Ydele Verwachtinge der Joden Getoont in den Persoon van Sabethai Zevi, Haren Laetsten Vermeynden Messias. Text in Dutch

COENEN, THOMAS.

Joannes van den Bergh

Amsterdam

1669

Engraved copper-plate portraits of Sabathai Zevi and his aide-de-camp, Nathan of Gaza

G. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, The Mystical Messiah(1975), p.939, no. 44; Rubens 2233 & 1464;

“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) no. 18, pp. 40-3 (illustrated). An important contemporary account of the rise of the famous false Messiah, Sabathai Zevi by Thomas Coenen, a Protestant minister serving the Dutch merchant community in Smyrna. Coenen’s detailed account provides a wealth of primary historical source material on the life of Sabathai Zevi, and has been used extensively by subsequent biographers and scholars. 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 for the officers of the Levant trade Company alone. See Story of the Levantine Trade (Dutch), vol. II p.163