Critici Sacri: sive Annotata doctissimorum virorum in Vetus ac Novum Testamentum. Quibus accedunt tractatus varii theologico-philologici. Editio nova in novem tomos . . .

A great monument to biblical scholarship, comprising nearly 10,000 pages of commentaries by well over fifty sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholars, perhaps the most ambitious universal Bible commentary ever compiled. The present second (first Netherlands) edition includes 13 stunning large engraved plates and is also a typographic monument of the greatest importance.
Printed in Amsterdam and Utrecht by H. & the widow of D. Boom, J. & G. Janssonius van Waesberge, G. Borstius, A. van Someren, J. Wolters, W. van de Water, 1698.
The commentaries and criticism are arranged not by author, but by the Bible passages they discuss, so that one can readily read and compare the views of all the leading scholars concerning any passage. The present edition mentions the compilers only at the end of the preface taken over from the first edition (London 1660), principally John Pearson (1613-1686), Bishop of Chester and later Professor of Theology at Cambridge, with his colleagues Anthony Scattergood, Francis Gouldman and Richard Pearson.
They brought together texts by Erasmus, Sebastian Münster, Joannes Drusius, Benedictus Arias Montanus, Isaac Casaubon, Edward Brerewood, Kaspar Waser, Hugo Grotius, Petrus Cunaeus, Joseph Scaliger, Johannes Cloppenburg, James Ussher and many more.
Volumes 1-4 cover the Old Testament, volume 5 the Apocrypha and Jewish antiquities, and volumes 6-8 the New Testament. The dedication to Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg, and the five-page note to the reader are new to this edition.

The main (Latin) text is set in roman types supplemented by italic, with numerous extensive passages in Greek and Hebrew (some running over several pages and some with a parallel Latin translation), one extensive passage in Syriac and shorter passages in Arabic, textura (used for Dutch and English) and fraktur (used for German). Neither the plates nor the engravings in the text or on the title-pages are signed, but they are fine pieces of work.

The world map, ten other plates and one engraving in the text are based on those first published in Plantin’s Polyglot Bible (1568-1573) where most were prepared by Arias Montanus. The world map shows how the world was repopulated by Noah’s three sons after the flood, and the origin of the present version (and that with “Tom. VI. pag. 553, probably from the 1660 Critici Sacri ) has long puzzled cartographers (see Shirley 125 and his corrigenda). Its inclusion of the northern part of a large land mass south of the East Indies has encouraged speculations about an early sighting of Australia. The lovely scenes of the Garden of Eden and the Flood in the margins of the present version do not appear on any of the earlier ones. The present versions of Arias Montanus’s maps are not in Laor (cf. 45, 46 & 945) or Poortman & Augusteijn (cf. chapter 14, items 1-4).

Isaac Walton’s London Polyglot Bible (1655-1657) secured England’s place in the world of biblical scholarship. While both its preparation and its publication stimulated a great deal of new scholarship, its parallel presentation of eighteen Bible texts in nine languages left limited room for commentary. The 1660 Critici Sacri in nine volumes was the first and most extensive attempt to fill this gap, the only comparable work being Matthew Poole’s five-volume Synopsis Criticorum (1669-1676). Both were printed by James Flesher in London.
English book production still lagged behind Dutch at this date, however, so the present second edition reaps the typographic benefits of the Dutch Golden Age. It was published by a syndicate of six bookseller/publishers in Amsterdam and Utrecht, but the typographic materials and their distribution in the book suggest that the printing may have been shared by two offices, one of them probably Hendrik Wetstein’s.
The rich collection of typographic materials includes (in gatherings likely to have been printed by Wetstein) Nikolaas Kis’s Text roman & italic (the earliest recorded use of any Kis roman or italic in Dutch printing outside Kis’s own publications) and J. A. Schmidt’s Mediaan Greek, which may also have been cut by Kis (the earliest example, outside of type specimens, of any of the new Greeks cut without the ligatures that had been normal for well over 150 years). The (serto) Syriac is a copy of Granjon's, but does not appear to exactly match the copies known from other publications. The 4 or 5 larger series of initial letters (mostly in the gatherings probably not printed by Wetstein) are also noteworthy, and some may be new.

Volume 6, which begins the commentary on the New Testament, has a full-fledged title-page similar to the general title-page and with the same imprint, but reading “Criticorum Sacrorum tomus sextus, exhibens Annotata in quatuor Evangelia. ...”. The other seven volumes have only a part-title without imprint.
By its own numbering, the book comprises 18 parts in 8 volumes, but part 2 of volume 1 has its own part-title, while parts 2 and 3 in the other volumes do not, the separate parts of volume 1 have about the same number of pages as the other whole volumes, and the general title-page calls for nine volumes, so the book was clearly designed for binding in nine volumes, like the 1660 edition.

Although the endpapers were replaced, probably in the nineteenth century, two original endleaves survive, at the beginning of volumes 1 & 6. These bear owner’s inscriptions and there are also a few early annotations in the margins. Casparus Henricus van Heimenberg (1694-1764), Protestant minister at Wormerveer, acquired this copy in 1729 from the library of the late D. Pekstok in nearby Crommeniedyk, about ten kilometers north of Amsterdam. One of the two must have been an Arabist, for two of the manuscript notes in the text correct the Arabic.

With all plates in fine condition. The last text leaf in volume 3 (fol. s1) is lacking, as are a few blank leaves, but the text is further in very good condition, with only an occasional sheet slightly browned, occasional minor offsetting, a couple leaves slightly wrinkled and a few other very minor, mostly marginal, spots, dirt, etc. A beautiful copy of a magnificent book, extremely rare on the market.

(124) pp., 1132, 922 cols., (4) pp., 566, 432, 496, 304 cols., (8) pp., 1060, 1196 cols., (2) pp., (2) pp., 992, 408, 272 cols., (4) pp., 1020, 440, 838 cols., (4) pp., 740, 352 cols., (2) pp., 464, 168 cols.; (4), lxiv pp., 1000, 800, 550 cols., (4) pp., 1376, 1190 cols., (4) pp., 616 cols., (2) pp., 232 cols., (2) pp., 1544 cols., (72) pp.