Among the very first Hebrew books printed in Italy was Sefer Yosippon. Abraham Conat, who had studied medicine and copied manuscripts in earlier years, had adopted printing enthusiastically and produced in Mantua, in the mid-1470s, a remarkable small series of books that included—besides halakhic and exegetical literature that formed the main output of the earliest Hebrew presses—a few popular texts of other genres, among them Sefer Yosippon. At the end of the book, Conat offered his readers a narrated “table of contents,” listing the subjects they would find attractive in this historical work.
From Josephus to Yosippon and Beyond
Un-writing the End : Histories and Counter- histories in the Early Modern Yosippon
