Bible. Old Testament. Greek.

Estimate

1,000 - 1,500 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

H palaia diaqhkh kata touV Ebdomhkonta di auqentiaV Xystou E akrou arcierewV ekdoqeisa. Vetus testamentum iuxta septuaginta ex auctoritate Sixti V Pont. Max. editum. Rome: Francesco Zanetti, 1586 [date altered to 1587]

folio (342 x 233mm.), half-title, engraved armorial device on title-page, woodcut initials, book titles within woodcut cartouches, eighteenth-century diced Russia gilt, cross in centre of covers (added later), old morocco lettering-piece, gilt edges, title-leaf soiled, repaired and partly laid down (not affecting text on verso), occasional light soiling, rebacked, lower cover slightly scraped, extremities slightly rubbed

Provenance

Truro Cathedral library, bookplate; Bequeathed to the Bishopric of Cornwall by the Rev. Franke Parker, M.A., Rector of Luffincott, Devon, 1883, bookplate

Literature

Darlow & Moule 4647; Delaveau & Hillard 1452; Censimento 16 CNCE 5815

Catalogue Note

First edition of the Sixtine Septuagint, based on the Codex Vaticanus, one of the great manuscripts of the Greek Bible (along with Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus) and edited by Cardinal Antonio Carafa and others, "which by modern standards is perhaps the only satisfactory achievement in the editing of a biblical text obtained in the sixteenth century, and its editors could rightly claim that by diligent correction it had been restored to its former splendour" (The Cambridge History of the Bible 3, p.58).