Lot 187
  • 187

BABYLONIAN TALMUD, TRACTATE HORAYOT, VENICE: DANIEL BOMBERG, 1521

Estimate
12,000 - 18,000 USD
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Description

18 folios (13 1/8 x 9 in.; 333 x 228 mm) (collation: i8, ii6, iii4) on paper. Beginning of Arabic alphabet in manuscript on f. [1v]. Very light dampstaining in upper and outer edges; worm track beginning at rear and diminishing toward the front of the volume, mostly affecting individual words and mostly repaired; small tears in upper edge of f. [1] and in outer edge of f. 3 repaired; minor (unrepaired) tear in upper edge of f. 6; repairs in gutter at foot on ff. 3-14; repairs along gutter on ff. 15-18 affecting some text near gutter; more extensive damage in outer edges of f. 18 repaired. Modern brown leather paneled in blind, very slightly scuffed; spine in seven compartments with raised bands; title, place, and date lettered in gilt on spine; modern marbled paper flyleaves and pastedowns; numerous blank pages of acid-free paper at rear.

Catalogue Note

Horayot (Rulings), the tenth and final tractate in the order Nezikin, treats, in three chapters, the topic of “sinning through error,” when a mistaken legal decision by the high priest or the high court (Sanhedrin) leads the populace to the inadvertent violation of a precept which, had it been willfully transgressed, would have carried the punishment of karet (excision). Also discussed are questions concerning high priests and rulers who themselves transgress. Because the editors of this treatise did not have access to any Tosafist commentaries to Horayot, they printed only Rashi on the Talmudic page, adding the text of the Jerusalem Talmud to Horayot at the end of the volume (ff. 16a-18a). (According to Saul Lieberman [1991], this version of the Jerusalem Talmud to Horayot is of better quality than the recension printed together with the rest of the Jerusalem Talmud tractates.) To this day, the text of Bomberg’s edition is one of the best available, as subsequent printers often tampered with it. Literature

A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis daniyyel bombirgi u-reshimat sifrei beit defuso (Safed: The Museum of Printing Art, 1978), 35 (no. 42).

Saul Lieberman, Mehkarim be-torat erets-yisra’el, ed. David Rosenthal (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), 236-258.

Vinograd, Venice 41