The oldest almost complete Hebrew Bible was sold to the house Sotheby’s on Wednesday for $38.1 million, one of the highest prices for a book or historical document ever sold at auction.

The ninth century book known as the Codex Sassoon is the link between the Dead Sea Scrolls and today’s Bible. The Hebrew Bible, which consists of 24 books, is the basis of both Judaism and Christianity, in which these texts are called the Old Testament. Sotheby’s senior adviser Sharon Lieberman Mintz said the Bible is in amazing condition.

“The Hebrew Bible is a sacred, foundational text for the peoples of the world,” Sotheby’s head of Jewish studies Lieberman Mitz said, adding: to reveal the complete history of the Hebrew Bible that was never presented in book form.

According to Yosef Ofer, professor of biblical studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, “there are three ancient Hebrew Bibles from that period”: the 10th-century Codex Sassoon and Aleppo Codex, and the early 11th-century Leningrad Codex. “. Only the Dead Sea Scrolls and a handful of fragmentary early medieval texts are older, and “a complete Hebrew Bible is rare,” he adds.

Centuries before the creation of the Code of Sassoon, Jewish scholars known as the Masoretes began to systematize oral traditions with the aim of correct syllabic construction, and therefore the pronunciation of the psalm of Judaism’s most sacred book. Unlike the Torah scrolls, where Hebrew is written in consonants only, with no vowels or punctuation marks, these manuscripts contain extensive notes to help readers pronounce the words correctly.