New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Edited and translated by Michael L. Rodkinson.

AUCTION 72 | Thursday, March 16th, 2017 at 1:00

Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Holy Land Maps & Fine Art

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Lot 41

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Edited and translated by Michael L. Rodkinson.

<<First Edition>> with translation into English. Photographic frontispiece portraits of Rodkinson and fellow editor <<Dr. Isaac Wise>> . Twenty volumes, complete here bound in 16 (including Rodkinson’s History of the Talmud). An uncut and largely unopened set. Each volume with book-plate of Gustav Ehrenberg, including his original purchase receipt (1900). Boards with paper spine labels. 4to. Singerman 5097.

New York: 1896-1903

Est: $1,200 - $1,800

<<The First Edition of the first translation of the Talmud into English.>> Although a pioneering effort, this abridged translation was not particularly well received by many of the editor’s scholarly peers. For more, see Marvin J. Heller, Deciphering the Talmud: The First English Edition of the Talmud Revisited. Michael Levi Rodkinson: His Translation of the Talmud, and the Ensuing Controversy in: Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden, 2013) Chap. 13. Rodkinson (original surname Frumkin), was born into a Russian Chabad-oriented family in 1845 and migrated to America in 1888.