'A copybook full of Hebrew texts: Johann Buxtorf the elder's approach to Jews and Judaism' Seminar
For more information regarding this seminar, please email Parkes Institute at parkes@southampton.ac.uk .
Event details
Part of the Parkes Research Seminar Series 2015/2016
Johann Buxtorf the elder (1564-1629), long-time professor of Hebrew at Basel, ethnographer, lexicographer, and textual critic, belongs to the category of the ‘accepted’ Hebraists and is usually regarded as one of the most distinguished Hebraists of the early modern period. In this seminar I shall discuss the nature of Buxtorf’s Hebraism –he was reputed as much for his outstanding mastery of Jewish tradition as he was notorious for his visceral loathing of Jews-- by means of his one copybook which gives us a special insight into his reading practices, and in particular, into his approach to Jewish literature.
Speaker information
Professor Joanna Weinberg , University of Oxford. I teach rabbinics, medieval and early modern Jewish culture in the Oriental faculty of the University of Oxford. Among recent publications are "I have always loved the Holy Tongue". Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (2011) which I co-authored with Anthony Grafton, and with Michael Fishbane I edited MidrashUnbound:Transformations and Innovations (2012). I am continuing my collaboration with Anthony Grafton with a study of Johann Buxtorf the elder.