Johannes Buxtorf was a celebrated Hebraist

Hebraist

A Hebraist is a specialist in Hebrew and Hebraic studies. Specifically, British and German scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries who were involved in the study of Hebrew language and literature were commonly known by this designation, at a time when Hebrew was little understood outside practicing...

, member of a family of Orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

s; professor of Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 for thirty-nine years at Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

 and was known by the title, "Master of the Rabbi

Rabbi

In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

s". His massive tome, De Synagoga Judaica (1st. ed. 1603), scrupulously documents the customs and society of German Jewry in the early modern period.

Buxtorf was the father of Johannes Buxtorf the Younger

Johannes Buxtorf II

Johannes Buxtorf the Younger, was son of the scholar Johannes Buxtorf, and a Protestant Christian Hebraist.-Life:...

.

Life

Buxtorf was born at Kamen

Kamen

Kamen is a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, in the district Unna.-Geography:Kamen is situated at the east end of the Ruhr area, approx...

 in Westphalia

Westphalia

Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...

. The original form of the name was Bockstrop, or Boxtrop, from which was derived the family crest, which bore the figure of a goat (Ger. Bock, he-goat). After the death of his father, who was minister of Kamen, Buxtorf studied at Marburg and the newly-founded Herborn Academy

Herborn Academy

The Herborn Academy was a German institution of higher learning very similar to a university in Herborn, which existed from 1584 to 1817...

, at the latter of which Caspar Olevian (1536–1587) and Johannes Piscator

Johannes Piscator

Johannes Piscator was a German Reformed theologian, known as a Bible translator and textbook writer.He was a prolific writer, and initially moved around as he held a number of positions...

 (1546–1625) had been appointed professors of theology. At a later date Piscator received the assistance of Buxtorf in the preparation of his Latin translation of the Old Testament, published at Herborn in 1602-1603. From Herborn Buxtorf went to Heidelberg, and thence to Basel, attracted by the reputation of Johann Jakob Grynaeus

Johann Jakob Grynaeus

Johann Jakob Grynaeus was a Swiss Protestant divine.-Life:He was born at Bern. His father, Thomas Grynaeus , was for a time professor of ancient languages at Basel and Bern, but afterwards became pastor of Röteln in Baden...

 and J. G. Hospinian (1515–1575).

After a short residence at Basel, he studied successively under Heinrich Bullinger

Heinrich Bullinger

Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss reformer, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Zurich church and pastor at Grossmünster...

 (1504–1575) at Zürich and Theodore Beza

Theodore Beza

Theodore Beza was a French Protestant Christian theologian and scholar who played an important role in the Reformation...

 at Geneva. On his return to Basel, Grynaeus, desirous that the services of so promising a scholar should be secured to the university, procured him a situation as tutor in the family of Leo Curio, son of Celio Secondo Curione

Celio Secondo Curione

Celio Secondo Curione was an Italian humanist, grammarian and suspected antitrinitarian.thumb|160px|Celio Secondo Curione-Works :* Pasquillus ecstaticus et Marphorius. Basel, 1544....

, well-known for his sufferings on account of the Reformed faith. At the instance of Grynaeus, Buxtorf undertook the duties of the Hebrew chair in the university, and discharged them for two years with such ability that at the end of that time he was unanimously appointed to the vacant office. From this date (1591) to his death in 1629 he remained in Basel, and devoted himself with remarkable zeal to the study of Hebrew and rabbinic literature. He received into his house many learned Jews, that he might discuss his difficulties with them, and he was frequently consulted by Jews themselves on matters relating to their ceremonial law. He seems to have well deserved the title which was conferred upon him of "Master of the Rabbins." His partiality for Jewish society brought him, indeed, on one occasion into trouble with the authorities of the city, the laws against the Jews being very strict. Nevertheless, on the whole, his relations with the city of Basel were friendly. He remained firmly attached to the university which first recognized his merits, and declined two invitations from the University of Leiden and Academy of Saumur

Academy of Saumur

The Academy of Saumur was a Huguenot university at Saumur in western France. It existed from 1593, when it was founded by Philippe de Mornay, until shortly after 1683, when Louis XIV decided on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, ending the limited toleration of Protestantism in...

 successively. His correspondence with the most distinguished scholars of the day was very extensive; the library of the university of Basel contains a rich collection of letters, which are valuable for a literary history of the time.

