Beschreibung:

BIBLE, in Massachuset. Manusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God naneeswa Nukkone Testament kah wonk Wusku Testament . Translated by John Eliot (1604-1690). Cambridge [Massachussetts]: Samuel Green, 1685-80. 2 parts in one, 4 o (195 x 147 mm). Natick-language general title, Natick-language New Testament title, Natick-language metrical Psalms (2K3-2Y4) and Rules for Christian Living (2Z1). (Occasional repairs in lower margins, catching a few letters, that on 3G3 affecting last line of text, small hole affecting several letters on 2Z3, small hole affecting a few letters on 3P4.) Nineteenth-century blue morocco gilt, red morocco doublures gilt, by F. Bedford; velvet-lined black morocco folding case. Provenance : John Tyrrell Bailey, presumably pastor at Watertown (1643-1697, inscription on title: "Jo. Baily Jan. 1 86/7 N.E.") -- Joseph Bailey (inscription on title: "John Tyrell Baylee To his son Joseph Baylee.") -- Grindal Rawson (1680-1715), secretary of the Massachusetts Colony, minister in Mendon, Massachusetts and translator into native languages (inscription on flyleaf: "Grindall Rawson His Indian Bible Given him by his Father 1712.") -- Robert D.L. Gardiner. Second edition: the second Bible printed in America, distinguished by having been printed in part by a Native American, "an Indian native, born at the Indian town called Hassanamesitt, now the town of Grafton..." (Thomas, History of Printing in America , p. 90). He was apprenticed to Samuel Green in 1659, given the surname Printer , and was thereafter called James Printer. In 1680, he was at work on the second edition with Green, and Eliot wrote in a letter to Robert Boyle: "I desire to see it done before I die, and I am so deep in years, that I cannot expect to live long; besides, we have but one man, viz., the Indian Printer, that is able to compose the Sheets, correct the Press with understanding" (quoted in Thomas, p. 92). "In Sept. 1672 the Commissioners ordered that all the remaining copies of the first edition of the Indian Bible (1663-61) should be bound. It is probable that the edition was soon exhausted. Many copies were lost or destroyed in the Indian war of 1675-6. As a new edition was much needed, Eliot began, about the year 1677, to revise the whole work, and he petitioned the Commissioners to reprint it. Eliot's own account of the revision contains the words: 'I obteined the favor to reprint the New testam t & psalmes, but I met w t h much obstruction for reprinting the old testamen t , yet by prayre to God, Patience & intreatye, I at last obteined y t also, praised be the Lord'" (Darlow & Moule). Eliot's letters to Governor Robert Boyle suggest that the second edition consisted of 2,000 copies. This copy contains a duplicate of the first title and blank as 5P2.3: "the first two leaves originally formed the third and fourth [sic] leaves of sheet Ppppp: this is proved by the fact that in one copy they occur in duplicate after Ppppp2" (Darlow & Moule). WITH AN IMPORTANT COLONIAL PROVENANCE: John Bailey was pastor at Watertown and two of his own sermons were published by Samuel Green, publisher of both the first and second editions of the Eliot Bible, making Bailey a likely candidate for early ownership of this volume. The book subsequently passed to his son and thereafter to Grindal Rawson an important figure in the history of Indian proselytizing and translation. Rawson was a classmate of Cotton Mather at Harvard and, after 1692, a clergyman sent by the general court to serve in the army sent to Canada to carry out Christian conversion. He learned the native languages in about nine months and is credited as being second to only John Eliot for his work among the Native Americans. In 1698 he, with Rev. Samuel Danforth of Taunton, was instructed by the commissioners for the propagation of the Gospel to visit the Indian plantations in Massachusetts. Rawson translated numerous works into the native languages, among them John Cotton's catechism "Milk for B