Originally published in Christian Today
The first complete version of the Bible in Chinese has sold at auction for over £56,000 (R1 317 136) after being given to an Oxfam store in Essex.
The Chinese edition Bible was translated by John Lassar and Joshua Marsham and published as a series between 1815 and 1822, and starting with the Pentateuch.
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It was found in a pile of donations by volunteers at Oxfam’s Chelmsford branch, who suspected it might be more valuable than their usual material.
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The Bible was put up for auction by Bonhams and was expected to sell for around £600-£800 (R14 112-R18 816). In fact, after two weeks of bidding, it was bought for a staggering £56,280 (R1 323 750).
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Nick Reeves, Oxfam Chelmsford’s bookshop manager, said of the auction: “We never imagined it might go for this much. We were sat watching the bidding and just seeing it go up and up. When it finally ended, I was in complete shock. We were absolutely speechless.
“It’s amazing to think that a donation from our shop could help raise that much money for Oxfam. It’s just wonderful.”
Various Oxfam stores around the country also came into the possession of a number of rare books and put them up for auction with Bonhams. In total the auction of 23 books raised a total of £105,000 (R2 470 045), of which more than half came from the proceeds of the Chinese Bible.
Charles Dickens proved to be the next most sought after author. A first edition of A Christmas Carol sold for £16,640 (R391 390), while a Dickens’ autograph with a quotation from the novel also went for £12,160 (R286 016).
The first English translation of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto raised £7,040 (R165 603), while a first edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice sold for £2,560 (R60 219).
A first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Return of the King sold for £2,048 (R48 177).
According to Sotheby’s the most expensive text ever bought at auction was the Codex Leicester, a manuscript created by Leonardo da Vinci. It was bought by Bill Gates in 1994 for $30.8 million (R561 439 327), which, adjusted for inflation, would be around $63.3 million (R1 153 870 342) today.
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