Bidspirit auction | (AMERICAN JUDAICA).

(AMERICAN JUDAICA). - New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Edited and translated by Michael L. Rodkinson.. First Edition with translation into English. Photographic frontispiece portraits of Rodkinson and fellow editor Dr. Isaac Wise . Twenty volumes, complete here bound in 16 (including Rodkinson's History of the Talmud). An uncut and largely unopened set. Each volume with book-plate of Gustav Ehrenberg, including his original purchase receipt (1900). Boards with paper spine labels. 4to. Singerman 5097. New York: 1896-1903. The First Edition of the first translation of the Talmud into English.      Although a pioneering effort, this abridged translation was not particularly well received by many of the editor's scholarly peers. For more, see Marvin J. Heller, Deciphering the Talmud: The First English Edition of the Talmud Revisited. Michael Levi Rodkinson: His Translation of the Talmud, and the Ensuing Controversy in: Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden, 2013) Chap. 13.      Rodkinson (original surname Frumkin), was born into a Russian Chabad-oriented family in 1845 and migrated to America in 1888.