Hebrew). Arba’ah ve-Esrim. Edited by Felix Pratensis with commentaries including Rashi, R. David Kimchi, Nachmanides, Gersonides, Aramaic Targumim, etc.

(BIBLE.

Daniel Bomberg

Venice

1516-17

Four parts bound in two volumes. Divisional titles. On titles, in Italki script, Hebrew signatures of former owner "Isaac Mahalalel [Norzi]." (In margin of Book of Job, Hebrew inscription: "Purchase of Samuel Norzi from Isaac Mahalalel Norzi.") (See below.) Large woodcut head-pieces, initial letters of each Book within ornamental heading. Numerous old marginalia, both Hebrew marginalia in an Italki hand, as well as Latin marginalia. * LAID IN from another copy: The exceptionally scarce leaf by R. David Kimchi: Teshuvoth LaNotzrim (“Responses to Christians”). See F. Talmage, Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver (1999), p. 213.

Vinograd, Venice 6; Mehlman 25 and 1227; Haberman, Bomberg 8; Adams B-1216; Darlow & Moule 5083

WITHDRAWN. Wide-Margined Copy of the First Biblia Rabbinica. “The importance of this edition can hardly be overrated” (C. D. Ginsburg). See D. S. Berkowitz, In Remembrance of Creation (1968), no. 165 (illustrated). This first great work published in large folio by Daniel Bomberg, the Aldo of Hebrew printing, was edited by the convert Felix Pratensis. Although he utilized the Brescia Bible of 1493, Pratensis consulted many additional manuscripts for his redaction, hence this 1517 edition made an important contribution to textual criticism. As a result, various readings and masoretic glosses, as well as the Jerusalem Targum of the Pentateuch and the Targum of the Prophets and Hagiographia appear for the first time. Also, for the first time in a Hebrew Bible, the chapter numbers appear in the margin and the Books of Samuel, Kings, Ezra-Nechemiah and Chronicles are divided each into two separate Books. Isaac Mahalalel Norzi of the distinguished Norzi (or Norsa) Family of Mantua figured prominently in communal life at the middle of the 17th-century. See S. Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (1977), pp. 64, 292, 562.