To the advantage of the Republic of Letters?: Gulielmus Surenhusius’s Projects, Plans, and Collaborations Beyond the Mishnah

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates how Guilielmus Surenhusius tried to make a career out of both the Mishnah specifically and Hebrew studies more generally through the book trade and the publishing of Hebrew works. The information is culled mostly from his correspondence, from which we learn that he was working with both Jews and Christians. It is demonstrated that the Surenhusius’s achievements were not only limited to his monumental edition of the Mishnah, but also that he also collaborated on Nuñez and Athias’s Amsterdam edition of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (1702), the lost commentary on the whole of the Talmud by Benjamin ben Immanuel Musaphia, the lost Latin translation of the whole of the Talmud by Balthasar Scheidt, and Breithaupt’s Latin translation of Jarchi (Rashi).