Enchiridion Expositionis Vocabvlorvm Haruch, Tharghum, Midrascim, Berescith, Scemoth, Vaicra, Midbar Rabba.
Rome, for T. Strozzi 1523.
Folio (300 x 193 mm.). lxxxxii leaves. To be read right to left; double-column, roman and fully pointed Hebrew type, historiated initial with a bust portrait of a tonsured monk (Strozzi?), title text and woodcut arms of the dedicatee Cardinal François-Guillaume de Castelnau-Clermont-Lodève (1480-1541) in a woodcut frame (270 x 175 mm.) of vines and flowers, final verso with a short-title and the dedicatee’s arms in a white- and black-line woodcut architectural frame (187/8 x 132 mm.) of grotesques, heads, nude women, swags, armor, flowers, dolphins.
Mid-16th-century French tan calf with three blind double-rule frames (hinges and spine neatly restored), blind lilies at the corners of the middle frame, gilt lilies at the corners of the inner frame, interlacing strapwork ornament in the center with the original owner’s name above (effaced on both panels), a single small ornament in each spine compartment alternately gilt and blind, old paper label with manuscript title.
With: Münster, Sebastian. 1489-1552. With: Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew. Ad I-III: Three significant works of Renaissance Christian Hebraism, two in first edition. With its wide compass, Pagnini’s polyglot dictionary (I) served Münster for his trilingual one (II). These were for Christian students and scholars who wished to read Aramaic and post-biblical Hebrew texts, while Münster’s Hebrew version of Matthew’s Gospel (III), with his new facing Latin translation, aimed to convert Jews to Christianity. All three works are in good condition, not withstanding the ink stain to the extreme upper outer corners (least visible in the Pagnini), 17th-century inscriptions of the Cluny Abbey Library and if J, d’Aulboroche on one title (III).
[Woodcut Hebrew title Silus Lesonot] Dictionarivm Trilingve. Basle, H. Petri 1543. Folio. 285, [3]p. Triple-column Latin-Greek-Hebrew.
[Woodcut Hebrew title Torat ham-Masiah] Evangelivm Secvndvm Matthævm In Lingva Hebraica, cum uersione latina atq[ue] succinctis annotationibus Sebastiani Munsteri. Basle, H. Petri 1537. Folio. [iix], 154, [2]p. Double-column, Hebrew facing Latin, commentary long line in italic, white-line woodcut initials (some historiated), occasional xylographic Hebrew.
Ad I: ONLY EDITION OF THIS PIONEERING WORK. A by-product of three decades spent preparing his never-published polyglot Bible, Pagnini’s Talmudic lexicon lists words in Aramaic found in the Targum, translates them into Latin, explains their meaning and compares them to other terms in Greek, Aramaic, and Persian. He drew on three principal Judaic sources — the sweeping 11th-century Aruk, the Chaldean Scriptural paraphrases (Targum) and allegorical biblical interpretations (Midrash) of the Five Megillot and of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers.
As no Hebrew press was authorized in 16th-century Rome, this folio appeared with only the name of its patron, Tommaso Strozzi (d. 1541), prior of Paginini’s monastery, in its imprint. The author immediately sent a copy to Bonifacius Amerbach, which passed by presentation to Sebastian Münster. I have identified three examples in U.S. libraries.
¶Schwab, Les Incunables orientaux 314; Steinschneider, Catalogus librorum hebræorum in Bibliotheca bodleiana 6705; Centi, “L’Attività letteraria di Santi Pagnini (1470-1536) nel campo delle scienze bibliche” in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 15 (1945) 5-51; Grendler, “Italian Biblical Humanism and the Papacy, 1515-1535” in Biblical Humanism and the Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus ed. Rummel 244; Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era 54; Freimann, “Die hebräischen Drucke in Rom im 16. Jahrhundert” in Festschrift Dr. Jakob Freimann zum 70. Geburtstag (1937) 53-67; Jones, The Discovery of Hebrew in Tudor England 40-1; Buisson, Répertoire des ouvrages pédagogiques du XVIe siècle 488; EDIT16 CNCE 47200.
Ad II: Second Edition (first 1530). “Probably the most famous Hebraist of his age” (Burnett), Münster organized this standard Bible study companion alphabetically by Latin main entry and added Aurogallus’ (?1490-1543) useful alphabetic list of Hebrew place names (pp. 239-84). The work concludes with a new short treatise on representing numbers with Hebrew letters. Multiple jurisdictions issued a blanket ban on Münster’s writings and several singled out this dictionary.
¶Burnett 96; Burmeister, Sebastian Münster. Eine Bibliographie 25; Prijs, Die Basler hebräischen Drucke (1492-1866) 65; Steinschneider, Bibliographisches Handbuch 1386.3; Fürst, Bibliotheca judaica II: 407 (“1553” in error); Bacher, “Hebrew Dictionaries” in Jewish Encyclopedia IV: 582; Buisson 459; VD 16 M 6665.
Ad III: FIRST EDITION, THE FIRST SEPARATELY PUBLISHED BOOK OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN HEBREW AND “THE FIRST COMPLETE EDITION OF THE HEBREW TEXT BY A CHRISTIAN” (Jewish Enc. 9: 112). Dedicated to Henry VII of England, the work is titled The Teaching of the Messiah in Hebrew, signaling the Gospel’s original intended Jewish audience, its emphasis on Christ as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and its contemporary missionary intent. Despite the anti-Semitic sentiments expressed in his Hebrew introduction (40p.), Münster did “regard Jewish writers as important authorities in the field of biblical exegesis and…their explanations of difficult passages could be of great value for the Christian in his understanding of Scripture” (Jones). He added his own facing Latin rendering and polemical notes.
The Hebrew manuscript on which he based his edition is not, as often claimed, taken from the 14th-century commentary falsely attributed to Shem Tov be Isaac Shaprut. Rather, it cannot have been written before 1490 “by references to several rabbis who began to teach at this time, but also by numerous New High German words which appear in the Hebrew text”, which is riddled with so many errors “that neither a Jew familiar with the Torah, nor even an ex-Jew, could have been responsible…for its intentional distortion” (Lapide).
¶Jones 45; Lapide, Hebrew in the Church: The Foundations of Jewish-Christian Dialogue 53-63 & 213,106; Prijs 48; Darlow & Moule, Historical Catalogue of…the Holy Scripture 5088; Delaveau & Hillard, Bibles imprimées du XVe au XVIIIe siècle 4645; Steinschneider, Catalogus 2016.25; Burmeister 142 & Abb. 19; Schwab 465; Burnett 107 & passim; VD 16 B 4898.
Price: $17,500.00