Jun 21, 2016 - Sale 2420

Sale 2420 - Lot 157

Price Realized: $ 8,125
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
"FIRST PRINTING OF ANY PART OF THE BIBLE IN HEBREW IN AMERICA"--GOLDMAN (JUDAICA.) Hare, Francis; editor. Liber Psalmorum Hebraïce. [4], 495 pages. 12mo, contemporary speckled calf, moderate wear, rejointed, spine split; intermittent foxing; with original two flyleaves and final blank; 1810 inscription on front free endpaper. In modern cloth folding case. Cambridge, MA, 1809
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Additional Details

With translation and notes in Latin. After a few Hebrew characters appeared in the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, "more than one-and-a-half centuries passed before Americans attempted to publish a Hebrew edition of the Bible"--Goldman, Hebrew Printing in America 1 and page 1; Rosenbach 152; Sabin 66455; Wright, Early Bibles page 122 ("very rare").
The inscription reads "Joseph Allen, Cambridge University"--probably by the Joseph Allen (1790-1873) who graduated from Harvard in 1811 and then led the First Unitarian Church in Northborough, MA for more than 50 years. As Goldman notes, "the first Hebrew Bibles in America were printed to meet Christian needs."