DIEU, Louis de.
Animadversiones sive commentarius in quatuor evangelia, in quo collatis, Syri imprimis, Arabis, evangelii Hebræi, Vulgati, Erasmi & Bezæ versionibus ...
Leiden, Ex officina Bonaventura & Abraham Elzevir, 1631. 2 works in 1 volume. 4to. With a woodcut printer's device on the title-page (le Solitaire), three woodcut decorated initials, two woodcut headpieces and one woodcut tailpiece. Ad 2 with a frame built up from typographical ornaments on the title-page, three woodcut decorated initials, a woodcut headpiece, plus eight headpieces and two tailpieces built up from typographical ornaments. With: (bound before ad 1): (2) CHRISTEN, Johannes. Speculum harmonicum, hoc est: Genesis et analysis harmoniæ quatuor evangelistarum, synoptica; perpetuâ dichotomiâ illustrata, secundùm seriem temporum, locorum & rerum gestarum accuratissimam ... Bern, Georgius Sonnleitnerus, 1642.
Contemporary blind-tooled vellum with overhanging fore-edge, with the manuscript title on the head of the spine, blue edges. [16], 87, [1 blank]; [16], 548, [19], [1 blank] pp.
€ 4,500
Ad 1: First edition of a rare work with commentary on the four Gospels by an important Orientalist. The work is partly printed in Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew and Greek. Louis de Dieu (1590-1642), who was well-versed in all these languages, was renowned for his interpretations of biblical texts, which were based on a wide and profound linguistic learning. His studies were mainly concerned with the early and more recent translations of the Bible. In the present work, he compares the Gospel texts in the Oriental languages with that of the Latin translations by humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) and Calvinist Theodore Beza (1519-1605).
De Dieu was a Dutch Protestant minister and a leading orientalist. He studied theology and Oriental languages (Ararbic, Syriac, Hebrew and Ethiopic) at the University of Leiden, under Thomas Erpenius and Jacob Golius. The present work is the first part of a series of four separately published works with commentaries on the New Testament. They were reprinted as a single body of work in 1693, under the title Critica sacra, sive animadversiones in loca quaedam difficiliora. De Dieu also wrote the first Persian grammar published in Europe.
Ad 2: The second work in this volume is a scarce treatise on the genealogy of Christ and the chronology of the 'Passio Christi' based on evangelist sources. It has only been recorded in four libraries and we have not been able to find any other copies in sales records of the past century. It is apparently so scarce, that the USTC has marked it as a "lost book".
With a later annotation on the front pastedown about the contents of the work, and an ownership annotation by Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Hagenbuch (1700-1763) at the head of the title-page ("Casp. Hagenbuchii 1760"). The vellum is slightly scratched and stained on the boards, the work has been professionally rebacked, with the original spine laid down. Ad 1 is slightly browned, ad 2 is somewhat browned and water stained throughout, otherwise in good condition. Ad 1: Rahir, Les Elzevier, 322; STCN 832859540 (10 copies); USTC 1028037; Willems, Les Elzevier, 346. Ad 2: USTC 2179442 (0 copies, marked as lost); WorldCat 716719091, 862085253, 1284477030 (4 copies); not in VD17.
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