Rare Copy of 16th Century Psalms, Loathed by Christopher Columbus’s Son, Is up for Auction

Ilan Ben Zion : Mar 10, 2017
The Times of Israel

The “Polyglot Psalter” was the second book ever printed in Arabic, which appeared alongside the original Hebrew and Aramaic, Latin and Greek translations of the text.

(New York, NY) — [The Times of Israel] Ferdinand Columbus, the famed explorer’s bastard son, had a serious beef with the first multilingual edition of the Book of Psalms, a pristine copy of which goes up for auction in New York next week. (Photo Courtesy of Kestenbaum & Co. via Times of Israel)

The Polyglot Psalter was printed in Genoa a decade after his father’s death, in 1516, but its two-page footnote on the life of Christopher Columbus on a verse in Psalms 19 mentioning “the ends of the earth” rubbed him the wrong way.

The Polyglot Psalter was the second book ever printed in Arabic, which appeared alongside the original Hebrew and Aramaic, Latin and Greek translations of the text.

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The Times of Israel