JOSEPHUS, Flavius.

Folio. ll. (iv) 886 [i] (xvi). Roman letter. Woodcut printer’s device to t-p. Woodcut initials. Contemp. probably English but possibly Dutch blindstamped calf, central panel formed of double floriated roll (not in Oldham), fillets, remains of clasps and corner supports, ms. inscription to upper board mostly faded, rebacked, edges stained red, ms. edge title. Autograph to front flyleaf 1622 of Petrus van Spoelberch with purchase note ‘Inveteratus xxviii st[uiver?]’, and note to lower corner, ‘praepositurus,’ some inscriptions lost through ink burning, C17th ms. annotations likely in the same hand, some in Hebrew, small sheet with Dutch inscription laid in at index. C19th inscription to t-p, ‘Dulac.’ Very light browning to index and to margins of a few ll., a very good, clean, wide margined copy.

Rare sixth Froben edition of Josephus’s history of the Jewish people in Latin, the most famous and influential work of Hellenistic Jewish history, edited by the German scholar Sigismundus Gelenius (1497-1554). It was first published in 1524 and followed by Froben’s Greek editio princeps in 1544. Gelenius used Greek manuscripts to significantly update the existing Latin version, traditionally attributed to Rufinus of Aquileia. Also included is Josephus’s autobiography, his history of the First Jewish Revolt of AD 66-70 against the Romans, his defence of Judaism against the Egyptian historian Apion, and his De Imperio Rationis, an account of the martyrdom of the seven Maccabee brothers and their mother, edited by Desiderius Erasmus. This last work is now acknowledged to be spurious.

The Antiquitatum Judaicarum combines mythical Berosian, biblical, and Roman history to tell the story of the Jewish peoples from the creation to Josephus’s own time, with his work De Bello Judaico conveying his own experiences of the Jewish Revolt against the Romans, which culminated in the Siege of Jerusalem and destruction of Herod’s Temple. His works contain contemporary references to Jesus, his brother James, John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, Herod, and the Sadducees, Pharisees and Zealots. The Contra Apionem is a defence of Judaism against the Greek Alexandrine historian Apion, in which Josephus demonstrated the antiquity of the Jewish religion and the authenticity of the Jewish scriptures. 

 Petrus van Spoelberch may have belonged to the distinguished noble Belgian house of Spoelberch; someone with this name was born in 1576. Other books with his purchase notes appear in Belgian institutional library catalogues.