A Manual of Hebrew Grammar.
Andover: Printed by Flagg, Gould, and Newman, 1833.
Price: $3,750.00
About the item
First edition. Inscribed on the upper cover, "Oliver Holden, Esqr. from his sincere friend the Author" 54pp. 8vo. Original cloth-backed boards. Ex-library with stamps and bookplate to front pastedown, and blindstamp to title (Rochester Theological Seminary). Goldman 183; Rosenbach 368; Shaw and Shoemaker 21148; Singerman 0590.
Item #326720
"Joshua Seixas, the son of Gershom Mendes Seixas (the minister of New York's Shearith Israel congregation), was born in New York in 1802. Little is known about his life. He taught in Shearith Israels Hebrew school in the mid-1920s and he established the congregation's first choir. Seixas moved to Charlestown, MA in the early 1830s and gave lessons in Hebrew. Seixas began referring to himself as James while in Charlestown and it is assumed that he converted to Unitarian Christianity while there. Seixas then settled in Hudson, OH. He offered priovate Hebrew classes to students at Oberlin College, and later at Western Reserve University ... He also taught groups of Mormons – the center of the movement at the time was Kirtland, OH – and among his students was Joseph Smith ... This Hebrew grammar is essentially a condensed version of the larger one publshed by Moses Stuart, which Seixas considered 'the best Grammar ever published in English'" (Goldman).
This example inscribed by the author to Oliver Holden (1765-1844), the Massachusetts composer and compiler of hymns. On the LDS connection to Seixas see Louis C. Zucker, "Joseph Smith as a Student of Hebrew," in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3 (Summer 1968), pages 41-55.
