Psalm Book Sold for Record Price at Sotheby’s

A little book of psalms—the first book printed in North America—was sold for a record $14,165,000 at a Sotheby’s auction on November 26, 2013. One of 11 known books to have survived out of the 1,700 copies made, the Bay Psalm Book was printed in 1640 by Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their ministers had retranslated the Psalms because they felt the King James Version did not reflect the original Hebrew as closely as it should. The Puritans believed their salvation depended on it.a The Bay Psalm Book sold at Sotheby’s was one of two […]