Fac-similes of the Hebrew Manuscripts…K'ae-Fung-Foo, Shanghae: London Missionary Society, 1851

150 leaves (7  3/4  x 7  1/4  in.; 200 x 185 mm). Four pericopes: Shemot, Pekudei, Kedoshim, Re'eh. Lithographed on rice paper; some leaves unopened. Some foxing. Volume title and four sectional titles printed on heavier stock; first two titles chipped, fourth title trimmed with no text affected. Modern black buckram.

The first Chinese Jews may have been descendants of Jewish silk traders who arrived in China in the first quarter of the third century CE, the period of the Han dynasty. Throughout the middle ages Jews had been intrigued by the idea that a Jewish community existed in China and references to the Jews of China are found in the Hebrew writings of Eldad Ha-Dani (9th century) and Benjamin of Tudela (12th century). For Christians, the possibility that Chinese Jews may have had older, and thus, more accurate copies of Hebrew biblical texts untainted by what they suspected were rabbinic and Talmudic embellishments, inspired them to begin a several hundred year attempt to make contact with the Chinese Jews. In 1850, two couriers from an English missionary group established the first contact with the Jewish community of Kaifeng. The two couriers returned to Shanghai with Hebrew books and the following year purchased six of the community's 12 Torah scrolls and some 40 additional Hebrew manuscripts from the Kaifeng Jews. Some of these manuscripts were reproduced in facsimile editions, including the four biblical sections in the present lot.

References: David S. Katz, "The Chinese Jews and the Problem of Biblical Authority in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth- Century England,"  The English Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 417 (Oct., 1990), pp. 893-919.