{"id":545,"date":"2026-10-19T17:47:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T17:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/soncino-and-the-first-complete-printed-hebrew-bible-of-1488\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T17:47:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T17:47:40","slug":"soncino-and-the-first-complete-printed-hebrew-bible-of-1488","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/soncino-and-the-first-complete-printed-hebrew-bible-of-1488\/","title":{"rendered":"Soncino and the First Complete Printed Hebrew Bible of 1488"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1488, in the small Lombard town of Soncino between Cremona and Brescia, a family of Jewish printers completed the first edition of the entire Hebrew Bible to be produced with movable type. The book contained the twenty-four books of the Hebrew canon, with the full Tiberian vocalisation and accents, printed without commentary in a large square type on folio pages. It is known to bibliographers as the editio princeps of the Hebrew Bible, and it was issued by the press of Israel Nathan Soncino, which also gave its name to the family of printers who were to become the most celebrated Hebrew typographers of the Italian Renaissance.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-1\"><a href=\"#note-1\">1<\/a><\/sup> The Soncino Bible stands at the beginning of the printed history of the Hebrew text. Every later printed Hebrew Bible, from the great Rabbinic Bibles of Venice to the critical editions of the twentieth century, belongs to a tradition that it began, and the problems that later editors such as Jedidiah Solomon Norzi and Benjamin Kennicott sought to address can be traced in part to the decisions made by the first printers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group at-a-glance\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"at-a-glance\">At a glance<\/h3>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li><strong>c. 1450s:<\/strong> Johannes Gutenberg\u2019s press at Mainz introduces printing with movable type to Europe.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1470s:<\/strong> Hebrew printing begins in Italy; the first dated Hebrew books appear.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1477:<\/strong> The Book of Psalms with David Kimhi\u2019s commentary is printed at Bologna, the first biblical book printed in Hebrew.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1482:<\/strong> Abraham ben Hayyim dei Tintori prints a vocalised Torah with Onqelos and Rashi at Bologna.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1483\u20131484:<\/strong> The Soncino family begins printing Hebrew books at Soncino in Lombardy.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1485\u20131486:<\/strong> The Prophets with Kimhi\u2019s commentary are printed at Soncino.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1488:<\/strong> The first complete printed Hebrew Bible, vocalised and accented, is issued at Soncino.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1491\u20131493:<\/strong> A second complete Hebrew Bible is printed at Naples.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1494:<\/strong> Gershom Soncino prints a small-format Hebrew Bible at Brescia.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1502\u20131527:<\/strong> Gershom Soncino works in the Adriatic cities of Fano, Pesaro and Rimini before moving to the Ottoman Empire.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This article describes the beginnings of Hebrew printing in Italy, the Soncino family and their press, the making and character of the 1488 Bible, and the editions that followed it in the last years of the fifteenth century. The later history of the printed Hebrew Bible is treated on this site in the articles on <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/daniel-bomberg-venice-press-rabbinic-bibles\/\">Daniel Bomberg\u2019s Venice press<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/jacob-ben-hayyim-second-rabbinic-bible-venice-1525\/\">Jacob ben Hayyim and the Second Rabbinic Bible<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-complutensian-polyglot-cisneros-alcala-1514-17\/\">the Complutensian Polyglot<\/a>, and the efforts of later scholars to correct the printed text in the articles on <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/norzi-and-the-minhat-shai-commentary-on-the-hebrew-text\/\">Norzi\u2019s Minhat Shai<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/kennicott-de-rossi-and-the-eighteenth-century-collations-of-hebrew-manuscripts\/\">the collations of Kennicott and De Rossi<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-beginnings-of-hebrew-printing\">The beginnings of Hebrew printing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Printing with movable type was developed at Mainz in the middle of the fifteenth century and spread rapidly across Europe in the following decades. Italy became one of its principal centres, and it was there that Hebrew printing began. The earliest Hebrew books were printed in the 1470s in several Italian towns, and the first dated Hebrew book, an edition of Rashi\u2019s commentary on the Torah, appeared in 1475. The technical problems of printing Hebrew were considerable. The script is written from right to left, it has final forms of several letters, and a fully vocalised and accented text requires small signs above, below and within the letters, which must be set in precise relation to the consonants.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-2\"><a href=\"#note-2\">2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first biblical book printed in Hebrew was the Book of Psalms with the commentary of David Kimhi, published at Bologna in 1477. The printers attempted to provide the biblical verses with vowels, but the difficulty proved so great that after the first few leaves they gave up the effort, and the remainder of the text was printed without vowels.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-3\"><a href=\"#note-3\">3<\/a><\/sup> Five years later, in 1482, Abraham ben Hayyim dei Tintori published at Bologna an edition of the Torah with the Aramaic Targum of Onqelos and the commentary of Rashi. This was the first printed edition in which the biblical text was successfully vocalised. The Targum and the commentary were printed in a smaller semi-cursive type, which later became known as \u201cRashi script\u201d from its long association with Rashi\u2019s commentary.