Pentateuch. With Targum Onkelos and commentary of Rash”i

AUCTION 26 | Monday, November 22nd, 2004 at 1:00

Exceptional Printed Books, Sixty-Five Hebrew Incunabula: The Elkan Nathan Adler-Wineman Family Collection

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Lot 59

(BIBLE)

Pentateuch. With Targum Onkelos and commentary of Rash”i

Vol. I: Genesis and Exodus (only). Texts of Chumash and Onkelos face-à-face in center of page; Rashi at top and bottom of page. Chumash with nikud (vocalization) and te’amim (cantillation) ff. 206 (of 216). Lacking first 4 and last 5 leaves and f.109. Leaves laid to size with loss of text in places. Modern morocco. Sm.folio Vinograd, Lisbon 5; Goff 20; Goldstein 94; Offenberg 17; Steinschneider, p. 2, no. 10; Thes. B20; Wineman Cat. 59. Not in Cambridge University

Lisbon: Eliezer (Toledano) 1491

Est: $30,000 - $40,000

PRICE REALIZED $24,000

A peculiarity of this edition is that not only does the text of the Chumash provide cantillation, but so does the text of Onkelos. This is evidence that as late as the final years of Iberian Jewry, it was still customary to chant the Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch as accompaniment to the public Torah reading in the synagogue. Today this ancient practice is continued only in a few Yemenite congregations. The reason the practice fell into disuse is simply the fact that Aramaic, once the common spoken language, is no longer comprehensible to the majority of Jews. See C. D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible, London, 1897, pp. 836-47. He states that this edition is “of peculiar importance to textual criticism.”