Midrash Chamesh Megiloth [aggadic compilation on the Five Scrolls]

(MIDRASH)

Gershom Soncino

Pesaro

1519

FIRST EDITION. With rare half-title. Title and half-title within four-piece white-on-black woodcut border of Renaissance ornament - a favorite of Soncino. Letters of opening words within white-on-black decorative vignettes. Important, extensive marginal notes throughout in an Italian Sephardic hand

Vinograd, Pesaro 48; St. Cat. Bodl. Col. 3754 (COPIED FROM WOLF); Haberman, HaMadpisim Bnei Soncino no. 67 (without seeing a copy, relying on Steinschneider)

EXTREMELY RARE. NO COPIES IN THE BODLEIAN OR THE BRITISH LIBRARY. THE BIBLIOPHILE DAVID FRANKEL CONSIDERED THIS BOOK (COMPLETE WITH BOTH TITLE PAGES) TO BE AS RARE AND VALUABLE AS AN INCUNABLE. The collection of Aggadic material on the Five Scrolls are part of the Midrash Rabbah genus of Midrashic literature - denominated “large” (Rabbah) to distinguish it from the smaller collections on these Biblical books. The time of compilation of the Midrash Rabbah lasted many centuries, but the material itself is ancient. The predominance of the sayings, parables, interpretations of verses, stories and proverbs which comprise the Midrashic literature originates with the Palestinian sages although the wisdom of the Babylonian scholars is amply represented. Eichah Rabbah (Lamentations Rabbah) is the earliest of the group. It is prefaced by a long introduction consisting of thirty-three homilies to the initial verses of Lamentations. The dates of the remaining four works cannot be determined with accuracy though the consensus of scholarship places them earlier than the other Midrashim of the last four books of the Pentateuch. The Five Scrolls were read in the synagoguges on the holidays and as such were the subject of much interpretation and homilies; hence the large quantity of Aggadic material centering around these books. See M. Waxman, Vol. I pp. 136-8.