MIDRASH TEHILLIM (MIDRASH ON PSALMS), PART 2, [SALONIKA, CA. 1515]

The first edition of the supplement to Midrash tillim, with distinguished Anglo-Jewish provenance.

Midrash tehillim on psalms 119-150 differs in language, subject matter, and expository character from the midrash on psalms 1-118 printed in Constantinople in 1512 (see lot 209) and would appear to be a later compilation. In fact, the homilies on psalms 122-137 were copied from Yalkut shim‘oni, an important collection of aggadic discourses on the Bible. The present, first edition of this work includes a commentary on the alphabetically-arranged psalm 119 attributed to Rabbi Mattathias ha-Yitshari, a fourteenth-fifteenth-century Sephardic philosopher who participated in the Disputation of Tortosa (1413-1414) as a representative of the Jewish community of Saragossa. In 1546-1547, the Bomberg press in Venice issued an edition of Midrash tehillim that included both the Constantinople and Salonika material. The present copy of the Salonika imprint comes from the collection of British Sephardic Chief Rabbi Moses Gaster (1856-1939).