Mikra'ot Gedolot (Magna Biblia Rabbinica), Venice: Daniel Bomberg, 1546-1548

4 volumes, folio (15¾ x 10¼ in.; 400 x 260 mm). Four woodcut architectural titles; first and third titles inlaid, leaf I:6 short and hinged, large dampstain in upper portion of vol. 2, and in outer portion of vol. 3, light dampstain confined to fore-edge of vol. 4. Seventeenth century Dutch vellum, blind-tooled in a panel design, with central arabesque medallions, gold-stamped red morocco title labels on spine; soiled, backstrip of vol. 2 torn, various stains.

Dukes of Manchester—engraved armorial bookplate and Kimbolton Castle shelf label

Vinograd, Venice 300; Habermann, 192

4 volumes, folio (15¾ x 10¼ in.; 400 x 260 mm). Four woodcut architectural titles; first and third titles inlaid, leaf I:6 short and hinged, large dampstain in upper portion of vol. 2, and in outer portion of vol. 3, light dampstain confined to fore-edge of vol. 4. Seventeenth century Dutch vellum, blind-tooled in a panel design, with central arabesque medallions, gold-stamped red morocco title labels on spine; soiled, backstrip of vol. 2 torn, various stains.
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The four volumes of Esrim ve-'Arba`ah " (lit. "Twenty-Four", referring to the number of canonical books in the Hebrew Bible) were printed three times in Venice by the end of the first half of the sixteenth century. These editions are known in Hebrew as "Mikra'ot Gedolot", a partial translation of the Latin name of the edition "Magna Biblica Rabbinica", and are among the most important and influential Hebrew compositions ever printed. The first edition was printed by Daniel Bomberg in the years 1515-1517 as was a second and significantly improved edition (1525-1526), edited by Jacob ben Hayyim ben Isaac ibn Adonijah, a Tunisian Jewish scholar. It represented the best and most important edition of the Hebrew Bible yet produced.  The present lot, the third edition of the Rabbinic Bible, was edited by Cornelius Adelkind, Bomberg's longtime associate, in 1546-48. It duplicates the improvements of the second, though it also adds the commentaries of Jacob ben Asher on the Pentateuch and of Isaiah di Trani on Judges and omits Ibn Ezra on Isaiah. The third edition represents the culmination of more than three decades of innovation and artistry in biblical printing from the press of Daniel Bomberg.