History of the Early Printed Hebrew Book: Christian Study of Hebrew
This is a guide to the History of the Early Printed Hebrew Book. It was copied with permission from the guide at the University of Pennsylvania, created by Bruce E. Nielsen, and updated for Columbia University by Michelle Margolis
Christian Study of Hebrew
An interesting chapter in the history of the early printed Hebrew book is the study of the role played by Christian Hebraists. Beginning sometime in the third quarter of the fifteenth-century, the study of the Hebrew language and especially biblical studies including rabbinic commentators increasingly became the focus of Christian scholars. Their needs for Bibles, classical rabbinic works, grammars, and dictionaries provided an important non-Jewish market for many printing houses.
Christian Hebraists and Printing
- Burnett, Stephen G., Christian Hebraica : the discovery of Hebrew literature and Jewish culture, 1500-1700, an exhibition in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin--Madison, July-October 1988 (Madison : Friends of the University of Wisconsin--Madison Libraries, 1988)
- Burnett, Stephen G., Christian Hebraism in the Reformation era (1500-1660) : authors, books, and the transmission of Jewish learning (Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2012)
- Burnett, Stephen G., “Christian Hebrew printing in the sixteenth century : Printers, humanism and the impact of the Reformation,” Helmantica 254 (2000) 13-42
- Dunkelgrün, Theodore, “The Hebrew Library of a Renaissance Humanist. Andreas Masius and the bibliography to his Iosuae Imperatoris Historia (1574) with a Latin edition and an annotated English translation”, Studia Rosenthaliana 42-43 (2010-11), 197-252
- Faierstein, Morris M., “Paulus Aemilius, Convert to Catholicism and Printer of Yiddish Books in Sixteenth Century Augsburg,” Judaica. Beiträge zum Verstehen des Judentums 71 (2015) 349-365
- Goldstein, David, "Charles II's Hebrew Books," British Library Journal 21 (1995) 23-33
- Goldstein, David, “Hebrew Printed Books in the Library of Westminster Abbey,” Transactions & Miscellanies. Jewish Historical Society of England 27 (1978-1980) 151-154
- Grafton, Anthony and Joanna Weinberg, “Isaac Casaubon’s Library of Hebrew Books,” pp. 24-42 in, Libraries within the Library: The Origins of the British Library’s Printed Collections (London: British Library, 2009) edd. Giles Mandelbrote and Barry Taylor
- Hill, Brad Sabin, “Hebrew fore-titles,” pp. 7-30 in, Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 2001-2002 (Oxford, England : The Centre, 2002), [Studies a product of Christian Hebraism since the Renaissance, that is, giving short titles in Hebrew characters at the head of otherwise Latin-character title-pages of non-Hebrew books]
- Hulvey, Monique, “Les bibliothèques retrouvées de Sante Pagnini, dominicain de Lucques et de Pierre Bullioud, « gentil-homme » lyonnais : en hébreu et en grec …,” Bulletin du bibliophile (2009) 79-106
- Katz, David S., “The Abendana Brothers and the Christian Hebraists of Seventeenth-Century England,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 40 (1989) 28-52
- Lorian, Alexandre, "L'Imprimerie hébraïque, 1470-1550: Ateliers chrétiens et ateliers juifs," pp. 219-229 in, Le Livre dans l'Europe de la Renaissance (Paris : Promodis/Editions du Cercle de la Librairie, 1988) edd. Pierre Aquilon and Henri-Jean Martin
- Offenberg, Adri K., “The first use of Hebrew in a book printed in the Netherlands,” pp. 166-182 in, A choice of corals : facets of fifteenth-century Hebrew printing (Nieuwkoop : De Graaf Publishers, 1992) [repr. of Quaerendo 4 (1974) 44-54]
- Roberts, Julian and Andrew G. Watson, John Dee's Library Catalogue (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1990)
- Ruderman, David B., “The Hebrew Book in a Christian World,” pp. 101-113 in, A Sign and a Witness: 2,000 years of Hebrew books and illuminated manuscripts (New York: New York Public Library; Oxford University Press, c 1988) ed. Leonard Singer Gold
- Schwarzbach, Bertram Eugene, “Les Hebraica du Cardinal Mazarin,” pp. 307–316 in, Mazarin Les Lettres et les Arts, actes du colloque des 11-14 décembre 2002, Paris (Paris : Bibliothe`que Mazarine ; Saint-Re´my-en-l’Eau : M. Hayot, 2006) edd. Isabelle de Conihout and Patrick Michel
- Schwarzbach, Bertram Eugene, “Identification des livres hébraïques de la bibliothèque du cardinal Mazarin “pris et échangés” pour la bibliothèque du roi en 1668,” pp. 417-28 in, Mazarin Les Lettres et les Arts, actes du colloque des 11-14 décembre 2002, Paris (Paris : Bibliothe`que Mazarine ; Saint-Re´my-en-l’Eau : M. Hayot, 2006) edd. Isabelle de Conihout and Patrick Michel
- Shamir, Avner, Christian Conceptions of Jewish Books: The Pfefferkorn Affair (Copenhagen : Museum Tusculanum Press, 2011)
- Striedl, Hans, “Die Bucherei des Orientalisten Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter,” pp. 200-224 in, Serta monacensia: Franz Babinger zum 15. Januar 1951 als Festgruss dargebracht (Leiden: Brill, 1952) edd. Hans Joachim Kissling and Alois Schmaus
- Tamani, Giuliano, “I libri ebraici del cardinal Domenico Grimani,” Annali di Ca‘ Foscari 34.3 (1995) 5-52
- Tamani, Giuliano, “I libri ebraici di Pico della Mirandola,” vol. two pp. 491-530 in, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (1494-1994), (Firenze : L.S. Olschki, 1997) ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini
- Wesselius, Jan Wim, "“I don’t know whether he will stay for long” Isaac Abendana’s Early Years in England and his Latin Translation of the Mishnah,” Studia Rosenthaliana 22.2 (1988) 85-96
- Wilkinson, Robert J., The Kabbalistic scholars of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible (Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2007.)
- Wilkinson, Robert J., Orientalism, Aramaic, and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation : the first printing of the Syriac New Testament (Leiden; Boston : Brill, 2007)
- Williams, Benjamin, “The First Printed Books of Midrash and Their Jewish and Christian Readers,” European Judaism 48 (2015) 60-69