Sepher Eilim

DELMEDIGO, JOSEPH SOLOMON OF CRETE

Menassah ben Israel

Amsterdam

1628-29

FIRST EDITION. Three Parts in one. With two titles, both within typographical borders. Missing Latin introduction before title of Sepher Eilim and engraved portrait before title of Sepher Ma’ayan Ganim. (The portrait is found, oddly enough, in another Delmedigo work in this sale, see previous Lot). Numerous astronomical and mathematical illustrations. Opposite Part III, stamp of “Baruch Friedenberg, Bialystok” (see below)

Vinograd, Amsterdam 20; Fuks, Amsterdam 150-1; Silva Rosa 6

“The most sumptuously illustrated of early scientific works in Hebrew, and unique in printed Hebrew literature before the modern period.” One of the great scientific books of Hebrew Literature, with treatises relating to: geometry, algebra, chemistry, astronomy, physics, medicine and metaphysics. See National Library of Canada Catalogue, The Jacob H. Lowy Collection (1981), no.80 (illustrated); A. Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century (1986), pp.251-2; H. Friedenwald, Jewish Luminaries in Medical History-Catalogue (1946), p.111; A.J. Karp, From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress (1991), pp. 199-200. R. Baruch Friedenberg of Bialystok (1845-1921) was the author of Mekor Baruch (Jerusalem, 1929), a highly original commentary to Bible and Talmud, which combines traditional rabbinic learning and utter familiarity with “chochmoth chitzoniyoth” (worldly wisdom). In his youth in Bialystok, Baruch was known as “Bogaleh Iluy” and was the study partner of R. Meir Simcha Cohen, later to become the illustrious rabbi of Dvinsk, Latvia