JUDAICA \ HEBRAICA A-C   •   D-I   •   J-Q   •   R-Z

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Anti-Superstition, Wherever it Might Lurk — Great ProvenanceLurking Here

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•  First edition: History and rationalist refutation of idolatry, including divination, demonology, astrology, exorcism, sorcery, prophecy, etc. — in Judaism as well as in Zoroastrianism and pagan religions. Born in Haarlem, van Dale (a.k.a. Anton van Dalen, 1638–1708) was a physician, Mennonite preacher, and classicist; his efforts to dismiss the influence of the Devil and indeed the existence of virtually all things miraculous, angelic, or supernatural led to the placing of this work (along with his treatise discrediting the ancient oracles) on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1737.

This volume is also of interest typographically; some of the Greek, Syriac, and Arabic types subsequently used in productions by Hendrik Wetstein and others make their first appearances here. The text is predominantly in Latin, with quotations in Hebrew and the above languages. The title-page is printed in black and red.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with inked inscriptions of the Rev. A.W. Miller of Charlotte, N.C., dated 1871, and of H. Ader of Assumption Hills, dated [18]92; front free endpaper with early inked inscription of Henry Joseph Thomas Drury. Drury was a master at Harrow School (where he taught Byron), and an original member of the Roxburghe Club. His inscription notes the book's passage from the Bibliotheca Heathiana “thro' Dr. Raine's hands, and Cuthell's to mine”; Drury's mother was Louisa Heath, daughter of the great collector Benjamin Heath, but most of Heath's library had originally gone either to his two sons or to auction following the death of his wife.

•  Rosenthal, Bibliotheca magica et pneumatica, 1614. Not in Caillet, Manuel bibliographique des sciences psychiques ou occultes; not in Coumont, Demonology & Witchcraft.   Contemporary speckled calf framed and panelled in blind with blind-tooled corner fleurons, inner edges of covers ruled in gilt double fillets, neatly rebacked; spine with gilt-stamped title, gilt-stamped raised bands, and blind-tooled compartment decorations; original leather with edges abraded, corners repaired. Hinges (inside) reinforced some time ago. Lower (closed) edges institutionally blind-stamped. Front pastedown and free endpaper with inscriptions as above, title-page with small ownership inscription in upper portion. Pages age-toned with small amounts of light foxing. Nice margins, all edges (once) saffron.  (25848)

Bodoni Printing: Texts of the Hebrew Old Testament

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•  First edition of an important collection of variant readings of the Old Testament, assembled by an Italian Christian Hebraist who taught Oriental languages at the University of Parma. This gathering of Massoretic manuscripts was printed by Bodoni in Latin and Hebrew, in double columns. The first four books close with Specimen ineditae et hexaplaris Bibliorum versionis Syro-Estranghelae cum Simplici atque utriusque fontibus Graeco et Hebraeo collatae cum duplici lat. vers. ac notis, and the final volume adds the Scholia critica in V.T. libros seu supplementa ad varias sacri textus lectiones.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with bookplate of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Farmar Jarvis, historian and author of A Discourse on the Religion of the Indian Tribes of North America, The Colonies of Heaven, and A Chronological Introduction to the History of the Church.

•  Brooks, Compendiosa Bibliografia di Edizioni Bodoniane, 279; Steinschneider, Catalogus hebraeorum in Bibliotheca Bodleiana, 2152.   Binding on vols. I–IV: Contemporary calf, covers framed and panelled in blind rolls with original leather cracked, chipping, and darkened (III–IV especially severely); rebacked, spines with gilt-stamped title, gilt-dotted raised bands, and gilt-stamped compartment decorations. Hinges (inside) reinforced. Binding on the Scholia:  Recent, full period-style calf framed and panelled in blind rolls; spine with gilt-stamped title, gilt-dotted raised bands, and gilt-stamped compartment decorations. All title-pages with very old institutional rubber-stamps; early portions of vol. I with lightly pencilled annotations and bracketing, and vol. II with small pencilled marks of emphasis. Old soft corner creases or mild cockling variously throughout to vols. I–IV and, where these things (or a natural paper flaw) are most notable, a grey soil has entered at the loose or open places to mark the margins at their edges.  Otherwise, scattered light foxing, golden, not brown; and the occasional old spill (e.g., I Samuel) or smudge only.   Not “fresh” — but substantial, impressive, and with its lovely typography still lovely.  (25513)

