Tehillim (Psalms) with Commentary of David Kimhi, Italy [Bologna]: Joseph and Nerijah Hayyim, Mordecai and Hezekiah Montero, 29 August 1477

153 leaves (10 ¼ x 7 ½ in.;262 x 191 mm), folio 98 in facsimile. Printed in single column, 40 lines in square and semi cursive Hebrew founts; nikud on biblical text, ff. 2-5, 7 only. Double leaf signatures from quire 9 only. COLLATION: [1⁹,2-5⁸, 6¹⁰, 7-8⁸], 9-15⁸, 16⁶, 17-19⁸ =153 leaves; (quires 10 and 15 are misbound in this copy; see foliation for correct order); later pencil FOLIATION: 1-76, 82, 78-81, 77, 83-97, [folio 98 in facsimile], 99-118, 121-123, 119-120, 124-153. Each psalm numbered in manuscript in the margins using Hebrew letters in ink. Remnant bookplate on front pastedown endpaper; earlier free endpaper with notes of Salomon Jakob Florsheim preserved but detached; f.1r, early owners’ notes including manuscript list of first lines of Psalms 111-150, bookplate of Reshit Hokhmah society and their inkstamp, strengthened at inner and outer margins with paper tape; f.3 remargined with paper tape; most leaves strengthened at gutter; Lightly soiled and stained; wormtracks occasionally affecting individual letters, primarily confined to last third of the volume; f. 153r, additional owner’s note and inkstamp. Nineteenth century gilt stamped mottled calf; spine with tape repair; worn.

Two early owners’ inscriptions on f.1r undecipherable; Purchased by Aharon Avram ben Yosef – his note on f. 153v; David Leeser- his gift to Reshit Hokhmah March 9, 1818; Reshit Hokhmah, donated as noted above; Salomon Jakob Florsheim (1893-1979)- remnant of his bookplate on inside front cover and his handwritten notes on loose front endpaper and pagination notes.

Vinograd, Bologna 1; Steinschneider C.B. 1, "extremae raritatis"; Goff Heb no. 28; Hain no. 13451; Offenberg 34; Iakerson, 73; Frank Talmage, David Kimhi: The Man and the Commentaries (1975).

THE EARLIEST PRINTING OF THE HEBREW BIBLE, ANYWHERE
FIRST EDITION OF KIMHI'S COMMENTARY ON PSALMS

Rabbi David Kimhi (1160?-1135?), also known by the acronym RaDaK, was the most prominent grammarian of the Hebrew language in the medieval period, surpassing all others in simplicity, comprehensiveness, and methodical presentation of the subject matter. Like all of RaDaK’s commentaries on the Prophets and Writings portions of the Hebrew Bible, his commentary on Psalms offers a master grammarian’s running gloss, interweaving text and commentary, and is liberally interspersed with philosophical interpretations, where pertinent.

Kimhi was born in Provence after his father fled the Almohade persecutions in Spain. Both his father and brother were accomplished grammarians in their own right and RaDaK’s philological writings would owe a great deal to their early influence. David Kimhi also shared his father’s penchant for anti-Christian polemic, which especially imbues RaDaK’s commentary to Psalms. Eventually, this polemic material would be collected in a separate work entitled Teshuvot la-Notzrim (Responses to the Christians), and be included in Lipmann Muelhausen’s Sefer Nizzahon. As a result, nearly all surviving copies of Psalms with Radak's commentary have undergone the indignities of church censorship. That the present volume bears no censor's signatures and indeed no censored text, suggests that it traveled out of Italy before church censorship began in earnest in the early 1550s. Having thus escaped the censor's pen by virtue of the accident of location, this exceptionally rare unexpurgated edition of the Psalms with Kimhi's commentary allows the reader to peruse Kimhi's theological arguments against Christianity; as clear today as they were more than 500 years ago, when this remarkable book was new.

The printers of this volume attempted to revolutionize the nascent craft of Hebrew printing by creating the first Hebrew printed text to include nikud, (vocalized text accomplished through the addition of vowel points, accents, and diacritic marks). Their experiment seems to have presented them with technical difficulties which proved insurmountable to them, and they only included nikkud in a portion of the initial quire before abandoning the practice for the remainder of the volume. The colophon is very unusual in that it  enumerates the exact number of copies printed: 300. The printers' names do not appear in any other colophon. The localization of their shop to Bologna remains conjectural, though subscribed to by most modern bibliographers, being based on the reappearance of the fonts used here (albeit with modifications) in the Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos completed in Bologna by Abraham ben Hayyim Tintori, 25 January 1482 (Goff Heb-18, Offenberg 13).