Auction 44 · Lot 294

Book of Isaiah. Judeo-German translation, with Hebrew commentary

Estimate: $600–$900
Hammer price: Not recorded

Historical auction record. Hammer prices exclude buyer’s premium and taxes.

author

(BIBLE).

Place

Prague

Publication

1817

Description

Cursive Aschkenazic script. On ff. 83v. and 135r. Latin inscriptions by the censor Carolus Fischer. Translation by Meir Abranik. Commentary by Heinrich Josephsohn

summary

In the foreword, the Author, presumably Heinrich Josephsohn (based on the information provided by the Censor's inscriptions), writes that he is emulating the example of Moses Mendelssohn's Bi'ur to the Pentateuch. Though convinced of the value of David Friedlander's German translation of the Haphtaroth, it did not fit the needs of this edition. (Friedlander was a disciple of, and in some sense, successor to Mendelsssohn.) Each chapter of this manuscript is sub-divided in two: The Judeo-German translation is followed by the pure Hebrew Bi'ur to that chapter. That the author would have obtained the imprimatur of Prague's censor Carolus Fischer, indicates the work was being readied for print, however no bibliographic record exists of it

ff. (8), 7-135. Brown sepia ink on coarse paper. Light stains, some foxing. Blind-tooled crushed morocco with gold florets, central cartouche "Moshe Chanoch Halevi" in square Hebrew characters; distressed; gutter split. 4to

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