Bible in German

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Biblia, Das Ist: Die Ganze Göttliche Heilige Schrift Alten und Neuen Testaments, mit der Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers; Mit jedes Capitels kurzen Summarien, auch beygefügten vielen und richtigen Parallelen: Nebst einem Anhang ... Germantown: Christoph Saur, 1776
leather,ink,paper

Thick 4to (10 x 7 1/2 in.; 254 x 191 mm). General title-page, separate title-page, register, and pagination for the New Testament, fraktur type set in two columns, woodcut initials, printer's ornaments used as head- and tailpieces; general title-page frayed along fore-edge and bottom margin, light to moderate browning, some foxing and spotting, old repair to bottom margin of ²L2, dampstaining in the last few quires of the New Testament. Contemporary calf; rebacked.

Provenance

Dillman Stauffer (early signature on front pastedown). acquisition: Philip C. Duschnes

Literature

Formatting the Word of God 12.2c; Darlow & bMoule 4240; ESTC W18549; Evans 14663; Hildeburn 3336; Rumball-Petrie pp. 51–63; Sabin 5194

Catalogue Note

The third edition and the first bible to be printed with American type. In his History of American Printing (1810), Isaiah Thomas first circulated an apocryphal story about the circumstances that befell this particular edition to the effect that the book acquired the sobriquet of the"Gun-Wad" Bible. Thomas writes: "[Saur's] estate was confiscated before the close of the war, and his books, bound and unbound, were sold, among these the principal of the last edition of the Bible in sheets. Some copies of them had been before, and others of them were now, converted into cartridges ..."(quoted by Rumball-Petrie). Dr. John Wright further embellished the story in his Early Bibles of America (1894), stating the British had confiscated the bible sheets to use as litter for their horses as well as wadding for their muskets. Rumball-Petrie neatly explodes the myth, as there is no contemporary, empirical evidence to support these claims.