ABCs around the WORLD — Illustrated

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•  Eye pleasing and mind instructive, this volume contains24 double-spread engraved plates of alphabets for various languages. They were engraved for the article on alphabets in the Diderot Encyclopédie, a massive 20-year project aiming to encompass every branch of human knowledge that was a landmark of Enlightenment-era philosophy, attacking superstition while promoting science, rationality, and scholarship. Many of the volumes were supplemented with illustrations, such as the plates present here, designed to facilitate comparing and contrasting the alphabets and basic writing conventions of “dead and living” languages.

Languages charted in these tables include “Tartares Mouantcheoux,” Tamoul, Telongou, Persian (ancient and modern), Armenian, Russian (ancient and modern), Coptic, Hebrew, etc., with the engraving done by master artisan Robert Bénard (fl. 1750–85).

•  Half green calf with green marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; slight wear to corners and spine extremities. Lacking one plate (#25).  (24823)

Eck on the Blood Libel

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•  Eck (1486–1543) was a forceful and often convincing voice for Catholicism during the first quarter century of the Reformation, and he was, specifically, Luther's “most indefatigable and important opponent” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Here he weighs in on the always hot-button topic of the supposed Jewish practice of ritual murder, also known as the blood accusation or the blood libel. His position was retrograde, and his powers of rhetoric significantly contributed to ongoing anti-semitism.

The text is printed in gothic with side- and shouldernotes, and the title-page has a woodcut of the arms of the Bishop of Trent.

WorldCat locates only three copies in the U.S. and COPAC only three in the U.K.

•  VD16 E383; Graesse, II, 460; Metzler, Eck, 93/1; Wiedemann 76.   Deep walnut full calf old style: Round spine with raised bands, accented with gilt beading, gilt center devices in compartments; red leather spine label; fillets extending onto covers from each band to terminate in trefoils and covers framed in blind double fillets. Some early inner margins reinforced. Stray stains on some pages, beyond “light” on only one. A rather good copy.  (26819)

Talmudic Commentary — Hebrew & Latin

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•  Scarce first edition thus, translated by Christoph Heinrich Rittmeier: Talmudic commentary, with text printed in parallel columns of Hebrew and Latin. Finzi’s Mafteach ha-Gemara was printed in the original Hebrew in Venice in 1622; the author was sometimes, as he is here, referred to as Eliakim Panzi or variants thereof.

Searches of OCLC, RLIN, and NUC Pre-1956 locate only three U.S. holdings.

•  VD17 23:237187N; Zedner, Hebrew Printed Books in the Library of the British Museum, 716. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, front cover with gilt-stamped leather author/title-label (“Panzi”). Pages age-toned, with mild offsetting.

Antiquity Jewish & Christian

•  Uncommon edition of a pair of treatises on Jewish and Christian customs of antiquity, originally published as two companion works in 1681 and 1682. Fleury, a lawyer turned theologian who tutored the sons of Louis XIV, is best known for his highly successful and oft-reprinted Histoire ecclésiastique; Brunet notes that the present items are “deux excellents ouvrages.”

•  Brunet, II, 1291 (for an 1810 ed. only, not citing this ed.). Contemporary speckled calf, spine gilt extra with gilt-stamped leather title-label; front joint entirely open with leather chipped along base of joint, spine leather and gilt rubbed in spots, corners bumped, small dent to outer edges. Front pastedown with private collector’s bookplate; front pastedown and free endpaper with institutional rubber stamp (no other markings). Pages faintly age-toned, else clean.

