Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures, The.
The First American Jewish Translation
Of The Five Books Of Moses
[Judaica]. Leeser, Isaac. The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures. Carefully Translated According to the Massoretic Text, on the Basis of the English Version, After the best Jewish Authorities; and Supplied With Short Explanatory Notes by Isaac Lesser. Philadelphia: (Privately Published), (1853).
Thick folio; black cloth elaborately stamped in blind, lightly chipped; morocco spine sympathetically restored; occasional faint pencil underlining; silk bookmark; blank family record bound in at rear.
First edition of the scarce first American Jewish translation of the Five Books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Number and Deutoronomy. Isaac Leeser’s rendering remained the standard in American synagogues and schools until the early 20th-century.
Leeser’s fifteen years of labor yielded a scholarly work that ran over one thousand pages. The copiously annotated, beautifully produced volume had an inherently political as well as an aesthetic and cultural purpose: “In presenting this work to the public,” Leeser remarked of his own work as translator,
...It is not a new notion by which he was seized of late years which impelled him to the task, but a desire entertained for more than a quarter of a century, since the day he quitted school in his native land to come to this country, to present to his fellow-Israelites an English version, made by one of themselves, of the Holy Word of God. From early infancy he was made conscious how much persons differing from us in religious ideas make use of Scripture to assail Israel’s hope and faith, by what he deems, in accordance with the well-settled opinion of sound critics, both Israelites and others, a perverted and hence erroneous rendering of the words of the original Bible. Therefore he always entertained the hope to be one day permitted to do for his fellow Hebrews who use the English as their vernacular, what had been done for the German’s by some of the most eminent minds whom the Almighty has endowed with the power of reanimating in us the almost expiring desire for critical inquiry into the sacred text...The translator is an Israelite in faith, in the full sense of the word...He has always studied the Scriptures to find a confirmation for his faith and hope; nevertheless, he asserts fearlessly, that in his going through this work, he has thrown aside all bias, discarded every preconceived opinion, and translated the text before him without regard to the result thence arising for his creed... He trusts, therefore, that to those who agree with him in their religious persuasion, he has rendered an acceptable service; as they will now have an opportunity to study a version of the Bible which has not been made by the authority of churches in which they can have no confidence; and that to those also who are of a different persuasion, his labours will not be unacceptable, as exhibiting, so far as he could do it, the progress of biblical criticism among ancient and modern Israelites–a task utterly beyond the power of any but a Jew by birth and conviction...With these few remarks the translator surrenders a labor in which he has been engaged, occasionally, for more than fifteen years, to the kindness of the public, trusting that, by the blessing of the Father of all, it may be made instrumental in diffusing a taste for Scripture reading among the community of Israelites, and by the means of a better appreciation of the great treasures of revelation to many who never have had the opportunity of knowing what the Hebrews have done for mankind, not alone in preserving the sacred books, but by labouring to make them intelligible to the world at large.
Isaac Leeser, rabbi, translator, and leader of American Jewry, was born in Westphalia, Germany in 1806. In 1824 he moved to Richmond, Virginia at the invitation of his uncle, and entered the mercantile establishment of Judah and Rehine while simultane
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