprisingly sloppy” compared to its counterpart.Ī note on the manuscript attest to its owners in centuries past: A man named Khalaf ben Abraham gave it to Isaac ben Ezekiel al-Attar, who gave it to his sons Ezekiel and Maimon. “Any Masoretic scholar in their right mind would take the Aleppo Codex over the Sassoon Codex, without any regret or hesitation,” said Kim Phillips, a Bible expert at the Cambridge University Library. The Codex Sassoon 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible is on display at the Tel Aviv’s ANU Museum of the Jewish People for a week-long exhibition of the manuscript. ![]() Though it’s certainly ancient and rare, scholars say the Codex Sassoon doesn’t match the pedigree and quality of its contemporary - the Aleppo Codex. “It’s so foundational not only for Judaism, but also for world culture.” “It’s like the emergence of the biblical text as we know it today,” Mintz said. The codex’s writing style suggests its creator was an unspecified early 10th-century scribe in Egypt or the Levant. Sharon Liberman Mintz, a senior Judaica specialist at Sotheby’s, said that radiocarbon dating of the parchment gave an estimated date of 880 to 960. Precisely where and when the Codex Sassoon was made remains uncertain. ![]() Unlike Torah scrolls, where the Hebrew letters are devoid of vowels and punctuation, these manuscripts contained extensive annotation instructing readers how to recite the words correctly. Starting a few centuries before the Codex Sassoon’s creation, Jewish scholars known as Masoretes started codifying oral traditions of how to properly spell, pronounce, punctuate and chant the words of Judaism’s holiest book. Only the Dead Sea Scrolls and a handful of fragmentary early medieval texts are older, and “an entire Hebrew Bible is relatively rare,” he said. ![]() “There are three ancient Hebrew Bibles from this period,” said Yosef Ofer, a professor of Bible studies at Israel’s Bar Ilan University: the Codex Sassoon and Aleppo Codex from the 10th century, and the Leningrad Codex, from the early 11th century. Looted Kandinsky work restored to Jewish heirs fetches $45M.Nannies on call, spas India witnessing 'mad rush' for luxury housing.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.The palm-sized prayer book, below right, was produced for a wealthy patron to use for personal worship. The choir pages, below left, were large so that a group could simultaneously view the pages from a distance. Lluminated manuscripts were created in various sizes depending on their intended use. The decline of the illuminated manuscript tradition coincided with the ability to mass produce printed text and the increasing numbers of literate people who wanted secular as well as religious books. ![]() Wealthy patrons also wanted these illustrative works for personal libraries and encouraged the formation of private workshops that flourished in French and Italian cities between the 13th and 15th centuries. Illuminated manuscripts were produced between 11, with monasteries as their earliest creators. The pages were made from animal skin, commonly calf, sheep, or goat. Illuminated manuscripts are hand-written books with painted decoration that generally includes precious metals such as gold or silver.
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