Seder Zeraim. With commentary by Maimonides and R. Samson (ben Abraham of Sens)

(TALMUD, BABYLONIAN).

Daniel Bomberg

Venice

1528

SECOND BOMBERG EDITION. Opening letters within white-on-black decorative woodcut vignettes. this copy with many marginal notations in an early Aschkenazic hand with illustrative diagrams, especially in Tractate Pe’ah ff.9v.-10r

Vinograd, Venice 132; Habermann, Bomberg 114; Adams T-100; Rabbinovicz, Talmud pp. 43-47

The first edition of Bomberg’s Talmud sold out quickly, necessitating reissues of various tractates in 1527-30, 1538-9 and 1548. Indeed, Ya’ari notes in Mechkarei Sepher: Sreiphath HaTalmud Be’Italia (1958), these subsequent issues are often more scarce than the early editions, as they were destroyed by the Papal authorities of the time. Heller, in Printing the Talmud (1992) emphasizes the importance of the emendations in Bomberg’s second edition, often overlooked, in analyzing the development of the text of the Talmud