Pirush Chamesh Megilloth [commentary to the Five Scrolls, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra & Nachamiah and Chronicles]

IBN YACHYA, JOSEPH

The Company of Jewish Silk Weavers

Bologna

1538

FIRST EDITION. Initial word of each chapter within decorative woodcut frame. Previous owner’s colorful handpainted cartouche with birds and floral patterns laid down on front flyleaf. Lengthy manuscript note in an Italian hand on final flyleaf, previous owners' signatures in various Aschkenazic and Italian hands (one dated 1604) on title-page, previous owners' bookplate on flyleaf. Signed by censors on title dated 1567 and 1589, some controversial passages censored (especially the anti-Christological portions of Daniel, f.112b.)

Vinograd, Bologna 11; Adams J-337

Contains fascinating conjecture concerning the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel by the year 5700 (i.e. 1940) (viz. Book of Daniel, f.110a -110b). Joseph ben David ibn Yachya (1494-1534), a disciple of Judah Mintz in Padua, took sharp exception to Maimonides’ rationalist philosophy and universalism, aligning himself with Judah Halevi’s doctrine of the chosenness of the Jewish People as expounded in the Kuzari. Thus, it is little wonder that Church censors found ibn Yachya’s works to be pernicious. Joseph’s son, Gedaliah ibn Yachya, author of Shalsheleth HaKabbalah, a classic of Jewish historiography, relates that after his father’s passing, Church censors burnt the deceaseds' unpublished manuscripts