Religious Books

Humanity’s search for the divine is as old as man. Early hunter-gatherer tribes sought meaningful ways to interact with the environment, thereby ensuring their survival by appeasing whatever spirits bestowed favorable fortunes upon them. The written record of humankind’s preoccupation with these controlling forces is found in religious texts, which are valuable both for their contents and their worth on the market.

Throughout time, sacred texts have been hidden, stolen, smuggled, and destroyed. These are factors which add to their rarity and value. The earliest-known religious texts are the inscriptions written on the walls of the Egyptian pyramids known as the Pyramid Texts, which date to around 3,000 B.C. Fragments of the Babylonian "Epic of Gilgamesh" and the Sumerian tablets discovered at the archaeological site of Ugarit are important cultural discoveries revealing the religious beliefs of ancient societies. The Dead Sea scrolls, a collection of documents written on papyrus and animal skins containing ancient biblical texts, were discovered in caves in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

Religious books bring lots of excitement at auction based upon their rarity, age, and scholarly or historical applications. The price of rare religious books is steadily climbing, often bringing millions at auction houses.

Quick Facts

• A rare copy of Rhode Island settlement founder Roger William’s "The Bloody Tenet of Persecution" sold for $175,000 at a 2015 Sotheby's auction. The book was so offensive to Christian views upon publication in 1644 that British Parliament ordered all copies burned
• The "Gospels of Queen Theutberga of Lorraine," a 9th-century gospel believed to be missing for 20 years, was sold by Christie’s to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for $2,850,844 in 2014
• "Hebrew Bible: Pentateuch with Haftarot and the Five Scrolls, England: 15 Tammuz 4949=2 July 1189" sold for $3,610,000 at a 2015 Sotheby’s auction. This rare Hebrew book dates to before the expulsion of the Jewish people from the British Isles