The Shem Tov Bible, written in 1312 featuring Jewish, Christian, and Islamic artistic styles, “is an essential piece of religious history”, experts say.
The Shem Tov Bible. / [link]Sotheby’s[/link]
A 14th-century Hebrew Bible will be sold on 10 September at an auction in Sotheby’s, by collector and heir of a Syrian Lebanese-Swiss banking fortune, Jaqui Safra, for an estimated 4.5 to 6.3€ million.
It is the Shem Tov Bible, written by Rabbi Shem Tov Ibn Gaon in 1312, in the Spanish city of Soria, “a masterpiece of scribal art from the Golden Age of Spain, in which the influences of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic artistic traditions come together”, says Sotheby’s in its website and social media.
After Rabbi Shem Tov died in about 1330, the Bible changed hands, and in the middle of the 14th century, was acquired by Sar Shalom ben Phinehas, a Jewish leader.
Historians think it stayed in the Middle East for hundreds of years, until it moved to North Africa sometime around the 17th century.
In the early 20th century, well known collector of Judaica and Hebraic manuscripts, David Solomon Sassoon, bought the Shem Tov Bible.
His family sold it for a then-record-breaking $825,000 in 1984. After being on display as part of exhibitions in Amsterdam, Berlin, New York and Dallas throughout the 1990s, the Bible was sold to Safra.
“It is an essential piece of religious history that plays a critical part in the faithful, accurate transmission of the Hebrew bible as we understand it today", Sharon Liberman Mintz, Sotheby’s international senior Judaica specialist told Fine Books & Collections magazine.
According to Mintz, “it is rare to have illuminated Hebrew bibles come to the market”.
She explained that the term “illuminated” refers to “medieval manuscripts decorated not only with beautiful, rich pigment, but also with gold and silver leaf. Today, the term is used to talk about all decorated medieval Hebrew manuscripts”.
The decorations in the text “combine the artistic aesthetics of the Christian, and Islamic, and Jewish worlds. There are drawings of arches that resemble those of the Alhambra, the Moorish palace in Granada, Spain, and others that appear Gothic”, added Mintz.
“The Shem Tov Bible also includes Kabbalistic symbolism, evident in the inclusion of a medieval text called the Sefer Tagei, which specifies how Jewish scribes were to write the holy letters of the bible in Hebrew”, the Sotheby’s specialist also told Penta magazine.
The Shem Tov Bible is also relevant because it references the Hilleli Codex, a famous copy of the Hebrew Bible made in the seventh century.
“Its connection to the famed Hilleli Codex cannot be overstated, providing a critical bridge to this lost and mythic text”, pointed out Mintz.
“Even more than the deeply important spiritual significance of this text, the pages of the bible, sing with the harmony of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic artistic traditions, and speak to the incredibly fertile moment of cultural dialogue that flourished at the time”, she added.
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