(SHABTHAI TZVI).

AUCTION 64 | Thursday, March 19th, 2015 at 1:00

Fine Judaica: Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Ceremonial Objects, Maps and Graphic Art

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Lot 174

(SHABTHAI TZVI).

Thomas Coenen. Ydele verwachtinge der Joden Getoont in den Persoon van Sabethai Zevi, Haren laetsten vermeynden Messias: Ofte Historisch Verhael van’t geneten tijde sijner opwerpinge in’t Ottomannisch Rijck onder de Joden aldaer voorgevallen is, en sijn Val [”Vain Hopes of the Jews as Revealed in the Figure of Sabethai Zevi…”] pp. (16), 140, (1). Last blank page adhered with portion of marbled endpaper. Later vellum-backed marbled boards, distressed. 8vo. G. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, The Mystical Messiah (1975), p. 939-940, no. 44, and two frontispieces (facs. of engravings of Shabthai Tzvi and Nathan of Gaza); Rubens, Jewish Iconography 2233 & 1464; EJ, Vol. XIV, col. 1221.

Amsterdam: Joannes van den Bergh 1669

Est: $10,000 - $15,000

<<One of Twenty-Five Copies of the Most Credible Contemporay Source for the Events Concerning the “Messiah of Izmir”>> “One of the best known books about the life of Sabbatai Sevi and the messianic upheaval which he aroused.” J. Kaplan, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Treasures of Jewish Booklore (1994), pp. 40-3. An important contemporary account of the rise of the famous false Messiah, Shabethai Zevi by Thomas Coenen, a Protestant minister serving the Dutch merchant community in Smyrna (Izmir). Coenen’s detailed account provides a wealth of primary historical source material on the life of Shabthai Tzvi, and has been used extensively by subsequent biographers and scholars. Coenen was so meticulous that he went to the trouble of providing the original Hebrew texts of various invaluable documents such as the letters of Shabethai Zevi and Nathan of Gaza, as well as those of their supporters and detractors. Scholem, who relied on Coenen extensively for his masterful biography, calls the work “a great rarity.” According to B. T. de Heringa, only 25 copies of Coenen’s work were issued exclusively for the officers of the Levant Trading Company, see The Story of the Levantine Trade (Dutch), Vol. II, p. 163.