#kuttithevangu
Incredible, but true: @kuttithevangu deserves to have a good day today.
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@darkhei-noam thank you for turning this BBC-based WTF moment into some neat exploration of sforim history I’m so delighted
My pleasure! I only need the slightest suggestion to derail my whole day into another side research project on Jewish book history and I’m off to the races. Interestingly, this ended up connected to something I had actually previously researched — this Mishnah translation was done by Willem Surenhuis, who relied on two other earlier translations (one in Latin, and another in Spanish), done by two Sephardi brothers, Jacob and Isaac Abendana. I had written a research paper on Isaac Abendana and his role as a Hebrew scholar vis-a-vis Christian Hebraists, so I had already run into this! Another link is that Abendana was connected with the Orientalist Edward Pococke, who in 1655 edited the first book in Hebrew characters printed in Oxford — Maimonides’ Judeo-Arabic commentary on the Mishnah, Porta Mosis.
Here’s the title page and the first page of Middot from the Amsterdam 1702 edition of the Mishnah with Maimonides’ commentary, Mischna sive totius Hebræorum juris, rituum, antiquitatum, ac legum oralium systema, cum Maimonidis & Bartenoræ commentariis integris:
