(Bible, English) Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

L. Johnson & Co

Philadelphia

1853

Torah Nevi’im U’kethuvim- The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures. Carefully Translated According to the Massoratic Text, After the Best Jewish Authorities and Supplied with Short Explanatory Notes. By ISAAC LEESER. FIRST EDITION. Text in English. Printed in two columns

Deinard 847; Singerman 1271; not in Darlow & Moule

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST JEWISH TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE INTO ENGLISH. A FINE COPY GRANDLY BOUND. Isaac Leeser, a pioneer of American Judaism, published the first Jewish translation of the entire Bible into English to wean American Jews (most of whom could not read Hebrew) off the King James Version and its Christological interpretations. “In presenting this work to the public, the translator would merely remark, that it is not a new notion by which he was seized of late years which impelled him to the task, but a desire entertained for more than a quarter of a century, since the day he quitted school in his native land to come to this country, to present to his fellow-Israelites an English version, made by one of themselves, of the Holy Word of God.” Leeser’s translation has become the standard Bible for English-speaking Jews, especially in America. It was greeted with acclaim by all circles and continues to be used in synagogues to this day. See J. D. Sarna and N. M. Sarna, The Bible and Bibles in America in: Jewish Bible Scholarship and Translations in the United States, pp. 84-90; Murray Friedman, Jewish Life in Philadelphia (1983) p.35