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Lot 158
Sale 6285 - Books and Manuscripts
Mar 27, 2025
10:00AM ET
Live / Philadelphia
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Estimate
$600 -
900
Price Realized
$384
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Lot Description
[Judaica] [Paine, Thomas] Levi, David. A Defence of the Old Testament, in a Series of Letters, Addressed to Thomas Paine...
London: Printed for the Author, by D. Levi, 1797. First English edition. 8vo. (ii), 2, 208 pp. Disbound; all edges trimmed; soiling and creasing to title-page, small chipping and closed tear along edges of same; scattered light spotting to text. ESTC N28798; Lowndes, 1126
Scarce first English edition of Anglo-Jewish scholar David Levi's (1742-1801) refutation of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. Levi was the first English Jew to write in defense of Judaism, here against Paine's rationalist critique of the Hebrew Bible.
A more common New York edition, printed by William A. Davis for Naphtali Judah, appeared the same year.
According to RBH, this is the first copy of the English edition to come to auction since 2010.