TALMUD - BILINGUAL EDITION 1629 - Lot 98

TALMUD - BILINGUAL EDITION 1629 Jean Coch, Duo Tituli Thalmudici Sanhedrin et Maccoth...cum excerptis ex utriusque Gemara versa et annotationibus, deprontis maximam partem ex Ebraeorum commentariis, illustrata. Amsterdam, Jansson, Typis Frederici Heynsii Typogr. in Acad. Franekerana, 1629, one vol. small in 4° square, bound in contemporary full brown calf, double fillet around the boards, four-nerved spine decorated with coats of arms (effaced) in the entrenerfs, two original chased steel clasps, red edges. Some foxing and a stamp on the title, otherwise a fine copy, in its rare original clasp binding (restored), of this bilingual (Hebrew and Latin) edition of two important legal treatises from the Talmud. According to P. van Rooden (Theology, biblical scholarship and rabbinical studies in the seventeenth century, Leiden, 1989), the translation is in fact not by the German Hebraist Jean Coccejus or Coch (1603-1669), but by Sixtus Amama, librarian and later rector of the University of Franeker and author of, among other works, a Hebrew grammar first published in Amsterdam in 1625. It is Amama, moreover, who dedicates the book to M. Martinius, professor of sacred literature in Bremen, in the preliminary leaves of the book, and it is also to Amama that Daniel Heinsius' letter of thanks for the work, printed in the same preliminary leaves, is addressed. The title page states that, like the translation, the Hebrew type used comes from Franeker: Amsterdam, at the end of the first third of the 17th century, had not yet conquered the leading position in Hebrew printing that it would occupy a few decades later.