Beschreibung:

BIBLE, in Hebrew. Pentateuch and Former Prophets. [Venice: Daniel Bomberg, [1533]. Parts 1-2 only (of 4). 4 o (217 x 150 mm). Collation: 1-17 8 18 4 19 8 20 1 0 21-34 8 35 6. (Lacks quires 19-20, containing the Megilloth). Each part separately titled. Square hebrew type, vocalized. Headings of Genesis and Joshua within woodcut foliate borders, opening words of the other books (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Judges, Samuel and Kings) in woodcut white-vine capitals. Ruled in red throughout. Interleaved. (Some marginal dampstaining and soiling, occasional browning.) 16th-century French blindtooled calf, sides panelled with outer floral roll-tool and inner blind-ruled and azur panel with fleurons at center and corners (rubbed with loss to leather at corners, interleaved and rebacked in the 18th century with strips from a vellum manuscript, upper inner hinge broken, first quire loose in stitching.) Provenance : Cardinal Jacob Paul Spifame (1502-1566), Bishop of Nevers for 11 years, emigrated to Geneva in 1559 and converted to Protestantism, becoming a preacher, but was accused of intrigue and forgery and beheaded in 1566 (inscription on lower pastedown); Jacques Lambin (later 16th-century signature on same pastedown); early French(?) inscription (illegible) and several later inscriptions and notes in Dutch, Latin and French (upper free endpaper); H. Ravechet (18th-century signature on lower free endpaper); Soissons, St. Mdard, Benedictine Monastery of the Congregation of St.-Maur (18th- or 19th-century inscription on title), extensive annotations in Latin on interleaves and in margins, highlighting passages or translating Hebrew words, probably by members of the latter order. Volume I of Bomberg's fourth quarto edition of the Hebrew Bible. The 1525/1528 (third quarto edition) and later editions combine the texts of Felice da Prato, an apostate Jew who had edited Bomberg's great 1517 Rabbinical Bible, the first edition to contain the Massoretic glosses, and that of Jacob ben Chayyim of Tunis, an expert in Hebrew grammar, the Targum and Rabbinical literature who worked closely with Bomberg after 1520 and who had edited his second Rabbinical Bible of 1524-25. This edition of parts I-II was published in 1533 along with a reissue of the sheets for Parts III-IV from the 1525-28 edition. Quires 19-20, containing the Megilloth, were deliberately omitted from this copy when it was interleaved and rebacked in the 18th century; they would presumably have been reinserted in the second volume between Job and Daniel in the Hagiographa, according to the conventional order of the Hebrew Bible. Adams B-1219; Cowley, p. 77-78; Steinschneider 72; Zedner, p. 97.