The First Edition of the Mishnah with Maimonides' Commentary
First printing of the Mishnah with commentary by Maimonides, printed in Naples in 1492. A copy of the book is preserved in the National Library of Israel.
The Maimonides hoped that the reader would find in his book all the rulings and halakhot necessary to maintain a full Jewish life.
The first edition of the Mishnah with Maimonides’ commentary was published in Naples, Italy in 1492, the same year in which the Jewish population was expelled from Spain. Already, in the early days of printing in Hebrew, an “Achilles' Heel” was discovered within Maimonides' great exegetical project: Jewish scholars refused to abandon the engagement of Talmudic argumentation and controversy.
They turned the work of Maimonides into yet another layer in the vast interpretive literature that he himself had sought to summarize and distill.
The copy of the work that resides in the National Library contains notes in the handwriting of the annotator, Rabbi Shmuel Lirma.
