EXEGESIS FROM THE LIBRARY OF A GUILLOTINED MARQUIS
[BIBLE, Ecclesiasticus.]
Σοφια Σειραχ sive Ecclesiasticus, Graece ad exemplar Romanum, et Latine ex interpretatione I. Drusii, cum castigationibus sive notis eiusdem, ad reverendissimum in Christo patrem D. Iohannem Whitgiftum archiepiscopum Cantuariensem etc.
Franeker, Gilles van den Rade, 1596.
[Bound with:]
[HEBREW PROVERBS.] Proverbia Ben-Sirae autoris antiquissimi, qui creditur fuisse nepos Ieremiae prophetae: opera I. Drusii in Latinam linguam conversa scholiisque aut potius commentario illustrata. Accesserunt adagiorum Ebraicorum decuriae aliquot nunquam antehac editae. Franeker, Gilles van den Rade, 1597.
Two works in one vol., 4to, I: pp. [xvi], 147, [1], [160 (last leaf blank)]; text in Greek and Latin with some Hebrew, title in red and black with woodcut device, initials, head- and tailpieces; most quires browned due to paper quality, as usual, a few spots, minor worming in the gutter of last 5 ff. (not affecting text); a few ink deletions and corrections throughout in Latin and Greek in a late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century hand; II: pp. [8], 122; text in Hebrew and Latin, woodcut device to title, initials; toned as usual; bound together in seventeenth-century vellum, title inked at head of spine; some light marks; eighteenth-century armorial bookplate ‘Bibliotheque de Gambais’ (see below) to front pastedown.
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Σοφια Σειραχ sive Ecclesiasticus, Graece ad exemplar Romanum, et Latine ex interpretatione I. Drusii, cum castigationibus sive notis eiusdem, ad reverendissimum in Christo patrem D. Iohannem Whitgiftum archiepiscopum Cantuariensem etc.
First editions of two scholarly works by the distinguished Flemish theologian and orientalist Joannes Drusius (1550–1616), who served as professor of oriental languages at Oxford and Leiden, and then of Hebrew at Franeker.
The first, dedicated to the then Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift (c. 1530–1604), gives the Greek text of Ecclesiasticus (or the Book of Sirach), Drusius’s Latin translation thereof, and his extensive accompanying critical notes. Written in Hebrew by the Hellenistic Jewish scribe Ben Sira, or Joshua ben Sirach, in the second century BC, Ecclesiasticus was subsequently translated into Greek by the author’s grandson. Being excluded from the canon of the Hebrew Bible, the text was known only in this Greek translation until the discovery of extensive Hebrew fragments in the Cairo Geniza at the end of the nineteenth century. Certain themes are recurrent in the Book, including creation, friendship, happiness, honour and shame, sin, social justice, and women.
In the second work, Drusius collects, translates, and comments upon the two sets of proverbs based around the Hebrew alphabet known as the Alphabet of Sirach, along with 125 further Hebrew adages.
Provenance: with the bookplate of the ‘Bibliothèque de Gambais’, formed by Clément Charles François de L’Averdy, marquis de Gambais (1724–1793), magistrate and controller of finances in the 1760s under Louis XV; he was arrested during the French Revolution, accused of instigating famine during his time in office, and sent to the guillotine.
Bible: USTC 423547; Adams B-1636. Proverbs: USTC 423862.
