Two issues of the work were printed almost simultaneously, the Arabic-only text, which has the year 1590 on the title-page (and 1591 on the colophon), and the interlenear Arabic-Latin edition, which has 1591 on the title-page. The Arab-only edition, with 1590 on the title-page, is generally considered the first. "Its first great Arabic publication was this edition of the Gospels, bearing the date 1590 on the title page, and 1591 at the end. Two versions appeared, one solely in Arabic and one with an interlinear Latin translation." (Library of Congress).

The work was edited by Giovanni Battista Raimondi (1536-1614), a renowned Orientalist and professor of mathematics at the College of the Sapienza in Rome. Raimondi had travelled extensively in the Middle East and had thorough knowledge of Arabic, Armenian, Syrian and Hebrew. He is, however, most famous for being the editor at the Typographia Medicea-press; together with French engraver Robert Granjon (who also created the Arabic typography of the present work) "bettered all previous attempts [to print in Arabic] in Europe, and would remain unsurpassed long after the press had closed. (Boogert, "Medici Oriental Press, Rome 1584-1614").

"Antonio Tempesta, the engraver (cutter: Leonardo Parasole), had studied under Santi di Tito and Joannes Stradanus at the Accademia del Disegno in Florence (later working with Stradanus and Vasari on the interior decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence), before travelling to Rome, where he executed various commissions, including frescos for Pope Gregory XIII in the Vatican and decorations for the Villa Farnese. Simultaneously with his frescos and panel paintings, he executed a large number of engravings. The illustrations for the present work are remarkable examples of Tempesta's work, noteworthy for their clear composition and narrative of the episodes depicted.

Despite the extremely high quality of the prints, the press never became an economic success and it went bankrupt in 1610. Scholars have noticed that presenting a work with beautiful scriptural illustrations, as the present, to Arabic-speaking Muslims, when Islam forbids religious illustration, showed little understanding of the culture and almost certainly hindered Pope Gregory XIII's missionary efforts.

"The press was not only an intellectual enterprise; it was also a commercial one. Raimondi clearly hoped to sell his books in the East, rather than the West, because the selection of the works he produced showed little consideration with the type of material European scholars in this period needed. While the works failed to sell in the Ottoman Empire, however, they did significantly stimulate the study of the Middle East in Europe.
Ferdinando de' Medici had ordered Raimondi to print 'all available Arabic books on permissible human sciences which had no religious content in order to introduce the art of printing to the Mohamedan community.' Only more than a century after the Medici Press in Rome had closed, did it finally have the envisaged impact in the Levant; Ibrahim Müteferrika, the first Muslim printer, referring to it in his plea to the sultan to allow him to open his own printing house at Istanbul, which happened in 1729." (Boogert, "Medici Oriental Press, Rome 1584-1614").

The copy was previously in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, at the time when it was entitled "Bibliothèque Imperiale", which was its name, inbetween, from 1849 to 1871. Thus, the book entered the library in Napoleonic times and was later deaccessioned.  

Brunet II, 1122-23
Schnurrer 318
Adams: B:1822