Mikraot Gedolot מקראות גדולות

Before printing, the commentaries were copied separately, and only a man who owned all three manuscripts could keep Rashi, the Targum and Ibn Ezra side by side. Daniel Bomberg's press in Venice did a simple thing: it put them on one page.

Two editions. The first, of 5277, was prepared by Felix Pratensis—a Jew who had been baptised, which troubled buyers. The second, of 5285, was made by Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adoniyahu: he collated manuscripts, restored the masorah and set it in the margins. It was this edition that became the model—the Bible was printed from it for four hundred years.

What it gave. The arrangement of the page teaches by itself: the text in the middle, and around it not "expert opinions" but a conversation a thousand years long, in which one can see who is answering whom. The page of the Talmud is built the same way, and Bomberg's press made both.

And a note. The edition was prepared in a Christian press and under Christian patronage, and it bears traces of censorship. That does not cancel the work: the masorah restored by Jacob ben Hayyim is still the basis of the printed Bible.