(RaMBa”M). Mishneh Torah [Code of Jewish Law]

The second book produced by Gershom Soncino. Although the standard bibliographers consider this to be the second incunable edition of Maimonides Code, the Iberian fragments in the Wineman Collection (see Lot 64) possibly predate this edition. The Mishneh Torah is Maimonides’ most celebrated work, written c. 1180 C.E. Maimonides was the most important Jewish philosopher and Halachic codifier of Talmudic jurisprudence of the 12th century and one of the most illustrious Jewish historical figures of all time. On the textual variants of this edition see: M. Lutzki, Afterword, (Shulsinger edition, New York, 1947), who states that manuscript sources were used for the preparation of the text of this edition. However, Prof. S.Z. Havlin, in the introduction to the facsimile of the Constantinople edition of the Mishneh Torah (Jerusalem,1973) pp. 14-18, suggests that the present Soncino edition may have been produced on the basis of that of Rome and the marginal glosses thereon. For typographical differences in various copies of this Soncino edition, see I. Rivkind, Kiryat Sefer, Vol. IV (1927) pp.275-6; Idem, Sefer Ha-Yovel…Marx (1950) p.404. See also I. Dienstag, Studies…in Honor of I.E. Kiev (1971) pp. 23-5; G. Cohen, Hebrew Incunabula… Yeshiva University (1984) pp. 49-50. Appended to this volume is an interesting letter (dated 1944) from the Librarian of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, E.O. Winsted, in reply to an inquiry from a previous owner concerning this edition: “I regret to inform you that there is no copy of the Mishneh Torah, Soncino, 1490 in our library, though the list of incunabula in the Jewish Encyclopaedia implies that there is. Steinschneider stupidly put books which were not here in his catalogue…with a bracket (]) after the entry, which of course nobody notices or understands [even] if they do.”