Well, that was fun. For the non-Hebrew reader, my last post (I know, ages ago) was about a book of hours in Latin. But now to serious matters. Hebrew printing, for example. The first Hebrew printers (or should I say, printers in Hebrew?), called 'Obadiah, Manasse and Benjamin from Rome', printed books apparently in Rome around 1470 (no date or place is mentioned in any of their books). When one compares their books with other early printed books in Italy one will notice theirs look less like manuscripts than the others. While the majority of the first printers (both in Hebrew and in Latin) aspired to make their books look like manuscripts, the thing their clients were used to, these books look like ... well, like printed books. Or at least so it seems to me.
Maybe that is because they were printed in square Hebrew characters, unlike most other Hebrew incunables which were printed in 'rabbinical' - semi-square - characters, the so called 'Rashi script'.
And what did they print? A Pentateuch commentary (Nahmanides, Perush al haTorah) folio, 124 +122 leaves; Sefer HaAruch (.....), folio, 308 leaves; Another Pentateuch commentary (Rashi's Perush al haTorah), quarto, 213 leaves; A commentary on the book of Daniel (Rashbag Perush al Daniel), quarto, 37 leaves; A grammar book (David Ben Kimhi's Sefer HaShorashim), folio, 188 leaves; Rabbinical Responsa (Shlomo ibn Aderet, She'elot ve-Teshuvot), octavo, 160 leaves; An halakhic work (Moshe ben Ya'akov from Coucy, Sefer Mitsvot Gadol), folio, 280 leaves. I added the format, as it has some importance for understanding how advanced these printers were. For each format one needs a different letter frame, of course. And I still have to compare the digital versions from the JNUL to see if they also have different size letters for the different formats.
The books were ascribed to Rome and to this early date because the lay-out, and certain other codicological features, are similar to certain printers of Christian works in Rome between the years 1469-1475.
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