logic, who renewed the study of the Tossafists; and Jehiel Heilprin (about 1725), descended from Luria through his mother, author of a valuable and learned Jewish chronicle followed by an index of rabbis. He declared he had seen a genealogical table on which Rashi's name appeared establishing his descent from so remote an ancestor as Johanan ha-Sandlar and including Rashi in the steps.[155] This family, which was divided into two branches, the Heilprins and the Lurias, still counts among its members renowned scholars and estimable merchants. As if the numberless copies of his commentaries had not sufficed to spread Rashi's popularity, the discovery of printing lent its aid in giving it the widest possible vogue. The commentary on the Pentateuch is the first Hebrew work of which the date of printing is known. The edition was published at Reggio at the beginning of 1475 by the printer Abraham ben Garton. Zunz reckoned that up to 1818 there were seventeen editions in which the commentary appeared alone, and one hundred and sixty in which it accompanied the text. Some modifications were introduced into the commentary either because of the severity of the censors or because of the prudence of the editors. Among the books that the Inquisition confiscated in 1753 in a small city of Italy, there were twenty-one Pentateuchs with Rashi's commentary. All the printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud are accompanied by Rashi's commentaries in the inner column and by the Tossafot in the outer column. Rashi's authority gained in weight more and more, and he became representative in ordinary, as it were, of Talmudic exegesis. This fact is made evident by a merely superficial survey of the work <I>Bet Yosef</I> (House of Joseph), which is, one may say, an index to rabbinical literature. Rashi is mentioned here on every page. He is the official commentator of the Talmudic text. The author of the <I>Bet Yosef</I>, the learned Talmudist and Kabbalist Joseph ben Ephraim Karo (born 1448, died at Safed, Palestine, at 87 years of age), places Rashi's Biblical commentary on the same plane as the Aramaic translation of the Bible. He recommends that it be read on the Sabbath, at the same time as the Pentateuch and the Targum. Luria goes even further. According to him, when the Targum and Rashi cannot be read at the same time, preference should be given to Rashi, since he is more easily understood, and renders the text more intelligible.