$3,000
Bible, New Testament in Greek, Editio Regia. Novum Iesu Christi D. N. Testamentum ex Bibliotheca Regia . Paris: Ex officina Roberti Stephani typographi Regii, Regiis typis, 1550. Small folio, printed in all three sizes of the special Greek font designed for the French King by Claude Garamond, with ornate woodcut head pieces and initials, some occasional spotting and minor marginal notations, with an embossed stamp on the first title page, contents otherwise clean, bound in full seventeenth century French marbled calfskin, spine gilt, all edges red, marbled end leaves, front joint cracked. This first Greek New Testament to contain numbered verses was compiled from fifteen different manuscript sources by the printer's son, Henri Stephanus. In 1550, Sorbonne theologians considered biblical scholarship heretical; variant readings of a divinely composed sacred text should not exist. However, not all scholars scorned Stephanus's achievement, the English translators of the King James version of the Bible used this edition of the Greek New Testament as one of their primary textual sources. Collated, complete.
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2012-11-18
