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For nearly 400 years one of the world’s oldest printed sets of that pivotal Jewish text, the Talmud, lay buried in the basement of a venerable English Christian institution. Thanks to a chance discovery at Sion College near London, however, it re-emerged in near perfect condition in 1991. And now visitors can actually see one of these precious books as part of an exhibition at Lambeth Palace Library that ends on 23 July.

http://www.lambethpalacelibrary.org/content/treasuresexhibition

The twelve-volume Bomberg Talmud is named after the famous Christian Hebraist and master printer, Daniel Bomberg, a native of Antwerp. In the exhibition catalogue, Hebrew book expert Brad Sabin Hill describes it as “one of the greatest achievements in the history of Hebrew printing, one that served as a model for all subsequent editions”. Following the original Bomberg template, this version forms exhibit 22 at the exhibition. Yet its placid and dignified appearance belies a rollercoaster of history.

Page from the Bomberg Talmud. This shows part one of the Talmudic tractate for the festival of Rosh Hashana. The larger font middle section consists of the Mishna, in Hebrew, followed by the Gemara, in Aramaic, both rendered in conventional Hebrew font. Surrounding these passages are rabbinical commentaries written in the distinctive Rashi script. The opening words, arb’a rashei shanim, mean ‘four new years’. Apart from the calendar new year, Rosh Hashana, the Mishna explains that there are three other ‘new year’ occasions, to mark the start of the year for cattle-tithing, for ‘kings and festivals’, and for trees (Tu Bishvat). For translation: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Talmud/rh1.html

The text of the Talmud itself encapsulates the traditional Oral Law that stood alongside the written law of the Torah itself. The core writings are the Mishna, written in Hebrew and collated around 200 AD. To that was added the longer commentary in Aramaic called the Gemara. Later, Jewish scholars in Babylon (in present-day Iraq) contributed their own texts, often in the form of discussions that still ring across the centuries. These writings run besides and around the central section, in a cross-referenced format that some half-jokingly dub the forerunner of the internet hyperlink.

Coinciding with the Babylonian Talmud, or Talmud Bavli, other scholars in Yavneh in the Holy Land (now Israel) created their own Jerusalem Talmud or Talmud Yerushalmi. Both Talmuds cover the intricacies of Jewish law over 60 tractates. Yet they also contain reams of aphorisms, ethical insights, folklore, fables, historical descriptions, even messianic predictions, poetry, musings on the inner meaning of Biblical passages, and even practical advice about how to hoe your field.

Throughout the Middle Ages the Catholic Church censored and banned the Talmud. They variously saw it as denigrating Christianity or impeding Jews from converting to their faith. The Soncino press printed Talmud extracts as early as 1483, only a few years after the Gutenberg bible appeared. Yet it was Bomberg who pioneered the first full printed Talmud in 1519, a gargantuan task for the technological exigencies of the time, and a true labour of love by a Christian who cherished the heritage of the ‘sister faith’, Judaism.

Escaping fire and fiat…

Bomberg printed this particular edition in Venice some time between 1526 and 1548; and five years after that latter date the Pope ordered all Talmuds to be burned. Somehow the set escaped the edict, and handwritten annotations in Italian dated around 1600 suggest that it was studied, possibly by Christians who valued its wisdom, in defiance of the Vatican. Other Talmuds were spirited away to safer havens in the Ottoman Empire and northern Europe. Quite how the Bomberg books arrived on these shores, though, remains a mystery. Jews had been expelled from Norman England in 1290, so the book was certainly not ‘imported’ by any contemporary Anglo-Jewish rabbis, because there simply were none. Yet around the 1620s, when it probably came here, we know that scholars of the Church of England, which separated from Rome in 1534, relished reading the Talmud in the original Hebrew and Aramaic.

The celebrated London bookseller Henry Fetherstone advertised the Bomberg Talmud set in his 1628 catalogue, the first known listing of antiquarian books in England. The next year, 19 London parishioners pooled their resources to purchase the books for £26, equivalent to nearly £4,000 in today’s money. The consortium duly donated the book to Sion College, an Anglican religious establishment, where it was noted in catalogues of 1650 and 1754. It also survived the great fire of London in 1666 which devastated large swathes of the college’s library, including a collection of smaller Hebrew books. Bizarrely the Talmud set lay otherwise forgotten and unused for hundreds of years.

