Talmud Bavli

(TALMUD, BABYLONIAN).

Immanuel Benveniste

Amsterdam

1644-7

Compete in Sixteen Volumes. Title letters within decorative woodcut vignettes. Printers device on title. (Yaari no. 60)

Vinograd, Amsterdam 74-5, 87-101,103-5,108,113,117-135&137; Fuks, Amsterdam 216; Rabbinovicz, Talmud pp. 93-5

THE FIRST PRINTING OF THE TALMUD IN AMSTERDAM. Benveniste’s edition follows the Basle example in lay-out and text, and likewise has no general title-page for the entire work. The Giustiniani’s edition from Venice 1546-51 as well as the editions from Cracow, 1602-5 and Lublin, 1617-39 also served as templates for the Amsterdam Talmud; a fact attested to by the corrector Abraham ben Joshua of Worms in his colophon. There was no censorship of printed books in the Dutch Republic, so Benveniste’s Talmud contains Tractate Avodah Zara in its entirety with all the references to Christianity to which the censors in other centers of Hebrew printing objected. Benveniste did not print his Talmud in chronological order. He produced most Tractates as individual books with separate title page and foliation, so that they could be sold separately. He printed 3000 copies of the Talmud, a tremendous investment considering a complete Talmud amounts to 5,940 leaves