The Coruña Bible: The Mysterious Journey of Isaac
We are certain that the Coruña Bible left Galicia after 1492. It may have been taken by Isaac, who secretly left A Coruña for Africa in 1493. It is also possible that it was not, as the name Isaac was quite common at the time, and we cannot rule out that there was more than one Isaac in A Coruña. However, the owner of this exceptional Bible considered himself unique and ordered a box with a key to transport his treasure, where he engraved in Hebrew a single word: “Isaac.”
Ethnologic Museum
The Disappearance and Recovery of the Coruña Bible: A Sephardic Treasure
We know nothing of the Coruña Bible’s journey in the Sephardic diaspora until 1771, when it was purchased in England by the Hebraist, librarian, and Oxford parish priest, Benjamin Kennicott, who gave it his name. However, we would prefer that it recover its original historical names and be known in the future as the Bible of Isaac, son of Solomon, Moses Ibn Zabarah, and Joseph Ibn Hayyim, or the Coruña Bible, or the Hebrew Bible of Galicia. That is why, to recover our history, we tell it to you, so that you may, in turn, pass it down “to your children and the children of your children through all generations, as it is written,” as Moses, our calligraphic artist, intended.
