(BIBLE).

Joseph ben Jacob Aschkenazi Gunzenhauser

Naples

1487

Kethuvim [Hagiographa]: Iyov (Job) with commentary of Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides); Megiloth Shir Ha-Shirim (Song of Songs), Koheleth (Ecclesiasties) with commentary of Rashi; Eichah (Lamentations) with commentary of Joseph Karo; Ruth, Megilah [Esther] with commentary of Rashi; Daniel, Ezra / Nechemia, Divrei HaYamim (Chronicles) with commentary of Rashi

Goff 26; Goldstein 51; Offenberg 46; Steinschneider p.1 no.5; Thes. A59; Wineman Cat. 33

First edition of commentaries on the Five Megilloth along with the text (see Cohen, Hebrew Incunabula...Yeshiva University no. 40, p.109). According to J. Bloch (p. 124, n. 32), “Very few copies of the Naples Hagiographa were known in the 18th-century. In fact, when in 1735 Dr. Theo. Pellet presented a copy of the book to the Library of Eton College, he described it as unique..." This edition does not follow the standard order presently used “in all generally familiar editions of the Hebrew Bible.” See J. Bloch, Hebrew Printing and Bibliography: Studies by Joshua Bloch (1976) pp.111-38 esp. p.126 “The reverence for the Divine Name which induced the Soncino editors...to print the Tetragrammaton ... substituting a “Daleth” for a “He” is also followed by the Naples editors...(p. 812). See Christian D. Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-Critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (1897) pp. 811-14