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-4\"><a href=\"#note-4\">4<\/a><\/sup> The vocalised Torah of 1482 showed that the technical problems could be overcome, and it opened the way for the printing of the whole Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-soncino-family\">The Soncino family<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Soncino printers were descended from a family of German Jewish origin, which had settled in the town of Soncino in the duchy of Milan in the fifteenth century and taken the name of the town as its own. The head of the family in the 1480s was Israel Nathan, a physician, and the printing was carried out chiefly by his son Joshua Solomon and later by his grandson Gershom, who became the most prolific and widely travelled member of the dynasty.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-5\"><a href=\"#note-5\">5<\/a><\/sup> The family\u2019s press began operating at Soncino in 1483 or 1484, and among its early productions was an edition of the Talmudic tractate Berakhot, one of the first parts of the Talmud ever printed.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-6\"><a href=\"#note-6\">6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1485\u20131486 the Soncino press printed the Prophets, the Former and Latter Prophets together, with the commentary of David Kimhi. The biblical text in this edition was not vocalised. It was printed in square Hebrew letters at the top of the page, normally in the right-hand column, with Kimhi\u2019s commentary in Rashi script beside it, and when one column ended before the other the remaining text was set across the whole page.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-7\"><a href=\"#note-7\">7<\/a><\/sup> The edition is notable also because it printed the passages in Kimhi\u2019s commentary that dealt with Christianity, which were omitted from many later editions under the pressure of censorship.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-8\"><a href=\"#note-8\">8<\/a><\/sup> The Prophets of 1485\u20131486 were the first complete printing of the prophetic books, and they prepared the way for the complete Bible two years later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-making-of-the-1488-bible\">The making of the 1488 Bible<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The complete Bible of 1488 was a substantial undertaking. It required the setting of the entire Hebrew text, with vowels and accents, in a consistent typeface, and the printing of a large number of folio leaves. The printers had to resolve the technical problems of placing the vowel signs and accents correctly in relation to the letters, a task that the Bologna printers of 1477 had abandoned and that those of 1482 had accomplished only for the Torah. They also had to choose a text, since the manuscripts available to them differed in many details, and to decide on the arrangement and order of the books.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-9\"><a href=\"#note-9\">9<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-10\"><a href=\"#note-10\">10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The resulting edition is a plain biblical text without commentary, Targum or Masorah. The Torah is followed by the Five Scrolls, after which come the Prophets and the remaining books of the Writings, an arrangement that reflects the liturgical use of the Scrolls alongside the Torah. The opening of the book of Joshua is decorated with an elaborate woodcut border, one of the few decorative elements in the edition.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-11\"><a href=\"#note-11\">11<\/a><\/sup> The type is a large square Hebrew face, with vowels and accents set beneath and above the letters,. The edition was intended for reading and study rather than for the specialised needs of scribes and Masoretes, and its simplicity distinguishes it from the Rabbinic Bibles of the following century, in which the biblical text is surrounded by commentaries and Masoretic notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Little is known of the manuscripts from which the 1488 text was set. The printers presumably used one or more manuscripts available to them in northern Italy, of the Ashkenazi or Italian tradition, and they made their own decisions about the details of spelling and vocalisation. The text of the edition is not identical with that of any single known manuscript, and it contains readings that differ from the best Tiberian codices. These differences were transmitted to later editions that depended on it, directly or indirectly, and they formed part of the inheritance that later critics sought to correct.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-12\"><a href=\"#note-12\">12<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"surviving-copies\">Surviving copies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The edition was printed in a limited number of copies, and many of those that survive are incomplete. Census work by A. K. Offenberg and his colleagues, published in 1990, located copies of Hebrew incunabula, including the Soncino Bible, in public collections around the world and established a basis for their bibliographical study.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-13\"><a href=\"#note-13\">13<\/a><\/sup> Two copies have been digitised by the National Library of Israel and made freely available. The first, a copy owned by David and Jemima Jeselsohn of Zurich and scanned from the Valmadonna Trust Library, has been rebound in two volumes. One contains the end of Numbers, Deuteronomy, parts of Psalms and Chronicles, Daniel, Ezra\u2013Nehemiah and the Five Scrolls, with the first leaf of Lamentations missing and replaced by a handwritten leaf; the other is a complete copy of the Prophets.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-14\"><a href=\"#note-14\">14<\/a><\/sup> The second, in the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library at Frankfurt, contains most of the Prophets, beginning at the very end of Joshua, followed by Daniel, Ezra and Chronicles.