DEDICATION.

...[demon]strating original: "strandam"; the completion of "illustrandam" what I had collected, I conceived so much confidence from it that I dared to send a book into the public under the title The Ruler of the Synagogue original: "Archisynagogi". It was intended to describe the Form of Government and Administration of Sacred Rites, as they existed in the Ancient Synagogue, insofar as the Church Government and Form of Public Worship among Christians were ordered and established according to that model.

For the Illustrious Buxtorfs, Father and Son Johannes Buxtorf the Elder (1564–1629) and his son (1599–1664) were the preeminent Christian Hebraists of their era, had already written learnedly and skillfully about the public and private rites and ceremonies of the Jews in their THE JEWISH SYNAGOGUE original: "S Y N A G O G A J U D A I C A", following the example of Leon of Modena A prominent Venetian Rabbi (1571–1648) who wrote an influential guide to Jewish life for Christian readers. While I left most of their work in its rightful place and respected its value, it was of little use for my specific purpose.

Indeed, although that book of mine was received by many with more affection than it deserved, it was by no means polished with such care, or furnished and adorned with such an abundance of material, that I did not realize—should God grant me a longer life and preserve my mental strength—that it would eventually need to be revised and given a "new dress" original: "novâ veſte donandum"; a scholarly metaphor for a revised and expanded edition.

However, because of the duties of my Theological Professorship, I was becoming more and more separated from Rabbinic Literature Literis Rabbinicis: The vast body of post-biblical Jewish scholarly writing, including the Talmud and medieval commentaries, which requires a person’s almost total and constant devotion. I would undoubtedly have procrastinated and put this work off from day to day, had I not pledged my word to the reader in that very book to compare—when the opportunity arose—the Sacred Rites and Ministries of the Synagogue with the Sacred...