BIBLE IN GERMAN

Biblia das ist: Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, Nach ver Deutschen Ueberfekung D. Martin Luthers

Germantown, PA: Christoph Saur, 1763. Thick quarto. [4], 992, 277, [3]pp. Printed in two columns. Expert restoration repairing tears with minor losses to OT *2 and A1 and NT A2 and Mm4.

Contemporary calf over bevelled wooden boards, early marbled endpapers, rebacked to style, spine with raised bands in six compartments

The second Saur bible: the second edition of the first bible in a European language to be published in America.

Sauer's text of the Luther translation was largely based on the Halle Bible, but with the addition of the appendix to the Apocrypha with books 3 and 4 Esdras and 3 Maccabees supplied from the Berlenburg version. When first published in 1743, Saur's bible was the first bible in a European language to be published in America and just the second Bible printed in America after John Eliot's Indian Bibles of the 1660s. The present edition, rumored to have been issued in 2000 copies, was printed by Christopher Saur II, son of Christoph Saur the elder.

Arndt, The First Century of German Language Printing in the United States of America 269; Darlow & Moule 4240; Evans 9343; Hildeburn 1877; O'Callaghan, p. 25; Sabin 5192; Wright, Early Bibles of America, pp. 28-50.

Item #32387

Price: $3,500.00