The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus, and: Le livre Hébreu à Paris au XVIe siècle: Inventaire chronologique (review)

What is the purpose of the bibliographical reference book in the age of the Internet? Cannot the intrepid researcher find everything with Google and WorldCat? Perhaps, but at the very least, the authors of reference books do the legwork (and mousework?) for the rest of us. In addition — as every researcher knows — online catalogs are only as good as the data they upload. In the case of early printed books, there is still no substitute for close examination of the books themselves.

Marvin Heller and Lyse Schwarzfuchs have spent a great deal of time and energy examining sixteenth-century Hebrew books, and all who are interested in Jewish cultural history and Christian Hebraism in particular, and early modern cultural history in general, will be rewarded by their efforts. Schwarzfuchs's Le livre Hébreu à Paris aims at a complete listing of books in Hebrew — or in other languages but employing Hebrew characters — printed in Paris in the sixteenth century. Other than Bibles (of which there are many on the list), the majority of the books here fall into the latter category. This is not surprising, as there were no Jews in Paris and the books surveyed here were produced by, and for, Christian Hebraists. Although Paris is not always thought of as the center of gravity of Christian Hebraism in this period, Schwarzfuchs cites Stephen Burnett's finding that Paris accounts for a full quarter of works with Hebrew type, published by and for Christians, in sixteenth-century Europe. Schwarzfuchs's introduction not only explains her bibliographical project here, but also contains a useful survey of a not-uncommon medieval and early modern phenomenon: "l'hébreu sans juifs." At the same time, as Schwarzfuchs makes clear, the Paris Hebraists did not work in a hermetically sealed environment. Their many contacts with Hebraist scholars elsewhere and the itinerant careers of printers brought the Parisians into indirect and direct contacts with Jewish scholars.

Schwarzfuchs's discovery that Hebrew turns up as well in some unexpected places — as in an edition of Aristophanes' comedies, with the frontispiece of each section adorned with the thirty-seventh Psalm in Hebrew — reminds us of Hebrew's status in the sixteenth century as one of the three languages that every humanist ought to know. As always, those of us who study Jewish history need to remember that Hebrew was not the sole possession of our subjects. Likewise, those who study Renaissance culture in general need to remember that this "Jewish" language was ever-present in early modern Europe.

The individual entries in the "chronological inventory" are useful and precise. They are useful for giving both Latin and Hebrew titles where a work has titles in both languages; for giving information about whether such books open right to left or left to right (helpful in assessing the publisher's view of prospective readership); and for lingering over the Hebrew date, rather than simply reporting a converted Latin date. Each entry is followed with a list of libraries — mainly in Europe, the United States, and Israel — where the item may be found today. This information could perhaps be dispensed with in the Internet age, but it does serve a function besides saving the reader time. It also gives a quick impression regarding the relative dissemination of the works. (It is perilous to assume that a wide dissemination correlates to popularity, but it's not a bad starting point for further research.)

Some of the books in Schwarzfuchs's inventory appear in Heller's Abridged Thesaurus as well, and there we can see where...