Sole Edition — Kabbalah & Pantheism

•  Uncommon sole edition of Freystadt’s essay on Kabbalah and on pantheistic thought, printed in Latin and Hebrew with sprinklings of Arabic and Greek. Steineschneider cites this as Freystadt’s “dissert. inaug.”

•  Steineschneider, Catalogus Librorum Hebraeorum, 5085. Contemporary paste paper–covered boards, spine with hand-inked title label; binding rubbed and abraded, spine with stamped shelving number. All edges stained red. Front pastedown with 19th-century private collector’s bookplate.

Jews, Mohometans, & Popery — For American Schools — 1806

•  First edition as such, and relatively uncommon. This is an English rendition of Jan Philipsz Schabaelje’s 1635 Lusthof des gemoets, a retelling of Old and New Testament history as a series of conversations between an inquisitive pilgrim and various Biblical figures, here edited and “accomodated to the use of schools in America” by the Rev. Gillet. Gillet, who also published a number of sermons and discourses, was a founding member of the First Congregational Church in Pittston, Maine, as well as a member of the Maine Missionary Society. At back is a list of Goodale’s other publications, to be had at the “Sign of the Bible.”

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 10485. Contemporary speckled sheep, worn and abraded; back cover with slices to leather, title label on spine almost entirely rubbed away. One leaf torn; pages age-toned throughout, with staining/spotting. Back pastedown with calligraphy practice inked in an early hand.

Anglo-Jewish Cookbook

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•  First edition. Written before food rationing came into force, while refrigerators were a possibility but not a probability in the home, this landmark cookbook is a remarkable document of British Jewish culture in the early 20th century. The author was the wife of Leopold Jacob Greenberg, a prominent Zionist and for many years the editor of the Jewish Chronicle; the Chronicle later published this work several times with the title Florence Greenberg's Jewish Cookery, under which it remains popular in many homes to this day.

There is a small separate section on Passover cookery; there is one on “invalid cookery”; and there are advertisements front and back that tickle in themselves.

•  Bitting 200.   Publisher's blue cloth, spine with gilt-stamped title; binding cocked, spine sunned, covers with spots of light discoloration. One upper outer page corner torn away, not touching text; index with one inked annotation. Pages age-toned with occasional small spots, mostly clean.  (26663)

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 10485. Contemporary speckled sheep, worn and abraded; back cover with slices to leather, title label on spine almost entirely rubbed away. One leaf torn; pages age-toned throughout, with staining/spotting. Back pastedown with calligraphy practice inked in an early hand.

“Our Ninth Annual Casket” — Verse & Prose Inspired by Charity

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•  The 1851 volume of an annual gift book issued by the charitable fraternity. Among the poems and stories are several pieces on the principles and virtues of Odd Fellowship, as well as the first appearance of Sarah Josepha Hale's “Song of the Flower Angels”; the volume is illustrated with a total of 11 steel-engraved plates (including the additional engraved title-page and theilluminated presentation plate, chromolithographed by Ackerman). One plate, “The Joyous Procession of the Law,” has an additional Hebrew title carefully inked in by hand.

Provenance: The front free endpaper bears a neatly inked ownership inscription dated 1860 (J.C.W. Kempe) and an additional inked “sold to” inscription dated 1871 (Aden Mc Bowman); Bowman also signed another blank, and the presentation leaf is made out to Kempe as “P.G.J.C.W. Kempe.”

Binding:  Publisher's deep blue/black diced sheep in imitation of morocco, covers with gilt-stamped vignette of Friendship, Love, and Truth personified within an architectural frame; spine gilt extra with column motif. All edges gilt.

•  BAL 6877; Faxon 609.   Binding as above, joints and extremities rubbed, spine gilt slightly dimmed. Inscriptions and presentation leaf as above. Poetry clippings, fabric swatch, and lock of hair laid in. Scattered staining, generally light, throughout; chromo very bright and nice.  (27041)

TO Part III . . .

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