Münster's grammar and dictionary of Aramaic

Münster, Sebastian. ['Arukh] Dictionarium chaldaicum non ta[m] ad Chaldaicos interpretes q[uam] Rabbinoru[m] intelligenda co[m]mentaria necessarium [...].

€ 8,500.00

Sammelband containing two rare works by Münster: the first grammar of Aramaic written in Germany, a principal work, and the first German-produced Aramaic dictionary. "His dictionary [was] adapted from Pagninus's excerpt of Nathan Ben Yehiel's Arukh [...] Münster's most important work [...] was his Aramaic grammar, the first of its kind. The 'Chaldean' element in the Bible has of course long since been recognised, and people like Aurogallus and Fagius had treated the subject earlier in connection with their Hebrew studies. But just as Sanctes Pagninus was the first to exclude deliberately the Aramaic vocabulary from his Hebrew dictionary (1529), so Münster was the first to publish both a grammar and a dictionary devoted solely to Aramaic [...] A special feature of this grammar is the lexicographical introduction to the rabbinical Bible commentaries, with various Latin-Hebrew wordlists of technical terms. Münster also gives examples of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi rabbinical script in woodcut [...] The author compares the Aramaic with Arabic (called by him Saracenica lingua) which he quotes in transcription" (Smitskamp).

Binding restored; endpapers replaced. Obliterated contemp. ownership to t. p.; a few contemp. marginalia near the beginning of the grammar.