World's oldest near-complete Hebrew Bible sells for $38 million

NEW YORK, United States - A Hebrew Bible more than 1,000 years old sold for $38.1 million in New York on Wednesday, setting a record for the most valuable manuscript ever sold at auction.

The Codex Sassoon -- which dates to the late ninth to early tenth century -- is the earliest, most complete Hebrew Bible ever discovered.

It was sold by Sotheby's following a four-minute bidding battle between two bidders, the auction house said in a statement.

The bible was bought by former US diplomat Alfred Moses on behalf of an American non-profit that will gift it to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sotheby's said.

"The Hebrew Bible is the most influential book in history and constitutes the bedrock of Western civilization. I rejoice in knowing that it belongs to the Jewish People," said Moses, a US ambassador under president Bill Clinton.

The sale surpassed the $30.8 million paid for Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester manuscript in 1994 as the most expensive hand-written document ever sold at auction.

The most expensive historical document remains one of the first prints of the US Constitution, which Sotheby's sold for $43 million in November 2021.

The Codex Sassoon is one of only two codices, or manuscripts, containing all 24 books of the Hebrew Bible to have survived into the modern era.

It is substantially more complete than the Aleppo Codex and older than the Leningrad Codex, two other famous early Hebrew Bibles, Sotheby's said.

The manuscript bridges the Dead Sea Scrolls -- which date back as early as the third century BC -- and today's modernly accepted form of the Hebrew Bible.

It is named for previous owner David Solomon Sassoon (1880-1942) who assembled the most significant private collection of ancient Jewish texts in the world.

The document was auctioned for the first time in more than 30 years and had a pre-sale estimate of between $30 million and $50 million.

Agence France-Presse

Trump spares bibles but not rosaries from Chinese tariff lists

WASHINGTON - In a move likely to appeal to his Christian supporters, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has permanently spared bibles printed in China from his tariff plans.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office said on Wednesday that bibles were among about 25 product categories that were removed from 10% tariffs due to take effect on Sept. 1 and Dec. 15. Other products removed, because of their importance, included child safety seats, cranes used in ports and construction, shipping containers and certain types of fish.

But rosaries and other personal religious items that are imported from China will still be hit by a 10 percent tariff on Sept. 1, according to a USTR tariff list released on Tuesday.

Around 60 percent of these imported religious items come from China - about $11 million worth last year, according to a Reuters analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

In May, bibles and other religious texts printed in China, which totaled $91.7 million or 65 percent of the total 2018 U.S. imports in the category, were placed on a list of items for tariffs of up to 25 percent, as part of a broader, $794 million category of printed books, brochures and leaflets.

The so-called "bible tax" would hinder churches and other religious organizations in their mission to "spread the word of God," said Mark Schoenwald, chief executive of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, at a USTR hearing in June.

Trump said on Tuesday he would delay the 10% tariff on cellphones, laptops and other consumer goods until Dec. 15 "just in case" the duty would have an impact on consumer spending during the Christmas season. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

In the #MeToo era, theologians publish 'Women's Bible'

GENEVA, Switzerland - Tired of seeing their holy texts used to justify the subjugation of women, a group of feminist theologians from across the Protestant-Catholic divide have joined forces to draft "A Women's Bible".

As the #MeToo movement continues to expose sexual abuse across cultures and industries, some scholars of Christianity are clamouring for a reckoning with biblical interpretations they say have entrenched negative images of women. 

The women we know from translations and interpretations of Bible texts are servants, prostitutes or saints, seen dancing for a king or kneeling to kiss Jesus' feet.

But while many feminists have called for The Bible, Christianity and religion altogether to be cast aside, an eclectic group of theologians instead insists that if interpreted properly, the Good Book can be a tool for promoting women's emancipation.

'FEMINIST VALUES' 

"Feminist values and reading the Bible are not incompatible," insisted Lauriane Savoy, one of two Geneva theology professors behind the push to draft "Une Bible des Femmes" ("A Women's Bible"), which was published in October.

The professor at the Theology Faculty in Geneva, which was established by the father of Calvinism himself in 1559, said the idea for the work came after she and her colleague Elisabeth Parmentier noticed how little most people knew or understood of the biblical texts.

"A lot of people thought they were completely outdated with no relevance to today's values of equality," the 33-year-old told AFP, standing under the towering sculptures of Jean Calvin and other Protestant founders on the University of Geneva campus.

In a bid to counter such notions, Savoy and Parmentier, 57, joined forces with 18 other woman theologians from a range of countries and Christian denominations.

The scholars have created a collection of texts challenging traditional interpretations of Bible scriptures that cast women characters as weak and subordinate to the men around them.

Parmentier points to a passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus visits two sisters, Martha and Mary.

"It says that Martha ensures the 'service', which has been interpreted to mean that she served the food, but the Greek word diakonia can also have other meanings, for instance it could mean she was a deacon," she pointed out.

OVERTURNING RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY

They are not the first to provide a more women-friendly reading of the scriptures. 

Already back in 1898, American suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of 26 other women drafted "The Woman's Bible", aimed at overturning religious orthodoxy that women should be subservient to men.