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-15\"><a href=\"#note-15\">15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The state of these copies illustrates the fortunes of early printed Hebrew books. Hebrew books were used intensively, and many were worn out by use. They were also subject to confiscation and destruction, particularly in the sixteenth century, when the Talmud and other Hebrew books were burned in Italy, and to the censorship of the Inquisition, which expurgated passages regarded as offensive to Christianity. The survival of any copy of a fifteenth-century Hebrew Bible is therefore a matter of some good fortune, and the imperfect state of most surviving copies is to be expected.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-16\"><a href=\"#note-16\">16<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-editions-that-followed\">The editions that followed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Soncino Bible was quickly followed by other complete editions. In 1491\u20131493 a second complete Hebrew Bible was printed at Naples, where Joshua Solomon Soncino had moved and established a press. In 1494 Gershom Soncino printed at Brescia a complete Hebrew Bible in a small format, convenient for personal use. The Brescia Bible had a notable later history, since a copy of it was used by Martin Luther in his translation of the Old Testament into German, and it is preserved in Berlin.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-17\"><a href=\"#note-17\">17<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-18\"><a href=\"#note-18\">18<\/a><\/sup> These three editions, of Soncino, Naples and Brescia, are the only complete Hebrew Bibles printed in the fifteenth century, and they served as the basis for the early sixteenth-century editions that preceded the great Rabbinic Bibles of Venice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gershom Soncino\u2019s career extended far beyond Brescia. In the first decades of the sixteenth century he worked in a series of towns on the Adriatic coast of Italy, including Fano, Pesaro and Rimini, where he printed Hebrew, Latin and Italian books. An exhibition devoted to his Adriatic editions of 1502\u20131527 illustrated the range of his output in these years.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-19\"><a href=\"#note-19\">19<\/a><\/sup> He later moved to the Ottoman Empire, where Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal had established new communities, and he continued to print in Salonica and Constantinople. His career thus links the beginnings of Hebrew printing in Italy with its later flourishing in the eastern Mediterranean.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-20\"><a href=\"#note-20\">20<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"hebrew-printing-beyond-italy\">Hebrew printing beyond Italy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Italy was not the only centre of early Hebrew printing. In the Iberian Peninsula, Hebrew presses operated in the 1470s and 1480s in Spain and Portugal, and they produced editions of the Bible, commentaries and other works. A commentary on the Torah by Nahmanides, for example, was printed at Lisbon in 1489.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-21\"><a href=\"#note-21\">21<\/a><\/sup> The Iberian presses came to an end with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and the forced conversion of the Jews of Portugal in 1497, and some of their printers and equipment travelled with the exiles to Italy, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. Eleazar Gutwirth has examined the relation between printers and readers in the Hispano-Jewish communities of the fifteenth century, showing how the new technology was received in a culture that had a long tradition of manuscript production.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-22\"><a href=\"#note-22\">22<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The transition from manuscript to print was gradual. Printed books coexisted with manuscripts for many decades, and scribes continued to copy texts by hand, sometimes from printed editions. The relation between manuscript and printed traditions could be complex. Judith Kogel, studying the vernacular glosses in David Kimhi\u2019s dictionary of Hebrew roots, has shown how such glosses were transmitted and altered by both scribes and printers.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-23\"><a href=\"#note-23\">23<\/a><\/sup> The same processes affected the biblical text, in which the choices of printers could introduce readings that later found their way back into manuscripts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-1488-bible-and-the-history-of-the-text\">The 1488 Bible and the history of the text<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The significance of the Soncino Bible for the history of the biblical text lies in the fact that it fixed, for the first time, a single form of the complete Hebrew Bible in multiple identical copies. In the manuscript period every copy was in some respects unique, and the details of spelling, vocalisation and accentuation varied from manuscript to manuscript. With the printed edition, readers in different places could consult the same text, and later printers could reproduce it. This standardisation was a gain for the consistency of the text, but it also meant that the errors and idiosyncrasies of the first editions were multiplied and perpetuated.