# Arbaʻa avne haǧ-ǧilionim mehat-tora ha-ḥadaša ašer neʻettaqu melišon romi lelišon ʻivri [hebraice] Quatuor Evangelia Novi Testamenti ex Latino in Hebraicum sermonem versa

**Autore:** Iona Giovanni Battista
**Dati Editoriali:** Rome, De Propaganda Fide, 1668
**Codice Archivio:** 128
**Prezzo:** 2100 USD
**Stato Commerciale:** Disponibile
**Link Ufficiale Collezione:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/iona-quatuor-evangelia-1668

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## Descrizione Accademica e Analisi
Folio (350x235 mm). [28], 395, [1 blank] pp. Collation: [π]4 ++-+++4 ++++2 A-Bbb4 Ccc6. Parallel text in Hebrew and Latin arranged in two columns. Half title, title within a typographic frame with the woodcut device of the Congretatio de Propaganda fide in the center. With four large woodcut vignettes at the beginning of each Gospel showing the Evangelists with their symbols, taken from the Arabic Gospels printed in Rome in 1590-‘91 by the Typographia Medicea. Woodcut initials and ornaments. Contemporary grey cardboards, inked title on spine (endleaves renewed). Some marginal worm tracks partly skillfully repaired, lower inner corner of the first quire repaired not affecting the text, some scattered browning due to the paper, all in all a very good, genuine copy. Uncut with deckle edges.First edition of the Gospels in the Hebrew translation from the Vulgate by the converted Jew Giovanni Battista Iona, who completed his version before 1639. The preliminary matter includes a dedication to Pope Clement IX, a twenty-two-page introduction printed in parallel columns in Latin and Hebrew, and the approbations. Jehudas Jona was born in a Jewish Sephardic family in Safed in 1588 and renamed Giovanni Battista in Warsaw in 1625. After travelling around various cultural centres in Europe, he settled in Rome, where he lectured at La Sapienza University from 1649 to 1664, and subsequently at the Collegio dei Neofiti until his death in 1668. Among his students was Giulio Bartolocci. Like other teachers of the discipline, he was also a Hebrew scriptor in the Vatican and an interpreter of other Eastern languages. In addition to teaching, he was intensely involved in apologetics. We know of his Hebrew and Latin sermons on the true Messiah and the descent of the Holy Spirit, as well as his translations of Bellarmine’s catechism, the Gospels and St Thomas’s Summa contra Gentiles. He died before completing the Hebrew version of the Acts of the Apostles, as well as various dialogues and polemical pamphlets against the Jews, which he left as manuscripts (cf. G. Rita, Le discipline umanistiche da Sisto V a Clemente XII (1587-1740), in: “Storia della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia de ‘La Sapienza’”, L. Capo-M.R. Di Simone, eds., Rome, 2000, p. 280).“Three main points may be adduced from [the introduction]. First, one particular reason for which Iona wished to read the Gospels in Hebrew was his belief – a widespread one – that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. Iona was therefore hoping to find this original version of Matthew or, at least, an approximation to it. Second, the Hebrew versions of the Gospel of Matthew that Iona actually found – the translation included in Shem-Tov ibn Shaprut’s fourteenthcentury polemical treatise ʾEben Bōḥan (The Touch Stone) and the translation published in Paris in 1555 by Jean du Tillet and Jean Mercier – disappointed him greatly, since he deemed that they were written in poor Hebrew, or in what he calls ‘stammered language’ […] Iona believed that the rendering of the Gospel into ‘bad’ Hebrew was a polemical technique used by the authors of these translations in order to make the Gospel ‘despicable’ to Jews […] Third, Iona hoped that his own translation was written in such ‘pure’ Hebrew that may enable it to be perceived as being ‘like the rest of the Holy Scriptures’, that is, as being similar to the books of the Hebrew Bible […] Iona hopes that the reading of his translation will be convincing to some Jews and therefore bring about their conversion. It may be noted that Iona’s translation is one of the earliest Hebrew translations of the New Testament in which such a missionary aim is mentioned. Only in the eighteenth and nineteenth century did the mission to the Jews become a main motivation for producing Hebrew translations of the New Testament […] Regarding the Hebrew used by Iona in the translation, it may first be observed that it has some clear ‘biblicizing’ features […] Last but not least, it is not rare to find in Iona’s translation renderings of undeniable quality, that is, cases in which Iona manages to find a translation that both faithfully renders the meaning of the Latin expression or phrase and is idiomatic in Hebrew and resonates with Jewish culture” (E. Shuali, Giovanni Battista Iona’s Hebrew translation of the four Gospels, in: “Journal of Jewish Studies”, 2023, 74.2, pp. 408-428). In 1626, Urban VIII established the Polyglot Printing House of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith with the aim of producing publications for missionary work. The press soon amassed a considerable amount of typographical material (23 alphabets), which was augmented by oriental characters donated by the Vatican and Medici printing houses. The creation of new typefaces was entrusted to the punchcutter S. Paolini. The press mainly printed religious books, grammars and lexicons.

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## Bibliografia di Riferimento
Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\CFIE\007075; T.H. Darlow & H.F. Moule, Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the British and Foreign Bible Society, London, 1911, vol. II/2, p. 716, no. 5136.

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