Ydele verwachtinge der Joden Getoont in den Persoon van Sabethai Zevi … (Vain Hopes of the Jews as Revealed in the Figure of Sabbatai Zevi…), Thomas Coenen, Amsterdam: Joannes van den Bergh, 1669

157 pages (5 7/8 x 3 5/8 in.; 146 x 93 mm). [16], 140 [1] pp. Text in Dutch, with some Hebrew (see pp. 49-50, 86, 99, 101, 106-107, 109, 113-115, 118-119). Two engraved copper-plate frontispieces: portraits of Sabbatai Sevi and Nathan of Gaza. Owner's note on front free endpaper. Hinges cracked; title page strengthened at gutter. remains of early marbled endpaper adhering to final (blank) page. Later vellum-backed marbled boards, distressed.

Yosef Kaplan, "The Sabbatean Movement in Amsterdam," Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Treasures of Jewish Booklore (1994), pp. 40-43; K. Heeringa and J.S. Nanninga, Bronnen tot de geschiedenis van den Levantschen handel 1590-1826, (The Story of the Levantine Trade), Vol. II, p. 163 (Dutch); Illustrated: G. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, The Mystical Messiah (1975), p. 939-940, no. 44, and two frontispieces; Rubens, Jewish Iconography 2233 & 1464; Encyclopedia Judaica (1971),Vol. XIV, col. 1221. These engravings are believed to be the only portraits of Sabbatai Sevi and Nathan of Gaza done from life. 

ONE OF ONLY TWO DOZEN COPIES PRINTED OF THE MOST CREDIBLE CONTEMPORARY SOURCE FOR THE EVENTS CONCERNING THE "FALSE MESSIAH OF IZMIR" 

An important contemporary account of the rise of the famous false Messiah, Shabethai Zevi by Thomas Coenen, a Protestant minister serving the Dutch merchant community in Smyrna (Izmir). Coenen's detailed account provides a wealth of primary historical source material on the life of Shabthai Tzvi, and has been used extensively by subsequent biographers and scholars. Coenen was so meticulous that he went to the trouble of providing the original Hebrew texts of various invaluable documents such as the letters of Shabethai Zevi and Nathan of Gaza, as well as those of their supporters and detractors. Scholem, who relied on Coenen extensively for his masterful biography, calls the work "a great rarity."  Only 24 copies of Coenen's work were issued, exclusively for the officers of the Levant Trading Company and only four of these copies are known to be extant today (BL, NLI, Maastricht, and University of Amsterdam). There are no copies in the United States.