Buxtorf, Johannes (I) (1564-1629)

German Hebrew scholar. Professor of Hebrew at Basel 1591-1629, he brought a new discipline and depth to Hebrew studies, largely by drawing on rabbinical scholarship. His published works include grammars, dictionaries, and biblical commentaries.

The son of a Protestant minister, Buxtorf was born in Marburg. He studied there and in Geneva and then Basel, where he met Théodore Beza. He occupied the chair of Hebrew at Basel for 38 years, rejecting attractive offers from the universities of Saumur and Leyden.

To the study of Hebrew Buxtorf brought rabbinical learning acquired from the many scholarly Jews whom he befriended. His main works had an educational purpose: a number of elementary grammars and readers, a Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon (1607), and a Hebrew reference grammar (1609). He also produced an edition of the Bible with rabbinic commentary, and the Chaldean paraphrases 1618-19.

His son Johannes II (1599-1664), followed him as professor of Hebrew at Basel and completed his father's Lexicon Chaldaicum Talmudicum et Rabbinicum (1639), which provided a scientific basis for the study of post-biblical Jewish writings.