1544 EDITIO PRINCEPS OF JOSEPHUS' OPERA

 

JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS. Opera.

Editio princeps of the original Greek texts of Josephus, printed in 1544 by the great Froben press. $13,000.

Basel: Froben & Episcopius, 1544. Folio, contemporary blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards. Light wear to corners and edges, spine label lacking; occasional worming to boards and first twenty leaves; wear to title, principally due to worming. Marginal annotations in Greek throughout in a delicate, scholarly script. The annotations are dated from 1546 to 1549. An exceptionally well-preserved copy.

Josephus writings represent the only contemporaneous historical account to link the secular world of Rome and the religious heritage of the Bible. Indeed, Josephus is the only historian to give a detailed contemporaneous account of the first Christian century. His greatest work is his Antiquitates Judaicae (The Antiquities of the Jews) in which he recounts the history of the Jews from creation up until the revolt of AD 66-70 and contains contemporary references to Jesus, James (the brother of Jesus), John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, Agrippa I and Agrippa II, as well as the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Zealots. His Bellum Judaicum (History of the Jewish War) gives a detailed account of the revolt of AD 66-70 and includes Josephus’ famous description of the siege of Jerusalem. “The Jewish War not only is the principal source for the Jewish revolt but is especially valuable for its description of Roman military tactics and strategy” (Britannica).
 

Josephus’ famous account of Jesus (from Antiquitates Judaicae):

“Now there rose about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive truth with gladness. He carried away with him many of the Jews and also many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And after Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, his first adherents did not forsake him. For he appeared to them alive again the third day; the divine prophets having foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of those called Christians, after him, is not extinct to this day.”

Josephus’ remarkable description of the siege of Jerusalem (from Bellum Judaicum):

“But when they went in numbers into the lanes of the city, with their swords drawn, they slew those whom they overtook, without mercy, and set fire to the houses wither the Jews were fled, and burnt every soul in them, and laid waste a great many of the rest; and when they were come to the houses to plunder them, they found in them entire families of dead men, and the upper rooms full of dead corpses, that is of such as died by the famine; they then stood in a horror at this sight, and went out without touching anything. But although they had this commiseration for such as were destroyed in that manner, yet had they not the same for those that were still alive, but they ran every one through whom they met with, and obstructed the very lanes with their dead bodies, and made the whole city run down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men's blood. And truly so it happened, that though the slayers left off at the evening, yet did the fire greatly prevail in the night, and as all was burning, came that eighth day of the month Gorpieus [Elul] upon Jerusalem; a city that had been liable to so many miseries during the siege, that, had it always enjoyed as much happiness from its first foundation, it would certainly have been the envy of the world. Nor did it on any other account so much deserve these sore misfortunes, as by producing such a generation of men as were the occasions of this its overthrow."
 

A superb contemporary binding: The illustrated binding of blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards is a magnificent example of late-medieval craftsmanship. The boards are illustrated with busts of bearded men topped with halos, crowns, mitres and other venerable symbols: these illustrations include Moses receiving the commandments, the grace of God and King, the holy warrior, and the learned doctor, among others (click image for closeup). Aside from these illustrations, the boards are decorated with six wide double-borders forming six rectangular compartments of diminishing size. The third-largest compartment contains the illustrations. The two innermost compartments on both boards contain floral ornaments. On the upper board, the two innermost compartments are square in shape, while on the lower board they are rectangular. The upper board retains one brass catch with a floral etching, while the lower board retains the brass bases for both clasps. The spine is divided by raised bands into five compartments. Each band is bordered in blind.

Beautifully printed: “[The Froben’s press] is remarkable for the number and importance of its productions, as well as for excellence of workmanship. In his desire for accuracy Froben surrounded himself with a number of scholars to whom he deputed the work of editing and correcting. Chief among these was Erasmus, who, after visiting him on several occasions, in 1521 permanently took up his residence with the printer and gave fresh impetus to the press” (The Printed Book by Harry G. Aldis).

With contemporary annotations: There are numerous neat ink annotations in the margins of the text dated from the 9th of May, 1546, to the final entry of the 9th of February, 1549. Generally in Greek, the commentary highlights the places in Josephus’s text where references are made to Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. The commentary also includes three very personal annotations in Latin, marking pauses in the writing for important events that impacted life in general or upon the personal life of the commentator. These comments include mention of his brother, the death of a parent, and, perhaps most interestingly, reference to what was likely the Schmalkaldic War (1546-47) between the Protestants and Catholics that was then being waged.

All in all, one of the most influential books in Western Civilization, in rare and extraordinary contemporary binding.