From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies

This book examines how Johannes Buxtorf's works helped to transform seventeenth-century Hebrew studies from the hobby of a few experts into a recognized academic discipline.
The first two chapters examine Buxtorf's career as a professor of Hebrew and as an editor and censor of Jewish books in Basel. Successive chapters analyze his anti-Jewish polemical books, grammars and lexicons, and manuals for Hebrew composition and literature, including the first bibliography devoted to Jewish books. The final chapters treat his work in biblical studies, examining his contribution to Targum and Massorah studies, and his position on the age and doctrinal authority of the Hebrew vowel points.

Stephen G. Burnett, Ph.D. (1990) in Hebrew and Semitic Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, has published extensively on Christian Hebraism, Jewish printing, and anti-Jewish polemics in Reformation era Germany and Switzerland