Babylonian Talmud, Amsterdam: Immanuel Benveniste, 1644-1648

7 volumes (10 3/8 x 7 5/8 in.; 265 x 194 mm). Individual title pages; tractate names formed from individual decorative letter cuts; also bearing the Benveniste escutcheon (lion rampant supporting a tower; surmounted by a star); each following, first page of text with decorative framed initial word. Some browning; marginal dampstains; edges tinted yellow. Rebacked. Later tree calf over marbled boards. Lightly rubbed.

Vinograd, Amsterdam 87-101, 103-5, 108, 113, 117-135 and 137; Fuks, Amsterdam 216; Rabbinovicz, Talmud pp. 93-5.

This small folio edition of the Talmud is notable for the restoration of material expurgated from the earlier Basle edition (whose layout it follows), but especially for its unexpurgated edition of tractate Avodah Zarah. The lack of censorship can be attributed to the progressive notions of freedom of conscience which prevailed in the new Dutch Republic, thus the present edition presents tractate Avodah Zara in its entirety, including its many references to Christianity, which raised strenuous objections from censors in other centers of Hebrew printing.

Aspects of the Giustiniani edition from Venice 1546-51 as well as the editions from Cracow 1602-5 and Lublin 1617-39 also served as templates for this Amsterdam Talmud, a fact attested to in this edition by the corrector Abraham ben Joshua of Worms in his colophon, at the end of Seder Tohorot. Each tractate was printed separately with its own title page, and sold individually as they appeared.  As a result, complete sets are extremely scarce, as they required assiduous assembly by dedicated scholars and bookmen over the four years that it took to produce the entire Talmud.