Colophon: Seder taharot (Order of Purification)
Daniel Bomberg
Jacob Ibn Adoniyahu
1523
So said Jacob ben R. ḥayim Ibn Adoniyahu of blessed memory, after completing the proofreading of Seder taharot, I intended to apologize, since the subject is not habitual, and the source texts are few and not easy to find except with great effort, and it is known to every literate man, that the Lord knows how much effort and burden I bore until I managed to complete the proofreading of this book, since I only possessed a single copy from [tractates] Kelim until Nega‘im, and it is entirely erroneous, even though it was given to me as if it had been examined, and in it were found nine heaps of leavened bread and eighteen measures of sourdough, and in the Tosefta in every single place there was no home without a corpse, and even in the examined places there were errors . . . and we, in the modesty of our opinion, weighed and measured it well in every place until it was bright and clear, and in a few places that seemed to me to be lacking something I added on my own counsel . . . and what I was unable to do was in the Tosefta in Kelim, because my own copy of the Tosefta in that very place was also faulty, I left the place blank . . . also in a few places I made a correction . . . Also in a few places, when in two copies the paths were different in clarifying the matter, when one interpreted it one way and the other in another way, even though they did not entirely disagree, I ordered the printers to print both explanations, so that nothing would be missing in it, and were it not that I was engaged in proofreading Maimonides, I would have taken trouble with it differently, so that every literate person and son of a literate person would be pleased with it. . . . Hence, if any error is found in it, let everyone who sees and peruses know that it was not from my heart, that an error came because of haste, and I have already made my apology in several other books that I proofread.
Other works by Ibn Adoniyahu: Introduction to Biblia Rabbinica (1525); Introduction to Pentateuch and Targum (1527).
of the Hebrew Bible with the principal commentators (known as Mikra’ot gedolot) between 1516 and 1526. Even farther-reaching in its consequences was Bomberg’s printing of the Babylonian Talmud, with the commentaries of Rashi and Tosafot, providing a uniform model, which was eventually adopted by the entire Jewish diaspora. The first edition, published between 1520 and 1523, comprised forty-four tractates; in later years, Bomberg printed three more editions, all of which were either partial or incomplete. Bomberg established the now-standard layout of the page of the Talmud. He also produced the first printed edition of the Jerusalem Talmud.Credits
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.
