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

29 folios (13 1/8 x 9 1/2 in.; 336 x 242 mm) (collation: i-iii8, iv5) on paper. Manuscript highlighting on f. 12r. Slight scattered staining; worming throughout, mostly marginal but some affecting a few individual words, all repaired; lower-outer corner soiled and/or repaired throughout; light dampstaining in outer edges and in gutter near head throughout; lower margin of f. [1] repaired; upper-outer corners of ff. [1]-6 repaired; ff. 12-13 strengthened along gutters. Modern ornately blind-tooled tan leather; spine in six compartments with raised binds; title and date lettered in gilt on spine; modern decorated paper flyleaves and pastedowns.

Hagigah, the final tractate in the order Mo‘ed, takes its name from the korban hagigah, a special sacrifice offered during each of the three pilgrimage festivals: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. In its three chapters, the treatise deals with the laws of such offerings, the duty of pilgrimage, and the rules of purity and impurity connected with sacred objects and the Temple. At the beginning of the second chapter, the Talmud uses a mishnaic teaching as a springboard to discuss the topics of Creation and the Heavenly Chariot, forming a self-contained “mystical midrash” that would subsequently serve as the basis for medieval mystical, including kabbalistic, speculation. The present volume was owned by Moses Gaster (1856-1939), hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation in London and a great collector of Hebrew books and manuscripts. Provenance

M[oses] Gaster (f. [1v])

Literature

A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis daniyyel bombirgi u-reshimat sifrei beit defuso (Safed: The Museum of Printing Art, 1978), 34 (no. 29).

Vinograd, Venice 42