THE KENNICOTT BIBLE WITH ACCOMPANYING COMMENTARY VOLUME, LONDON: FACSIMILE EDITIONS, 1985

THE KENNICOTT BIBLE WITH ACCOMPANYING COMMENTARY VOLUME, LONDON: FACSIMILE EDITIONS, 1985

Facsimile volume: 460 folios (approx. 11 5/8 x 8 1/2 in.; 295 x 218 mm) (modern foliation: 1-17, 17a, 18-143, 143a, 144-151, 151a, 152-266, 266a, 267-281, 281a, 282-332, 332a, 333-412, 412a, 413-453) printed by offset lithography (in up to eleven colors) on specially milled Italian, 160-gsm, neutral pH “vegetable parchment” paper, each leaf’s opacity, feel, and thickness almost matching that of the original manuscript; 238 (of the total 922) pages illuminated with lively colors, burnished gold, and silver leaf; twenty-four canonical book headings; forty-nine parashah headings structured with gold in different motifs featuring zoomorphic figures in many colors; twenty-seven lavishly illuminated arcaded pages framing the text of the Sefer mikhlol; nine fully illuminated carpet pages; 150 psalm headings, numbered and illuminated with gold and silver. Fine Italian morocco goatskin box-binding over specially prepared boards; interlacing geometric designs on all six sides embossed with handmade dies; facsimile edges gilt with 23-carat gold leaf; spine in seven compartments with raised bands; the facsimile number (77) blind-stamped on the inside of the back cover using minute steel dies; a few minor scratches on the inside of the box binding.

Commentary volume: 97 pages (12 1/4 x 9 3/4 in.; 310 x 250 mm) printed on mould-made, cold-pressed Magnani 160-gsm paper, plus an unbound limitation slip stamped and signed by a representative of the publisher. Bound in blind-tooled morocco, lightly scratched; spine in seven compartments with raised bands.

Facsimile and commentary volumes enclosed in a blue, velvet-lined presentation portfolio box, slightly scuffed; title stamped in blind on upper board.

Limited facsimile edition—number 77 of 550 copies stamped and signed by the publisher—of “the most lavishly illuminated Hebrew Bible to have survived from medieval Spain.”

The Kennicott Bible takes its name from Benjamin Kennicott (1718-1783), the Oxford canon who acquired this exquisite manuscript from the Earl of Panmure and subsequently, in April 1771, sold it to Oxford’s Radcliffe Library, which then transferred it to the Bodleian Library in 1872. The book, which includes the text of both the entire Hebrew Bible and Rabbi David Kimhi’s (1160-1235) popular grammatical treatise Sefer mikhlol, was produced over the course of about ten months by the master scribe, vocalizer, and masorator Moses ben Jacob Ibn Zabara in collaboration with the illuminator and illustrator Joseph Ibn Hayyim. It was completed in the northwestern Spanish city of La Coruña in 1476 on behalf of Isaac ben Don Solomon de Braga, who apparently took it with him into exile after the Spanish expulsion of 1492.

Not only is Ibn Zabara’s text bold and clear, with the micrographic Masorah periodically inscribed in geometric patterns, but Ibn Hayyim’s playful, colorful, and intricate artistic program—inspired by that of the Cervera Bible, as well as by Islamic, Christian, and secular motifs—bears elegant witness to the multiculturalism of pre-expulsion Spain. The present sumptuous facsimile edition represents the culmination of five and a half years of exacting efforts by Michael and Linda Falter to produce a work of consummate beauty. It is accompanied by a commentary volume coauthored by Bezalel Narkiss and Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, both of the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, analyzing paleographical, codicological, and art-historical aspects of the book hailed by Cecil Roth as “one of the finest Hebrew manuscripts in existence.”

Literature

Leila Avrin, “Illuminated Hebrew Manuscript Facsimiles,” Ars Orientalis 20 (1990): 189-195.

Yael Zirlin, “Review of The Kennicott Bible,” Jewish Art 12-13 (1986-1987): 355-356.

Facsimile Editions Website (https://www.facsimile-editions.com/en/kb/)

MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Kennicott 1 (https://iiif.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/iiif/viewer/5e43568d-e01e-444c-870f-485b90b25b5c#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&r=0&xywh=-4093%2C0%2C14219%2C7385)