Works

• Manuale Hebraicum et Chaldaicum (1602; 7th ed., 1658).
• Synagoga Judaica (1603 in German; afterwards translated into Latin in an enlarged form), a valuable repertory of information regarding the opinions and ceremonies of the Jews.
• Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum cum brevi Lexico Rabbinico Philosophico (1607; reprinted at Glasgow, 1824).
• His great Rabbinical Bible, Biblic Hebraica cum Paraphr. Chald. et Commentariis Rabbinorum (2 vols., 1618; 4 vols., 1618–1619), containing, in addition to the Hebrew text, the Aramaic Paraphrases of Targums, punctuated after the analogy of the Aramaic passages in Ezra and Daniel (a proceeding which has been condemned by Richard Simon and others), and the Commentaries of the more celebrated Rabbis, with various other treatises.
• Tiberias, sive Commentarius Masoreticus (1620; quarto edition, improved and enlarged by J. Buxtorf the younger, 1665), so named from the great school of Jewish criticism which had its seat in the town of Tiberias. It was in this work that Buxtorf controverted the views of Elias Levita regarding the late origin of the Hebrew vowel points, a subject which gave rise to the controversy between Louis Cappel
  Louis Cappel
  Louis Cappel was a French Protestant churchman and scholar.-Life:Cappel, a Huguenot, was born at St Elier, near Sedan. He studied theology at the Academy of Sedan and the Academy of Saumur, and Arabic at the University of Oxford, where he spent two years...
  
   and his son Johannes Buxtorf II
  Johannes Buxtorf II
  Johannes Buxtorf the Younger, was son of the scholar Johannes Buxtorf, and a Protestant Christian Hebraist.-Life:...
  
  .

Buxtorf did not live to complete the two works on which his reputation chiefly rests, his Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum, et Rabbinicum, and the Concordantiae Bibliorum Hebraicorum, both of which were edited by his son. The lexicon was republished at Leipzig in 1869 with some additions by Bernard Fischer, and the concordance was assumed by Julius Fürst

Julius Fürst

Julius Fürst , was a Jewish German orientalist.Fürst was a distinguished scholar of Semitic languages and literature...

 as the basis of his own Hebrew concordance, which appeared in 1840.

Further reading

• Athenae Rauricae, pp. 444–448.
• Articles in Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopädie, and Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk..
• Stephen G. Burnett, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564 - 1629) and Hebrew learning in the seventeenth century (Studies in the history of Christian thought 68). Leiden u.a.: Brill 1996. ISBN 90-04-10346-5
• J. M. Schroeckh
  Johann Matthias Schröckh
  Johann Matthias Schröckh was an Austrian-German historian and literary scholar born in Vienna. He was a grandson to Pietist preacher Matthias Bel ....
  
  , Kirchengeschichte, vol. v. (Post-Reformation period), pp. 72 seq. (Leipzig, 1806).
• E. Kautsch, Johannes Buxtorf der Ältere (1879).
• G. W. Meyer, Geschichte der Schrift-Erklärung, vol. iii. (Göttingen, 1804).
• J. P. Niceron, Mémoires, vol. xxxi. pp. 206–215.
• Rudolf Smend, Vier Epitaphe - Die Basler Hebraistenfamilie Buxtorf (Litterae et Theologia 1). Berlin: de Gruyter 2010. ISBN 978-3-11-022895-3

External links

• Synagoga Judaica
• http://books.google.be/books?id=MFQTAAAAQAAJ&pg=PP18&dq=Johannes+buxtorf&as_brr=3&hl=fr#v=onepage&q=&f=falseDe abbreviaturis Hebraicis liber novus et copiosus, Cui accesserunt operis talmudici Brevis recensio, cum ejusdem librorum & capitum Indice. Item Bibliotheca rabbinica nova, cum Appendice, ordine Alphabethico disposita. Editione hac Ultima. Omnia Castigatiora & Lucupletiora. Franequerae, Apud Jacobum Horreum, 1646]