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-24\"><a href=\"#note-24\">24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The early printed editions were not based on the best manuscripts, and the printers did not have access to the great Tiberian codices that modern scholars regard as the most authoritative witnesses to the Masoretic text. The Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex, discussed on this site in the articles on the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/aleppo-codex.html\">Aleppo Codex<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-leningrad-codex-b19a-st-petersburg-1008\/\">Leningrad Codex<\/a>, were not used by any editor until the twentieth century. The printed text that descended from the fifteenth-century editions therefore represented a late and somewhat mixed form of the Masoretic tradition, and the history of the printed Hebrew Bible from the sixteenth century to the twentieth can be read as a series of attempts to correct it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Rabbinic Bible of 1524\u20131525, edited by Jacob ben Hayyim and printed by Daniel Bomberg, was the most important of these attempts in the sixteenth century. Ben Hayyim collated manuscripts and supplied the Masorah, and his edition became the standard text for later printings. But it too depended in part on the earlier printed tradition, and it did not use the best manuscripts. The work of Norzi in the seventeenth century, of Kennicott and De Rossi in the eighteenth and of the editors of the critical editions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continued the process. Each of these efforts built on the foundation laid by the first printers, even as it sought to improve on their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-printed-page-and-the-reader\">The printed page and the reader<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Soncino Bible also changed the way in which the Hebrew Bible was read. Manuscript Bibles were expensive and often large, and they were owned by communities, synagogues and wealthy individuals. Printed Bibles, though still costly, could be produced in greater numbers and at a lower price, and they became available to a wider range of readers. The small format of the Brescia Bible of 1494 was a step towards the personal Bible that a scholar or student could carry and use, and it anticipated the small-format Bibles of the sixteenth century that became common among both Jewish and Christian readers.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-25\"><a href=\"#note-25\">25<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The printed Hebrew Bible also became accessible to Christian scholars to an extent that had not been possible before. In the manuscript period Christian students of Hebrew depended on Jewish teachers and on the few manuscripts they could obtain. With the advent of printing, Hebrew Bibles could be bought, and Christian Hebraists in Italy, Germany and elsewhere began to study the text directly. Luther\u2019s use of the Brescia Bible is the best-known example, but it was part of a broader movement. The Christian study of Hebrew in the Renaissance and Reformation, which produced the polyglot Bibles and the vernacular translations of the sixteenth century, was made possible in large part by the printed editions of the Hebrew text that the Soncino family and other Jewish printers had produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"setting-a-vocalised-text-in-type\">Setting a vocalised text in type<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The technical demands of the vocalised Hebrew page explain why the complete Bible was so long in coming. A Latin page of the period could be set from a fount of letters, ligatures and abbreviations arranged in a single line. A vocalised and accented Hebrew page required, in addition to the consonants, a set of vowel signs placed beneath, above or within the letters, and a larger set of accent signs, many of them placed beneath the line and some above it. Each of these had to be cast and set so that it aligned with the consonant to which it belonged, and the spacing of the lines had to allow room for signs both above and below. The failure of the Bologna Psalter of 1477 to sustain its vocalisation beyond the first leaves is a measure of the difficulty, and the success of the Torah of 1482 and the Bible of 1488 a measure of the progress made within a few years.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-26\"><a href=\"#note-26\">26<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-27\"><a href=\"#note-27\">27<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The printers\u2019 solutions were not uniform, and the vocalisation and accentuation of the early editions show inconsistencies that reflect both the manuscripts from which they were set and the technical limitations of the type. Signs could be omitted, displaced or confused, and the more complex accents were especially liable to error. Such features are of interest to historians of printing as evidence of the methods of the early compositors, and to historians of the text as one of the sources of the variants that entered the printed tradition. The study of Hebrew incunabula as physical objects, pursued by Offenberg and others in the second half of the twentieth century, has provided much of the evidence on which such judgements rest.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-28\"><a href=\"#note-28\">28<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-29\"><a href=\"#note-29\">29<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-order-of-the-books\">The order of the books<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The arrangement of the Soncino Bible, with the Five Scrolls placed immediately after the Torah, deserves comment. In the Talmudic tradition and in many manuscripts the Scrolls are distributed among the Writings, and their order varies. The grouping of the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther as a unit reflects their reading in the synagogue on particular festivals and fasts, and their placement after the Torah in the 1488 edition brings together the books read publicly in the synagogue.