Neville, Marianne, trans. Sha'ar HaTephilah V'Seder HaAvodah / The Book of Common Prayer

(IRELAND)

Dublin

Oct. 25, 1829

Trilingual edition: English, Greek and Hebrew in square characters, unvocalized. Colophon reads: "Written in lithographic ink by Marianne Neville in one month for the use of the Christian institute at Smyrna."

See M. Rosenfeld, Hebrew Printing (Gazetteer), no. 484

On p. ii is this curious Certificate written by the translator: "I certify that during the time I was translating and transcribing this Prayerbook for the use of the Christian Israelites that lest they should deem it an offence to use a book of prayer written by a Gentile, I abstained from eating anything forbidden by the Law of Moses, nor did I use any pens but new ones, that had not been used in any other writing." Before the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, Smyrna (Izmir) was home to a large and influential Greek Orthodox population. The inclusion of Greek in this prayerbook is rather obvious: It was the fervent hope of the missionaries that Smyrniote Jews, once converted to Christianity, would be absorbed into the local Greek population