Obj. ID: 40550  Biblia en Lengua Espanola, Amsterdam, 1646

This text was prepared by William Gross:

The beginning of the Jewish community in Amsterdam is rooted in the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions at the end of the 16th century. During this period, many of the large number of Jews whose ancestors had been forcibly converted almost one hundred years earlier and labeled "New Christians" were being hounded and accused of heresies. Some of these chose to leave and found a friendly refuge in the Protestant city of Amsterdam. As more and more of them arrived and sought to return to their Jewish roots, the need arose for fundamental Jewish texts that would be comprehensible to an audience ignorant of Hebrew.
This large-format Spanish Bible was one of the answers to that need. Printed in 1646, it was the second edition of this Bible to be printed in Amsterdam. Both it and the earlier edition (of 1630) were copied from a Spanish Bible printed in Ferrara, Italy in 1563. The title reads: "Bible in the Spanish language, translated word for word from the Hebrew truth."
The volume’s title page shows the figures of Moses and Aaron, and two scenes from the Garden of Eden. The images are modeled after similar (woodcut) depictions by Hans Holbein, demonstrating the ubiquitous custom of "borrowing" images from earlier sources.
621 pp.