Hebrew. PENTATEUCH, PROPHETS AND WRITINGS). Biblia Hebraica. Edited and with an introduction in Latin by Johannes Leusden

(BIBLE.

Joseph Athias

Amsterdam

1667

Title in Hebrew and Latin. In Preface, Latin initials historiated, tailpiece. Woodcut divisonal title pages. Replete with Latin marginalia in a fine hand

Vinograd, Amsterdam 356; Fuks, Amsterdam 393; Darlow & Moule 5134

“D. E. Jablonski states, on the authority of Leusden himself, that Athias, after printing four or five sheets of this volume, determined to raise the number of copies from 4,500 to 5,000, and so had to reprint the early sheets. These few reprinted sheets did not receive Leusden’s correction, and they differ slightly from the first impression. The second issue may be distinguished from the first by the omission of a Maqqeph between the first two words of v. 18 in Gen. viii.” Cited in Darlowe and Moule 5134. (Our copy has the makaph or hyphen, thus it is from the first issue.) In their formal Haskama, the three rabbis of Amsterdam - Isaac Aboab, Aaron Sarfati, and Moses Raphael de Aguilar - praise the scholarly contributions made here by the Christian Hebraist Johannes Leusden, head of the faculty at the University of Utrecht. It has been suggested that the chronograms on the divisional titles of Nevi’im Acharonim (Later Prophets) and Kethuvim (Hagiographa), “Moshi’a” (Saviour) and “Nosha” (Saved), respectively, betray the printer Joseph Athias’ sympathies for pseudo-Messiah Shabbetai Zevi. One recalls that it was in that year of 1666 that the so-called “Messiah of Izmir” proclaimed himself Redeemer. Nowhere was there greater Messianic enthusiasm than in Amsterdam, home to a large Marrano population