Sepher Tehilim [Psalms]. With commentary by the <<Rada’k>> (R. David Kimchi).

Auction 94 | Thursday, June 17th, 2021 at 11:00am
Rare & Excellent Hebrew Printed Books: From the Library of Arthur A. Marx

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Lot 431
(TEHILIM).

Sepher Tehilim [Psalms]. With commentary by the <<Rada’k>> (R. David Kimchi).

Complete with the <<rare 2-page anti-Christian addendum:>> Teshuvoth HaRaDaK LeNotzrim. Marginalia. ff. 108, (2). Lightly foxed, few leaves remargined. Modern elegant tooled morocco. Sm. folio. Vinograd, Isny 18.

Isny: P. Fagius 1541

Est: $3,000 - $4,000
PRICE REALIZED $3,000
A surprisingly clean and uncensored copy. The grammarian and Biblical exegete R. David Kimchi (1160? -1235?), known in Latin as Maistre Petit, was a native of Narbonne. Kimchi, as his father Joseph before him, excelled as a polemicist and his commentary to Psalms devotes several passages to Christian-Jewish polemics. The Teshuvoth HaRaDa"K LeNotzrim ("Responses to the Christians"), published as an addendum in very few copies copies, is an extract of these passages from the commentary to Psalms. See Frank Talmage, Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver (Toronto, 1999), p. 213; see also D. Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (1979).