Johann Buxtorf 1 (1564-1629): A late Renaissance Student of Judaism

This project will provide the first comprehensive study of the working methods of the great Christian Hebraist, Johann Buxtorf the elder (1564-1629), professor of Hebrew at Basel and author of the first systematic study of Jewish life and ritual by a Christian. Buxtorf was a prolific scholar whose dictionaries and grammars of the Hebrew language were reprinted for centuries after his death. Our study will produce a fresh appraisal of Buxtorf by attempting to discover how he arrived at his mastery of Hebrew, Aramaic and Yiddish as well as of a vast range of Jewish texts; how he obtained Jewish books and information about Jewish and other topics from a network of correspondents; and whether his extremely negative attitudes towards contemporary Jews fluctuated in the course of his life. In order to obtain this knowledge we will concentrate our research on Buxtorf's surviving copybook (Basel University Library AXII 20) which reveals precious information about his method of extracting from texts, notes on conversations with Jewish informants and his extraordinary expertise in delving into the alien texts of Jewish tradition.
By analysing the copybook with other surviving materials such as letters, and the annotated books of his own library (many of which are in Basel) and comparing these with his printed works we hope to reach a better understanding of a major figure in the cultural history of early modern Europe. In doing so, the study should also help articulate a restatement and redefinition of the nature of Hebraism in early modern Europe.

The beneficiaries of this research will include theologians and religious leaders who are involved in ecumenical dialogue and debate and seek to base their discussions not on vague concepts of belief and religious identity but rather on the empirical facts as gained from a study of the history of Jewish-Christian interaction and the central issues that perennially arise from it. From scrutiny of Buxtorf's copybook the complex nature of his anti-Hebraism becomes evident. It is this complicated religious dilemma that confronts the reader of Buxtorf's work that could enable theologians and religious leaders and those engaged in Jewish-Christian encounter to reassess their understanding of the history of religious prejudice.