Then in 1991, and quite by chance, a Hebrew scholar at the British Library re-discovered the Talmud in the college basement while looking for other books. “It was an incredible experience to see it there on those dark stacks, yet in such pristine condition”, he told Untold London. Another comparable contemporary printed set, the Valmadonna Talmud, is housed in Westminster Abbey Library; there are two more in New York. But none other exist anywhere else. The Bomberg editions were rebound by the English master binder Bernard Middleton, who incorporated its original English leather boards, and the latest stage in their long journey was their transfer to Lambeth Palace in 1996 when Sion College closed its library.

Incidentally, one intriguing side note about Bomberg’s ‘sister’, the Valmadonna Talmud: it was owned by Henry VIII, who allegedly wished to cite it in his attempt to divorce Catherine of Aragon. Maybe scholastic allies of the renegade monarch felt it wise to quote from the Talmud, as it interpreted laws originally expressed in the Old Testament, a text which Jews and Christians alike regard as holy writ.

Other amazing items.....

The current Lambeth exhibition celebrates the 400th year of an extraordinary collection. The Great Hall in which it is contained was built in 1663 and survived a direct hit from a German bomb in World War II.

“It is lovely to be able to show what we have”, deputy librarian Gabriel Sewell said. “There truly is something for everyone here.” Visitors can view such amazing artefacts as a 1455 Gutenberg Bible, probably the first printed book to arrive in Britain, with gold illumination and elegant red and black lettering on parchment (exhibit 3). In exhibit 20 stands the 1587 warrant for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots; not far away is an Ethiopic Christian Psalter of 1491, the first setting in type of a language other than Latin, Greek or Hebrew.

Also displayed are a Godfrey sword to commemorate the trumped-up ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678; the marriage license of the poet John Milton; the commissioners’ papers approving Wren’s rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral (exhibit 19), and George Carew’s diary pages recording the last journey and death of Sir Frances Drake (10). Somewhat ghoulishly, Richard III’s Book of Hours (exhibit 7) is probably the very compilation of prayers that he read in his tent before being killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Two particularly ancient books on display are a 10th century copy of Bishop Aldhelm’s De Virginate (4) and the pocket-sized 9th century Irish Macdurnan Gospel-Book (12).

While the Bomberg Talmud is the only explicitly Jewish item on view, visitors will doubtless spot many fascinating exemplars of Judaic tradition elsewhere. For instance, there is Queen Elizabeth I’s personal prayer-book of 1569 (exhibit 13), turned to a page that shows a picture of the queen supplicated in prayer, beside an invocation in Latin to “the Lord God of Israel”. Other examples include a 15th century miniature of the prophet Samuel anointing Saul as King of Israel; and a charming depiction of Jonah and the whale from a 14th century psalter. The five books of Moses are celebrated in the famous lavishly illustrated Tyndale Pentateuch, printed in English in Antwerp, 1530. And near the entrance you will find a bust of the late Archbishop Fisher by the US-born British Jewish sculptor, Jacob Epstein.

Page from the Lambeth Bible, 1140s, English provenance, illustrating scenes from the Book of Daniel

No visit to the palace would be complete without viewing exhibit 6, the so-called Lambeth Bible. Created in the 1140s, the book is turned to a dazzling illustration of the story of the prophet Daniel. Of course the accompanying Latin text is a translation from the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, or Tanach.

A perfect exemplar of English Romanesque art, it is one of about twelve huge decorated bibles that still exist. Monks used to read aloud from the tome in church and at meal times. More than eight centuries later, Archbishop Rowan Williams calls the Lambeth Bible his favourite historic book. “This wonderful artistic achievement of the early Middle Ages portrays the story of the Bible in vivid, beautiful terms as a story that was meant to speak to people of that age”, he says, “just as the story of the Bible is meant to speak to people of every age.”