Books and Manuscripts

Germantown: Christoph Saur, 1763. Second edition. Thick quarto. (4), 992, 277, (3) pp. Printed in two columns. Contemporary calf over reverse beveled wooden boards, rebacked, claps perished; early marbled endpapers; old ownership signature on verso of title-page and foreword, crossed out; scattered spotting to text; repairs with minor losses to OT *2 and A1 and NT A2 and Mm4. Arndt, The First Century of German Language Printing in the United States of America 269; Darlow & Moule 4240; Evans 9343; Hildeburn 1877; O'Callaghan, p. 25; Sabin 5192; Wright, Early Bibles of America, pp. 28-50.

The second edition of the first bible in a European language to be published in America.

Christoph Sauer's (1695-1758) text of the Luther translation was largely based on the Halle Bible, but with the addition of the appendix to the Apocrypha with books 3 and 4 Esdras and 3 Maccabees supplied from the Berlenburg version. When first published in 1743, Sauer's bible was the first bible in a European language to be published in America and only the second Bible printed in America after John Eliot's Indian Bibles of the 1660s. The present edition, rumored to have been issued in only 2,000 copies, was printed by Sauer's son, Christoph Sauer (1722-84).