Perush al ha-Torah (Commentary on the Pentateuch), Levi ben Gershom, (Ralbag), Venice: Cornelius Adelkind for Daniel Bomberg, 1547

246 [of 248] leaves (12 1/8 x 7 7/8 in.; 308 x 200 mm). Collation: 1^{6, 2-318=246 leaves, lacking ff.7-8 as in most copies. Metalcut architectural title border, metalcut initial word panels on ff. 9, 53, 117, 179 and 206; title with several owners' notations and next leaf supplied from a shorter white-paper copy, waterstained throughout, gutter margin of a few leaves strengthened, short wormtrack in a few quires in text or in lower margin, last leaf wormed and mounted with loss of a few words. Old quarter cloth, gold-stamped title on spine.}

Vinograd, Venice 327; Habermann 196; Brad Sabin Hill, Carta Azzura: Hebrew Printing on Blue Paper, London, British Library: 1995

246 [of 248] leaves (12 1/8 x 7 7/8 in.; 308 x 200 mm). Collation: 16, 2-318=246 leaves, lacking ff.7-8. Metalcut architectural title border, metalcut initial word panels on ff. 9, 53, 117, 179 and 206; title with several owners' notations and next leaf supplied from a shorter white-paper copy, waterstained throughout, gutter margin of a few leaves strengthened, short wormtrack in a few quires in text or in lower margin, last leaf wormed and mounted with loss of a few words. Old quarter cloth, gold-stamped title on spine.
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printed on blue paper

The author of this commentary on the Pentateuch, Levi ben Gershom (1288–1344), is known in Hebrew by the acronym Ralbag. A biblical exegete, talmudist, philosopher, physician, scientist, astronomer, and mathematician, the Christian world knows him best as Gersonides and less frequently as Leo Hebraeus or Maestro Leon de Bagnols. In this voluminous commentary on the Pentateuch, Levi attempts to reconstitute the halakhah rationally, basing himself on nine logical principles which he substitutes for the traditional 13 hermeneutical rules, and condemning allegorical interpretations. From each book of the Bible, Levi extracts the ethical, philosophical, and religious teachings that may be gleaned from the text and calls them to'alot or to'aliyyot. The works of Ibn Ezra and Maimonides serve as Ralbag's most important resources, the former for exegetic material, the latter for his philosophic ideas. Due to his rationalistic explanation of miracles, this commentary engendered significant opposition. 

Included in this volume is the listing of the chapter names of all 63 tractates of the Babylonian Talmud (f.4r-6v).  Before the printing of the Talmud by Daniel Bomberg, any reference to a talmudic passage was simply referred to by the name of the chapter in which it was found. These names in turn were derived from the initial words of the chapter and did not necessarily have any connection to the general subject matter being discussed. Thus, in order to find a referenced passage one had either to memorize the names of the more than 500 chapters or have access to the kind of chart provided here.