Unique Bible translated into Hebrew in the 14th century up for auction in Spain

The Bible translated into Hebrew by the Jewish scholar and Kabbalist Shem Tov in the 14th centuryin Soria, Spain, one of the most significant medieval manuscripts of the Spanish Golden Age, will be auctioned on September 10 in New York.

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Auction house Sotheby’s estimates it could be worth up to $7 million.

In an impeccable state of preservation, the Shem Tov Bible, as it is known, “is an essential piece of religious history that plays a fundamental role in the faithful and accurate transmission of the Hebrew Bible.” “as we understand it today,” says Sharon Liberman Mintz, a specialist in Hebrew texts and manuscripts at Sotheby’s auction house.

But beyond the “deep spiritual meaning” of the text, The pages exemplify “the harmony of Jewish, Christian and Islamic artistic traditions, and they speak of the incredibly fertile moment of cultural dialogue that flourished” in the Golden Age on the Iberian Peninsula, he notes.

To translate this text, the author used sources such as the famous Codex Hilleli, written around the year 600, and now lost, which was considered the most faithful transmission of the text of the Hebrew Bible in circulation.

This jurist and judicial assistant also added a Kabbalistic dimension to the letters, particularly in the part devoted to the Pentateuch.the first five books of the Bible that Judeo-Christian tradition attributes to the Hebrew patriarch Moses, and which also form the Torah, the Jewish sacred book, the expert explains to AFP.

Originally created for personal use, The structure of the text suggests that the Bible was originally created for study and not for liturgical use, he says.

When he finished this 768-page work in 1312 in the city of Soria, in what was then the kingdom of Castile, the rabbi took it with him to Safed, in the north of present-day Israel, because “he felt it was a sacred work that should be sent to the Holy Land,” Liberman says.

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Sold in 1984, when it fetched a record price of $825,000, it was believed for centuries to have passed from Israel to Baghdad, Iraq, and then to Egypt, only to reappear in the 19th century in Tripoli, now Libya. In 1909 it was purchased by David Sassoon, one of the world’s largest collectors of Hebrew manuscripts.

This Bible was one of the most important pieces in his collection, so much so that when he was on his deathbed he asked for it to say goodbye to her.

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