An early Christian exposition on the Hebrew calendar and Jewish history. Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) was a prominent and prolific German Humanist, cartographer, cosmographer, and Christian Hebraist. His Hebraic scholarship included a wide range of grammatical, lexicographical, philosophical, historical, and biblical works. In the present lot, Hokhmat ha-mazzalot, completed in Heidelberg in 1526, Münster collected texts treating various aspects of the Hebrew calendar and Jewish history, translated most of them into Latin, and appended his own essays on related topics like intercalation and conjunction. The book includes extracts from the anonymous historical work Seder olam zuta; Rabbi Abraham Ibn Daud’s (ca. 1110-1180) Sefer/seder ha-kabbalah; several manuscript sources on New Moons, tekufot (seasonal turning points), and the different types of years in the Jewish calendrical system; and the treatment of solar and lunar eclipses found in Johann Stoeffler’s Calendarium Romanum magnum (Oppenheim, 1518). Numerous tables, charts, and illustrations are used to aid the reader’s comprehension of the material. Physical [8], 1-200, [16] pages, 2 foldout folios (7 7/8 x 5 7/8 in.; 198 x 150 mm) on paper; imposed from right to left; intermittent Latin marginalia. About 60 small woodcuts, including woodcut initials; two elaborate foldout charts; visual chart of the tekufot on p. 54; Julian calendar within elaborate woodcut on p. 119; diagram on p. 192; illustrations of eclipses on pp. 194-195, 199-[12]; several tables; periodic tapering text; printer’s device on first and final leaves. Some dampstaining in upper edges, causing minor warping throughout; very slight scattered staining (a bit more on p. 119); short slit along foldline of second foldout chart. Early seventeenth-century leather, elaborately tooled in blind, including with some Latin characters; stained, heavily worn, especially at corners, and starting at head and foot; spine in four compartments with raised bands; headband and tailband exposed; “Calendaria hebraica” written in ink on outer paper edges; numerous Latin manuscript parchment leaves used as flyleaves and pastedowns on both boards. LiteratureKarl Heinz Burmeister, Sebastian Münster: eine Bibliographie mit 22 Abbildungen (Wiesbaden: Guido Pressler, 1964), 49-50 (no. 44). Joseph and Bernhard Prijs, Die Basler hebräischen Drucke (1492-1866) im Auftrag der Öffentlichen Bibliothek der Universität Basel (Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau: Urs Graf Verlag, 1964-1965), 45-48 (no. 24), 493-494 (Appendix 11). Vinograd, Basel 23 Isaac Yudlov and G. J. Ormann, Sefer ginzei yisraʼel: sefarim, hoverot, va-alonim me-osef dr. yisraʼel mehlman, asher be-beit ha-sefarim ha-leʼummi ve-ha-universitaʼi (Jerusalem: JNUL, 1984), 281 (no. 1871).
An early Christian exposition on the Hebrew calendar and Jewish history. Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) was a prominent and prolific German Humanist, cartographer, cosmographer, and Christian Hebraist. His Hebraic scholarship included a wide range of grammatical, lexicographical, philosophical, historical, and biblical works. In the present lot, Hokhmat ha-mazzalot, completed in Heidelberg in 1526, Münster collected texts treating various aspects of the Hebrew calendar and Jewish history, translated most of them into Latin, and appended his own essays on related topics like intercalation and conjunction. The book includes extracts from the anonymous historical work Seder olam zuta; Rabbi Abraham Ibn Daud’s (ca. 1110-1180) Sefer/seder ha-kabbalah; several manuscript sources on New Moons, tekufot (seasonal turning points), and the different types of years in the Jewish calendrical system; and the treatment of solar and lunar eclipses found in Johann Stoeffler’s Calendarium Romanum magnum (Oppenheim, 1518). Numerous tables, charts, and illustrations are used to aid the reader’s comprehension of the material. Physical [8], 1-200, [16] pages, 2 foldout folios (7 7/8 x 5 7/8 in.; 198 x 150 mm) on paper; imposed from right to left; intermittent Latin marginalia. About 60 small woodcuts, including woodcut initials; two elaborate foldout charts; visual chart of the tekufot on p. 54; Julian calendar within elaborate woodcut on p. 119; diagram on p. 192; illustrations of eclipses on pp. 194-195, 199-[12]; several tables; periodic tapering text; printer’s device on first and final leaves. Some dampstaining in upper edges, causing minor warping throughout; very slight scattered staining (a bit more on p. 119); short slit along foldline of second foldout chart. Early seventeenth-century leather, elaborately tooled in blind, including with some Latin characters; stained, heavily worn, especially at corners, and starting at head and foot; spine in four compartments with raised bands; headband and tailband exposed; “Calendaria hebraica” written in ink on outer paper edges; numerous Latin manuscript parchment leaves used as flyleaves and pastedowns on both boards. LiteratureKarl Heinz Burmeister, Sebastian Münster: eine Bibliographie mit 22 Abbildungen (Wiesbaden: Guido Pressler, 1964), 49-50 (no. 44). Joseph and Bernhard Prijs, Die Basler hebräischen Drucke (1492-1866) im Auftrag der Öffentlichen Bibliothek der Universität Basel (Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau: Urs Graf Verlag, 1964-1965), 45-48 (no. 24), 493-494 (Appendix 11). Vinograd, Basel 23 Isaac Yudlov and G. J. Ormann, Sefer ginzei yisraʼel: sefarim, hoverot, va-alonim me-osef dr. yisraʼel mehlman, asher be-beit ha-sefarim ha-leʼummi ve-ha-universitaʼi (Jerusalem: JNUL, 1984), 281 (no. 1871).
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
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