Pirush Chamesh Megilloth [commentary to the Five Scrolls, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra & Nachamiah and Chronicles]
AUCTION 34 |
Tuesday, September 12th,
2006 at 1:00
Exemplary Hebrew Books: The Library of Joseph Gradenwitz, Esq.
Lot 74
IBN YACHYA, JOSEPH
Pirush Chamesh Megilloth [commentary to the Five Scrolls, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra & Nachamiah and Chronicles]
Bologna: The Company of Jewish Silk Weavers 1538
Est: $2,000 - $2,500
PRICE REALIZED $2,600
Contains fascinating conjecture concerning the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel by the year 5700 (i.e. 1940) (viz. Book of Daniel, f.110a end of first column).
Joseph ben David ibn Yachya (1494-1534), a disciple of Judah Mintz in Padua, took sharp exception to Maimonides’ rationalist philosophy and universalism, aligning himself with Judah Halevi’s doctrine of the chosenness of the Jewish People as expounded in the Kuzari. Thus, it is little wonder that Church censors found ibn Yachya’s works to be pernicious. Joseph’s son, Gedaliah ibn Yachya, author of “Shalsheleth ha-Kabbalah,” a classic of Jewish historiography, relates that after his father’s passing, Church censors burnt the deceased’s unpublished manuscripts