NEW YORK, Dec. 23 (UPI) — A set of 16th century books comprising the Jewish Talmud sold for a record $9.3 million at a New York auction.
The first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud, commentaries on Biblical law by rabbinical scholars and compiled by Daniel Bomberg from 1519 to 1523, was sold at a Sotheby’s auction Tuesday. It was part of the auction of items from The Valmadonna Trust, a London library of Hebrew and Jewish books and artifacts. The total sale of $14.9 million of items made the evening’s auction the most valuable sale of Judaica, items pertaining to Jewish history, ever.
The sale of the “Bomberg Talmud” brought the highest price ever for a single item of Judaica.
The multi-volume Talmud, regarded as the first printed Babylonian Talmud, is one of only 14 complete sets existing, and was kept for centuries in the library of Westminster Abbey before it was traded to a private collector in 1956 for the Abbey’s original 900-year-old charter.
Among the other items sold at Tuesday’s auction were a Hebrew Bible printed in 1189 in England, the “Codex Valmadonna I,” which went for $3.6 million.
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