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.
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.
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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