Dickdook Leshon Gnebreet. A Grammar of the Hebrew Tongue
Item #84429
MONIS, Judah. Dickdook Leshon Gnebreet. A Grammar of the Hebrew Tongue, Being An Essay to Bring the Hebrew Grammar into English, to Facilitate the Instruction of All Those Who Are Desirous of Aquiring a Clear Idea of This Primitive Language by Their Own Studies. Boston: Printed by Jonas Green, and are to be Sold by the Author at his House in Cambridge, 1735. 1st ed. 4to. [4], 94, [2] pp. 19th century half calf and marbled paper boards, worn. Title page in facsimile. Ex-library (Newton Theological Institution) with inked stamp on dedication leaf. Hinges quite fragile, trimmed close at top margin, minor foxing mostly to preliminary and terminal leaves, else good plus. Evans 3931. Singerman 24. Rosenbach 28. Wilberforce Eames, "On the Use of Hebrew Types in English America Before 1735," in A. S. Friedus Memorial Volume (1929), p. 481. Goldman 171. Bibliography of Hebrew Books 2, #24. Karp, From the Ends of the Earth, 286. NAIP w004735. A landmark in the history of printing in the Americas, this is the first Hebrew grammar published in America, printed from "the first complete fount of Hebrew type in the American colonies" (Eames). Hebrew type was first used in the North American colonies in the Bay Psalm Book, printed in 1640 in Cambridge. Over the next ninety-five years, Hebrew type appeared in only a handful of American imprints, usually in brief examples of single words or short sentences. However, the increasing focus on the Hebrew Bible as an original source demanded additional resources for the study of Hebrew, particularly in the colleges and seminaries of New England, where all Harvard students except freshmen were required to learn Hebrew. The course, however, was unpopular, owing largely to the lack of a textbook. Judah Monis (1683-1764), a Jew born in Algiers or Italy, had settled in Boston by 1720, when he presented the Harvard Corporation with his handwritten Hebrew grammar. In that year he was also awarded an M.A. from Harvard. He was the first Jew to receive a degree from Harvard, though he had to convert to Christianity to take up his position as instructor of Hebrew there in 1723, a position in which he served until 1760 (though he was never made a full professor and seems to have remained an unpopular outsider). Monis published several works in his lifetime, and though the present grammar was accessible to any ed.
Price: $8,500.00