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Lot 260
Gutenberg Bible Leaf From the 4th Book of Esdras. Printed leaf, double folio, 4 columns (2 each front and back), each column with 42 lines, being chapter 11, line 38 through chapter 13, line 6, from the 4th Book of Ezra, identified in Latin as Esdrae liber IV, and traditionally included among the Apocrypha of English Bibles as 2 Esdras. Authorship is ascribed to Ezra, c. A.D. 100. Printed by Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany), c. 1450-1455. With hand rubrication. Presented in a black leather portfolio case with the title: A Noble Fragment Being A Leaf of the Gutenberg Bible. 1450-1455 With A Bibliographical Essay By A. Edward Newton. New York Gabriel Wells 1921. The Bible leaf is attached with archival tape on the verso at the left margin to a slightly larger sheet in the portfolip.
Chapters 3-14 of 4 Esdras are referred to as the Jewish Apocalypse of Ezra and contain seven visions granted to Salathiel (also called Ezra) in Babylon. The page offered here holds part of the fifth and sixth visions. The fifth vision has an eagle with three heads and twenty wings rising from the sea, being rebuked by a lion and then burned. The page begins with the lion rebuking the eagle, "Listen and I will speak to you. The Most High says to you, 'Are you not the one that remains of the four beasts which I had made to reign in my world so that the end of my times might come through them? You, the fourth that has come, have conquered all the beasts that have gone before; and you have held sway over the world with much terror, and over all the earth with grievous oppression'…." The Lord tells a terrified Ezra that the eagle is "the fourth kingdom which appeared in a vision to your brother Daniel" and "the lion is the Messiah whom the Most High has kept until the end of days, who will arise from the posterity of David…."
In the sixth vision (13:1-58), Ezra sees "something like the figure of a man come up out of the heart of the sea…and behold, that man flew with the clouds of heaven; and wherever he turned his face to look, everything under his gaze trembled, and whenever his voice issued from his mouth, all who heard his voice melted as wax melts when it feels the fire…." The page ends with line 6 of the sixth vision.
A translation of the the fourth Book of Ezra is included, with the text of this leaf highlighted. The Gutenberg Bible is a printed version of the Latin Vulgate. It was the first major book to be printed with movable type. It is thought that Gutenberg printed approximatey 180 copies: 145 on paper and the remainder on vellum. Either 47 or 48 of the 42-line Bibles are known to exist today but only 21 of them are complete. Even at the time they were printed, they were prohibitively expensive and probably only within the financial reach of churches and monasteries.
Estimated Value $50,000 - 60,000.
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