משל הקדמוני :ספר סופר אמרי שפר נקרא משל הקדמוני אותו העיר האיש מ”א“יר בכמר יעקב פרענצוני גם הוא מוגה אף אם הוגה מאחיהו השילוני (The Fable of the Ancient. A book of beautiful sayings named the fable of the ancient).

Lindseth.jpg

Creator

Isaac ben Solomon Abu Sahula (b. 1244).

Title

משל הקדמוני :ספר סופר אמרי שפר נקרא משל הקדמוני אותו העיר האיש מ”א“יר בכמר יעקב פרענצוני גם הוא מוגה אף אם הוגה מאחיהו השילוני (The Fable of the Ancient. A book of beautiful sayings named the fable of the ancient).

Coverage

Venice

Publisher

Meir ben Jacob Parenzo

Date

[1546]

Description

In June of 1990 I received a phone call from Judy Lowry of the Argosy Book Store and the auction house Swann. It was to alert me to an important Jewish fable book coming up at auction, this edition of Meshal ha-Kadmoni (The Fable of the Ancient.) It is the third edition of the first illustrated book in Hebrew on any subject.

At that time I had a large collection of fable books but nothing in Hebrew. Being a collecting completest and remembering the words of Grolier member William Barlow from his 1983 talk at the Library of Congress, where he said that book collecting is “the triumph of rationalization over reason,” I bought the book and began the search for more Hebrew editions.

The Hebrew fable collection now numbers some 400 items and a book on the subject is forthcoming. Scholars tell me it may be the most extensive analysis ever done on the use of fables in Jewish writing.

Source

Jon Lindseth