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-30\"><a href=\"#note-30\">30<\/a><\/sup> The edition was thus not simply a reproduction of a single model codex of the whole Bible but a book shaped by the habits of the communities for which it was made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later printed Bibles adopted a variety of arrangements, and the order of the books in printed editions was not settled for a long time. The order found in modern editions based on the Leningrad Codex reflects the arrangement of that manuscript rather than the conventions of the early printers. The variation is a reminder that the canon of the Hebrew Bible, fixed in its contents, was never fixed in a single order of its books, and that the printed editions inherited this variety from the manuscripts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"printers-patrons-and-readers\">Printers, patrons and readers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Soncino press was a commercial enterprise as well as a scholarly one. The production of a complete Bible required a considerable investment in type, paper and labour, and the printers needed to recover their costs through sales. The market for Hebrew books in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century consisted of the Jewish communities of the peninsula, which had been augmented by immigrants from Germany and later by refugees from Spain and Portugal, and of a smaller number of Christian scholars with an interest in Hebrew. The family\u2019s movements from Soncino to Naples, Brescia and the Adriatic towns, and finally to the Ottoman Empire, reflect both the search for markets and the shifting conditions under which Jews were permitted to live and work in different states.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-31\"><a href=\"#note-31\">31<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-32\"><a href=\"#note-32\">32<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The audience for the 1488 Bible was primarily Jewish. Its plain text, without commentary or translation, was suited to readers who already knew the language and the traditions of reading, and it served the needs of study and of preparation for the synagogue readings. The edition did not contain the Masorah, the apparatus of notes that guided scribes in the correct copying of the text, and it was not intended as a model for scribal practice. The inclusion of the Masorah in printed Bibles was the achievement of Jacob ben Hayyim in the Venice edition of 1524\u20131525, and the absence of such material from the fifteenth-century editions marks them as books for readers rather than for scribes. The scholarly study of the Masorah in print, which Elias Levita advanced in his <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/elias-levita-and-the-masoret-ha-masoret-of-1538\/\">Masoret ha-Masoret of 1538<\/a>, belongs to the following century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-soncino-name\">The Soncino name<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The name of Soncino has remained associated with Hebrew printing and scholarship. The Soncino Gesellschaft, a society of Jewish bibliophiles founded in Berlin in 1924, took its name from the family, and in the twentieth century the Soncino Press in London published widely used English translations of the Talmud, the Midrash Rabbah and the Zohar, and a commentary on the books of the Bible. These later uses of the name reflect the reputation of the fifteenth-century printers as pioneers of Hebrew printing and as founders of a tradition of fine Hebrew typography.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-33\"><a href=\"#note-33\">33<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"assessment\">Assessment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Soncino Bible of 1488 was the first printed edition of the complete Hebrew Bible. It was produced by a family of Jewish printers in a small town in Lombardy, a little over a decade after the beginning of Hebrew printing in Italy, and it built on the experience of the Bologna printers who had produced the first vocalised Torah in 1482 and on the family\u2019s own edition of the Prophets in 1485\u20131486.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-34\"><a href=\"#note-34\">34<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-35\"><a href=\"#note-35\">35<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-36\"><a href=\"#note-36\">36<\/a><\/sup> It presented the entire Hebrew text with vowels and accents, without commentary, in a large and legible type, and it was followed within six years by the complete Bibles of Naples and Brescia.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-37\"><a href=\"#note-37\">37<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The edition fixed a form of the complete Hebrew Bible in print for the first time and began the tradition of the printed Hebrew text that has continued to the present day. Its text, set from manuscripts that were not among the best witnesses to the Masoretic tradition, contained readings that later editors sought to correct, and the history of the printed Hebrew Bible in the following centuries is in large part the history of those corrections. The surviving copies, now digitised and freely available, allow readers to see the first printed form of the Hebrew Bible and to appreciate the achievement of the printers who produced it.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-38\"><a href=\"#note-38\">38<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-39\"><a href=\"#note-39\">39<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"notes\">Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list post-notes\">\n\n<li id=\"note-1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/tanakh-soncino-1488-jb-738.1-2-images\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), editio princeps, copy 1<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan of the Valmadonna and Jeselsohn copy. <a href=\"#ref-1\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-2\">A. K. Offenberg, <em>A Choice of Corals: Facets of Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Printing<\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1992), especially \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_004\">Literature on Hebrew Incunabula since the Second World War<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_005\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-2\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-3\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/psalms-with-radaq-bologna-1477-images\">Psalms with the commentary of David Qim\u1e25i (Bologna, 1477)<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan. <a href=\"#ref-3\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-4\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/chumash-bologna-5242\">Torah with Targum Onqelos and Rashi (Bologna, 1482)<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan. <a