Sefer tehillim. Psalterium Hebraicum

1547

Shoults Swa 1547 B

[Basel: Hieronymus Froben and Nikolaus Episcopius]

Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language spoken today by some 9 million people world-wide. In antiquity, it competed with Aramaic and Greek, and survived as a language used mainly in Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, and poetry. In the 19th century, the language faced a revival, and those living in Israel today constitute the majority of speakers. The Froben family were Swiss printers, and Hieronymus (1501–1563) son of Johann Froben, continued the family business, providing texts like this Psalter of 1547 for Christian scholars interested in the Hebrew Bible, its language and grammar, and overall biblical studies. This copy once belonged to William Arderne Shoults (1839-1887).