[HEBREW BIBLE.] םיטפושו עשוהי [Joshua and Judges.]

Pocket Prophets

[HEBREW BIBLE.] םיטפושו עשוהי [Joshua and Judges.] Geneva: Kefa Elon (i.e. Pierre de la Rouvière). 5377 (i.e. 1616 or 1617).

[with:]

[—.] [Samuel.] שמואל.

Geneva: Kefa Elon (i.e. Pierre de la Rouvière). 5377 (i.e. 1616 or 1617).

Two parts in one volume, 16mo. Eighteenth-century sheep, spine richly gilt in compartments, board-edges roll-tooled in gilt, red gilt brocade endpapers; Joshua and Judges: ff. [3 (blank)], [130], [3 (blank)], with part-title to Judges; Samuel: ff. [3 (blank)], [151], [6 (blank)]; titles within architectural woodcut borders and start of text within woodcut cartouches; hinges starting, boards lightly rubbed with a few minor abrasions, worming to upper joint with small loss; internally clean and bright; a very good copy.

Two portions, comprising Joshua and Judges as well as Samuel, of the handsome eighteen-part, pocket-sized Hebrew Bible printed in Geneva by Pierre de la Rouvière, sold as individual fascicles which could be bound together (as here) or in sets of four volumes.

The Christian printer Pierre de la Rouvière (1574–1622, fl. 159–1622) is here listed on the title-page as ‘Kefa Elon’, a literal translation of his name ('Rock Oak’); he is elsewhere known as Cephas/Cafa Elon or Petrus Quercetanus and was the printer of the first bilingual Josephus (1611) as well as a Hebrew–Greek Bible (1609). The two discrete parts bound together here form part of what Steinschneider calls the Biblia Eliana – known also as the Petrus Bibles – issued shortly after the 4to Hebrew edition, also published in 8vo with interlinear Latin translation. All are based largely on earlier Venetian Hebrew Bibles, especially those printed by Giustiniani in the sixteenth century, to which they are typographically related.

The present work evidently makes use of Picard’s square Sephardic Hebrew typeface (Lubell’s Hb27), first used by Robert Estienne in 1543 and ‘most probably the first complete Hebrew type specimen ever recorded’ (Lubell, p. 258). De la Rouvière had used the same type for his 1614 Thesaurus linguae sanctae, distinguished by the ‘lamed with its distinctive flagged ascender, the shin with the squared termination on the middle stroke and the gimmel with the bent middle stroke and calligraphic termination to the baseline […] The attributions for this Picard typeface show a very wide distribution: Geneva, Gießen, Frankfurt and Hanau in Germany’ and were likely spread by André Wechel, who re-established his business in Frankfurt in the aftermath of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and likely ‘managed to have some of his type brought to Frankfurt by Denis du Val, his associate in Paris’, or by Robert Estienne, who brought much of his type to Geneva after 1549 (ibid., pp. 259–60). Geneva (גנווא) is often mistaken in the imprint as Genova.

The title-page to each fascicle gives the date of 5377, i.e. 1617, but the colophon of the last portion, Chronicles, gives the date of 13 Av 5318, i.e. 28 July 1618 and the name of ‘the German Johann Caspar from Oeder’ (trans.), whose name also appears at the end of the Book of Esther. We have been un-able to identify the handsome gilt brocade endpapers, depicting acanthus leaves and flowerpots and signed ‘B.L.sC’, although the interlacing geometric borders bear a resemblance to motifs employed by Georg Christoph Stoy (cf. Kopylov 38).

BM STC, p. 99; Darlow & Moule 5121 (dividing the work into fourteen parts rather than eighteen); Roest I, p. 168; Steinschneider 420b. See Heller, The Seventeenth Century Hebrew Book I, pp. 380–81; cf. Vinograd, Geneva 9 (calling for 8vo and 4to only) ; endpapers not in Kopylov.

SKU: 2125727