Biblia, das ist: Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, nach der Deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers, mit jedes Capitels kurzen Summarien, auch beygefügten vielen und richtigen Parllelen [sic]. by Bible. German. 1743. Luther - 1743

Germantown: Gedruckt bey Christoph Saur, 1743. 4to (26.3 cm, 10.375"). [2] ff. (supplied in facsimile), 995, [1 (blank)], 277, [1] pp., [1] f.

1743 saw the first complete Bible in a European language printed in the New World, in — of all places — Germantown, Pa., and in — of all languages — German. The colonial powers had granted monopolies for Bible printing to "home" publishers and their products were priced sufficiently low to discourage illegal printing by colonial printers, which left it to German-Americans — a people here as independent settlers, not "colonists" — to first print a Bible of their own. Christopher Saur (or Sower, as he Englished it) was something of a renaissance man, university educated and a physician, and he used his connections in Germany to obtain the gift of the fraktur type used in this Bible. It was printed in an edition of 1200 copies, and cost 18 shillings. Another complete American Bible did not follow until Saur's son, also Christopher, published a further edition in 1763.
    Arndt lists three states for this edition, of which this appears to be C, based on the absence of a two-leaf addendum giving a short history of Bible translation — that a buyer could choose to have bound in or not.
    
    Evans 5127–28; Sabin 5191; Arndt, The First Century of German Language Printing in the United States of America, 47C; Hildeburn 804; Rumball-Petre, Rare Bibles, 159; Darlow & Moule 4240; O'Callaghan 22; Wright, Early Bibles of America, 24–44. Contemporary calf over bevelled boards; binding scratched and abraded with tears to spine leather, hinges (inside) open. First two leaves lacking (i.e., main title-page and preface) and title-page supplied in facsimile. A printed poem has been affixed to the front pastedown, over a strip of cloth. Ownership inscriptions in German (in gothic cursive) and English on endpapers. Pp. 1–2 with loss of part of margins, some text, and part of headpiece, repaired with paper. Lightly age-toned with darker brown-spotting, some waterstaining, occasional dog ears, and some holing or chipping in the margins — some of the latter repaired with paper. The New Testament title-page is present.