href=\"#ref-4\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-5\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003). <a href=\"#ref-5\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-6\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003); A. K. Offenberg and C. Moed-Van Walraven, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615182_008\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections: A First International Census<\/a><\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1990). <a href=\"#ref-6\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-7\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/neviim-radaq-soncino-1486-images\">Nevi\u2019im with the commentary of Radaq (Soncino, 1485\u20131486)<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan. <a href=\"#ref-7\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-8\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/neviim-radaq-soncino-1486-images\">Nevi\u2019im with the commentary of Radaq (Soncino, 1485\u20131486)<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan. <a href=\"#ref-8\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-9\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/tanakh-soncino-1488-jb-738.1-2-images\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), editio princeps, copy 1<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan of the Valmadonna and Jeselsohn copy. <a href=\"#ref-9\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-10\">A. K. Offenberg, <em>A Choice of Corals: Facets of Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Printing<\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1992), especially \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_004\">Literature on Hebrew Incunabula since the Second World War<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_005\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-10\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-11\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/tanakh-soncino-1488-jb-738.1-2-images\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), editio princeps, copy 1<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan of the Valmadonna and Jeselsohn copy, description of the contents and the woodcut at the opening of Joshua. <a href=\"#ref-11\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-12\">A. K. Offenberg and C. Moed-Van Walraven, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615182_008\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections: A First International Census<\/a><\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1990); A. K. Offenberg, <em>A Choice of Corals: Facets of Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Printing<\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1992), especially \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_004\">Literature on Hebrew Incunabula since the Second World War<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_005\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-12\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-13\">A. K. Offenberg and C. Moed-Van Walraven, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615182_008\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections: A First International Census<\/a><\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1990). <a href=\"#ref-13\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-14\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/tanakh-soncino-1488-jb-738.1-2-images\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), editio princeps, copy 1<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan of the Valmadonna and Jeselsohn copy. <a href=\"#ref-14\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-15\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/inc-hebr-4-ausst-191-biblia-hebraica\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), copy 2<\/a>, scan of the copy in the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library, Frankfurt. <a href=\"#ref-15\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-16\">A. K. Offenberg, <em>A Choice of Corals: Facets of Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Printing<\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1992), especially \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_004\">Literature on Hebrew Incunabula since the Second World War<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_005\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-16\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-17\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003). <a href=\"#ref-17\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-18\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003); A. K. Offenberg and C. Moed-Van Walraven, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615182_008\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections: A First International Census<\/a><\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1990). <a href=\"#ref-18\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-19\">\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004444522_coco_cc1689\">Gershom, Girolamo, Hieronymus: le edizioni del Soncino nelle citt\u00e0 adriatiche 1502\u20131527<\/a>\u201d, exhibition catalogue, in <em>Catalog of Catalogs Online<\/em> (Leiden: Brill). <a href=\"#ref-19\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-20\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003). <a href=\"#ref-20\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-21\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/nahmanides-torah-lisbon-1489-goethe-inc.-hebr.