Keritot Tractate with Rashi Commentary and Tosafot

Must Know

This volume contains one of the tractates of the Babylonian Talmud printed in Daniel Bomberg’s printing house in Venice. Bomberg, a Christian, was the first to print a full edition of all the tractates of the Babylonian Talmud, a project for which he received official permission from Pope Leo X. The first edition was printed in 1520-1523 and following its success two additional editions were printed during Bomberg’s lifetime. The volume here is from the second edition, printed in 1528.
The Bomberg Babylonian Talmud had a huge impact on Jewish scholarship. Until the invention of the printing press, the Talmud was conveyed via manuscripts that were available only to very few due to their high price and the amount of work entailed in producing them. In addition, the different Talmud manuscripts presented different versions due to differences in traditions or copying mistakes. However, as soon as the complete edition of the Talmud was printed it became a common and affordable book.
The influence of this edition is still felt: the version of the text determined at the print house based on several different manuscripts became the popular and only version of the Talmud. The layout of the page designed in this edition remains to this day its iconic layout: the Talmud text in the center of the page, the Rashi commentary in its internal margins, and the Tosafot commentary on its outer margins.