Nishmath Chaim [on the immortality of the Soul]. With Latin dedication by the Author to the German Emperor Ferdinand III, and abstract

MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL

Samuel Soeiro (Author’s son)

Amsterdam

1652

FIRST EDITION. With Engraved Frontispiece Portrait of Menasseh ben Israel by Shalom d’Italia

Vinograd, Amsterdam 202; Mehlman 1211; Fuks, Amsterdam 190; Silva Rosa 59; Rubens 1814

A MOST UNCOMMON COMPLETE COPY. The fine portrait of Menasseh ben Israel is of exceptional rarity. Menasseh's Nishmath Chaim with its conceptions regarding the reincarnation of the Soul is of fundamental importance to Jewish theology and is the great mans magnum opus. “The work is a sustained attempt to argue for the eternality of the soul against those who contended that such a belief could not be maintained for philosophical and Scriptural reasons. To confute the skeptics, Menasseh marshalled evidence from a wide range of sources to prove that the soul endures after bodily death. Biblical passages, classical rabbinic literature, Gentile scholarship, and kabbalistic texts are all adduced to make this case. Moreover, Menasseh adds what he considered to be the the best empirical evidence of the existence of a spirit world: contemporary ethnographic accounts (often travelers' reports from the New World) and stories of spirit possession.” (Prof. Y. Chajes)