De Resurrectione Mortuorum [on the resurrection of the dead]

AUCTION 21 | Thursday, December 04th, 2003 at 1:00

Kestenbaum & Company Holds Inaugural Auction of Hebrew Printed Books & Manuscripts at Their New Galleries

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Lot 168

MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL.

De Resurrectione Mortuorum [on the resurrection of the dead]

FIRST EDITION. Printer’s Hebrew device on title. On f.1v. deaccession date from British Museum, 1787. pp.(24),346,(6). Latin. Title page frayed. Some faint underlining of text. Later boards. 12mo Silva Rosa 25

Amsterdam: by the Author 1636

Est: $400 - $600

PRICE REALIZED $700

The Amsterdam Jewish community at this time was comprised primarily of Marranos, who in their Iberian homeland knew Judaism, if at all, only through the lenses of the Old Testament. Since the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is not spelled out in the Bible, some of the newly arrived Marranos came to doubt the belief in an afterlife. The most notorious of these modern-day “Sadducees” was one Uriel Acosta. In response to these sceptics, Menasseh marshaled proofs from throughout Judaic literature as to the existence of an afterlife. See Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel (Philadeplhia, 1945), pp. 92-94.