"Sefer Dikduk Leshon HaKodessh" – Alfonso de Zamora, Alcala de Henares (Spain), 1526 – First Comprehensive Edition ...

"Sefer Dikduk Leshon HaKodessh" – Alfonso de Zamora, Alcala de Henares (Spain), 1526 – First Comprehensive Edition, with Letter Addressed to the Jews of Rome

Introductiones Artis Grammatice Hebraice, by Alfonso de Zamora. Alcala de Henares (Spain): Academia Complutensi in aedibus Michaelis de Eguia, 1526. Latin and Hebrew.

Book of Hebrew grammar, presenting one of the finest examples of Hebrew lettering from the earliest days of the printing press. Title page printed in red and black, with a Hebrew inscription spanning the width of the page; heraldic emblem – five red stars enclosed within a shield, adorned with flowers and dragons – of the Archbishop of Toledo, Alonso III Fonseca, the author’s patron, stamped in center; illuminated initials (woodcuts).

A shorter version of the contents of the present book originally appeared as one of the volumes of the "Complutum", or "Complutensian Polyglot Bible" (1520), the world’s first complete, multilingual Bible, widely regarded as one of the most noteworthy achievements of the early printing press.

The present copy represents the full, expanded edition of this one volume, published in 1526 by the same publishing house, the same printer, and using the same fonts as those of the original edition. The expanded edition of the volume also contains a lengthy section in Hebrew, not included in the original edition; it is titled: "Letter Sent by the Author from the Kingdom of Spain to the Jews of the State of Rome" (Hebrew). Though written entirely in Hebrew, a Latin translation appears underneath each Hebrew line.

Regarding the Hebrew letters appearing in this book of grammar (which uses the same font as the remainder of the "Complutensian Polyglot Bible"), Dr. Joshua Bloch, an eminent authority on Semitic languages and head of the Jewish Studies Department of the New York Public Library, writes that "virtually nothing like their beauty is to be met in the types of fifteenth-century printing".

The book’s author, a Jewish convert to Christianity, Alfonso de Zamora (ca. 1480-1558), was the editor of the Hebrew and Aramaic sections of the "Complutensian Polyglot Bible", the world’s first multilingual Bible. Work on this edition began just a few years after the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, upon the insistence of the "Grand Inquisitor", the Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436-1517). Since most of the Hebrew speakers among the Christians of Spain were in fact converts from Judaism, the job of writing and editing the Hebrew section was entrusted to three learned Jewish converts. Chief among these scholars was Alfonso de Zamora, author of the present volume.

[223] leaves. 18 cm. Good condition. Numerous notations in margins, some in Hebrew. Stains. Open tear to edge of one leaf (not affecting text). Slight tears to edges of title page, professionally mended. Elegant leather binding, with stamped gilt impression on spine.

See: Joshua Bloch, Early Hebrew printing in Spain and Portugal, New York: New York Public Library, 1938; reprinted in: C. Berlin, (ed.), Hebrew Printing and Bibliography, 1976, pp. 46-47.