The two Geneva theology professors say they were inspired by that work, and had initially planned to simply translate it to French.

But after determining that the 120-year-old text was too outdated, they decided to create a new work that could resonate in the 21st century.

"We wanted to work in an ecumenical way," Parmentier said, stressing that around half the women involved in the project are Catholic and the other half from a number of branches of Protestantism.

In the introduction to the "Women's Bible", the authors said that the chapters were meant to "scrutinize shifts in the Christian tradition, things that have remained concealed, tendentious translations, partial interpretations."

'LINGERING PATRIARCHAL READINGS'

They take to task "the lingering patriarchal readings that have justified numerous restrictions and bans on women," the authors wrote. 

Savoy said that Mary Magdalene, "the female character who appears the most in the Gospels", had been given a raw deal in many common interpretations of the texts.

"She stood by Jesus, including as he was dying on the cross, when all of the male disciples were afraid. She was the first one to go to his tomb and to discover his resurrection," she pointed out.

"This is a fundamental character, but she is described as a prostitute, ... and even as Jesus's lover in recent fiction."

The scholars also go to great lengths to place the texts in their historical context.

"We are fighting against a literal reading of the texts," Parmentier said, pointing for instance to letters sent by Saint Paul to nascent Christian communities.

Reading passages from those letters, which could easily be construed as radically anti-feminist, as instructions for how women should be treated today is insane, she said.

"It's like taking a letter someone sends to give advice as being valid for all eternity."

The theologians' texts also approach the Bible through different themes, like the body, seduction, motherhood and subordination.

The authors say they consider their work a useful tool in the age of #MeToo.

"Each chapter addresses existential questions for women, questions they are still asking themselves today," Parmentier said.

"While some say that you have to throw out the Bible to be a feminist, we believe the opposite."

elr/nl/bs/ach/tom 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Pope Francis: Big Bang theory does not contradict role of God

VATICAN CITY - Scientific theories including the "Big Bang" believed to have brought the universe into being 13.7 billion years ago and the idea that life developed through a process of evolution do not conflict with Catholic teaching, Pope Francis said on Tuesday.

Addressing a meeting of the Pontificial Academy of Sciences, an independent body housed in the Vatican and financed largely by the Holy See, Francis said scientific explanations for the world did not exclude the role of God in creation.

"The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to something else, but it derives directly from a supreme principle that creates out of love," he said.

"The 'Big Bang', that today is considered to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the creative intervention of God, on the contrary it requires it," he said.

"Evolution in nature is not in contrast with the notion of (divine) creation because evolution requires the creation of the beings that evolve," the pope said.

The Church once opposed early scientific explanations of the universe that contradicted the account of creation in the Bible, famously condemning the 17th century astronomer Galileo Galilei who showed that the earth revolved around the sun.

However, more recently it has sought to shed its image as an enemy of science and the pope's comments largely echoed statements from his predecessors.

Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans in 1950 and Pope John Paul reiterated that in 1996.

In 2011, the former Pope Benedict said scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Fil-Am curator eyes rare $30,000 Ibanag-language Bible

WASHINGTON D.C. - A Filipino-American curator at the Library of Congress has her eyes set on a rare 17th century Bible written in Ibanag, a language spoken by an ethnic minority in Northern Luzon, that has been put up for sale.

An excited Reme Grefalda, curator in the Asian Pacific Islander collection of the Library of Congress, said she is looking for benefactors who can cough up the $30,000 to purchase the Ibanag-language Bible on behalf of the Library of Congress.

“I have to justify why the Library should have this,” she told the Manila Mail.

“It’s an Ibanag Bible written by a friar who studied the Ibanag culture and language,” Grefalda explained.

“Aside from the Bible itself, it has comments there from the Ibanag people talking about the Bible,” she revealed.

The Ibanags (translated as “People of the River”) inhabit parts of Cagayan, Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya in Luzon’s northeast. They speak an indigenous language bearing the same name which, like much of their culture, facing the threat of being supplanted by the more dominant Ilocanos of Northwestern Luzon.

The Ibanag Bible was written by Fray Antonio Lobato de Santo Tomas in Tuguegarao, Cagayan in 1776-80, according to the online posting about the sale of the rare book.

“Only a handful of missionaries worked in the region of the northeastern Philippine provinces of Isabela and Cagayan, most notably in Tuguegarao City, Solana, Cabagan, and Ilagan, where the language is spoken; and not all mastered the tongue.

“Fray Antonio Lobato was one of those who did and it was he who took Fr. José Bugarin's Ibanag-Spanish dictionary, created in the previous century, and edited it to a usable work – though the result was not published until the 19th century, and apparently no other work was published in the language during the 16th, 17th, or 18th centuries,” according to the Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscript Company website.

“This could be very significant in the study of how indigenous tribes interpreted the Christian Bible,” Grefalda stressed to the Manila Mail.

She pointed out that the Library of Congress already has several rare Bibles, including a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the 1st major book produced on a printing press in the world in the 1450s. Only 48 copies reportedly exist today, and one is on permanent display at the Library of Congress.

source: abs-cbnnews.com