[JUDAICA] Sota. Hoc est: Liber Mischinus de Uxore Adulterii suspecta

una cum libri en Jacob excerptis gemarae versione Latina & commentario perpetuo … Accedunt correctiones Lipmannianae. Altdorf : Johann Heinrich Schönnerstadt, for J. A. & W. Endter, 1674. First edition. Thick small quarto (220 x 170 mm), contemporary vellum boards, spine with raised bands and black leather title-piece stamped in gilt; top edge stained black; front pastedown with bookplate of the Library of Church House (Westminster) dated 1901; engraved frontispiece, title-page printed in red and black, pp. [50], 1234, [88]; text in Latin and Hebrew; with a further 11 engraved plates, including a portrait of the dedicatee Johannes Capellanus (Jean Chapelain), and 17 engraved illustrations in the text; occasional browning and light foxing, binding sound, a good copy.

First edition of the author’s first published work, comprising the first Latin translation of (and a commentary on) the Sotah, a tractate in Seder Nashim, the third order of the Mishnah, which addresses family law. It also contains other Talmudic extracts and corrections to the late fourteenth-century Sepher Nitzachon of Yomtov Lippmann ben Shlomo Mühlhausen.

Hebraist, jurist and Orientalist Johann Christoph Wagenseil (1633-1705) was born in Nuremberg. Over many years he collected and researched anti-Christian writings by Jewish authors and published refutations of them, his ulterior motive being to see the Jews persuaded into conversion – not to have them punished or treated unjustly.

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