-44-images\">Nahmanides, Commentary on the Torah (Lisbon, 1489)<\/a>, Goethe University Frankfurt copy; Eleazar Gutwirth, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004306103_015\">Techne and Culture: Printers and Readers in Fifteenth-Century Hispano-Jewish Communities<\/a>\u201d, in <em>The Late Medieval Hebrew Book in the Western Mediterranean<\/em> (Leiden: Brill, 2015). <a href=\"#ref-21\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-22\">Eleazar Gutwirth, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004306103_015\">Techne and Culture: Printers and Readers in Fifteenth-Century Hispano-Jewish Communities<\/a>\u201d, in <em>The Late Medieval Hebrew Book in the Western Mediterranean<\/em> (Leiden: Brill, 2015). <a href=\"#ref-22\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-23\">Judith Kogel, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004306103_009\">Le\u2018azim in David Kimhi\u2019s Sefer ha-shorashim: Scribes and Printers through Space and Time<\/a>\u201d, ibid.. <a href=\"#ref-23\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-24\">A. K. Offenberg and C. Moed-Van Walraven, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615182_008\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections: A First International Census<\/a><\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1990); A. K. Offenberg, <em>A Choice of Corals: Facets of Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Printing<\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1992), especially \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_004\">Literature on Hebrew Incunabula since the Second World War<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_005\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-24\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-25\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003). <a href=\"#ref-25\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-26\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/psalms-with-radaq-bologna-1477-images\">Psalms with the commentary of David Qim\u1e25i (Bologna, 1477)<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan. <a href=\"#ref-26\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-27\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/chumash-bologna-5242\">Torah with Targum Onqelos and Rashi (Bologna, 1482)<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan. <a href=\"#ref-27\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-28\">A. K. Offenberg, <em>A Choice of Corals: Facets of Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Printing<\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1992), especially \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_004\">Literature on Hebrew Incunabula since the Second World War<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_005\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-28\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-29\">A. K. Offenberg and C. Moed-Van Walraven, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615182_008\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections: A First International Census<\/a><\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1990); A. K. Offenberg, <em>A Choice of Corals: Facets of Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Printing<\/em> (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1992), especially \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_004\">Literature on Hebrew Incunabula since the Second World War<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004615236_005\">Hebrew Incunabula in Public Collections<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-29\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-30\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/tanakh-soncino-1488-jb-738.1-2-images\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), editio princeps, copy 1<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan of the Valmadonna and Jeselsohn copy. <a href=\"#ref-30\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-31\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003). <a href=\"#ref-31\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-32\">\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1163\/9789004444522_coco_cc1689\">Gershom, Girolamo, Hieronymus: le edizioni del Soncino nelle citt\u00e0 adriatiche 1502\u20131527<\/a>\u201d, exhibition catalogue, in <em>Catalog of Catalogs Online<\/em> (Leiden: Brill). <a href=\"#ref-32\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-33\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003). <a href=\"#ref-33\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-34\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/tanakh-soncino-1488-jb-738.1-2-images\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), editio princeps, copy 1<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan of the Valmadonna and Jeselsohn copy. <a href=\"#ref-34\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-35\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/chumash-bologna-5242\">Torah with Targum Onqelos and Rashi (Bologna, 1482)<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan. <a href=\"#ref-35\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-36\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/neviim-radaq-soncino-1486-images\">Nevi\u2019im with the commentary of Radaq (Soncino, 1485\u20131486)<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan. <a href=\"#ref-36\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-37\">Mendel Metzger, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/gao\/9781884446054.article.t079735\">Soncino family<\/a>\u201d, <em>Grove Art Online<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2003). <a href=\"#ref-37\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-38\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/tanakh-soncino-1488-jb-738.1-2-images\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), editio princeps, copy 1<\/a>, National Library of Israel scan of the Valmadonna and Jeselsohn copy. <a href=\"#ref-38\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-39\"><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/inc-hebr-4-ausst-191-biblia-hebraica\">Soncino Tanakh (1488), copy 2<\/a>, scan of the copy in the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library, Frankfurt. <a href=\"#ref-39\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1488, in the small Lombard town of Soncino between Cremona and Brescia, a family of Jewish printers completed the first edition of the entire Hebrew Bible to be produced with movable&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":591,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":547,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545\/revisions\/547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}