Christian Hebraist

A Christian Hebraist is a scholar of Hebrew who comes from a Christian family background/belief, or is a Jewish adherent of Christianity. The main area of study is that commonly known as the Old Testament to Christians (and Tanakh to Jews), but Christians have occasionally taken an interest in the Talmud, and Kabbalah.

The early fathers of the Christian Church got their knowledge of Hebrew traditions (Masoretic, Midrashim, Aggadah) from their Jewish teachers. This is seen especially in the exegesis of Justin Martyr, Aphraates, Ephraem Syrus, and Origen of Alexandria. Jerome's teachers are even mentioned by name—e.g., Bar Ḥanina (Hananiah).

What was known of Jewish literature came to the scholastics entirely through translations, as can be seen in the works of Albertus Magnus.

That the Venerable Bede (673-735) knew anything of Hebrew may be doubted, despite the testimony of Hody in his De Bibliorum Textibus (1705). The same may be said of Alcuin (b. 735); but the "Magister Andreas, natione Anglus" mentioned by Roger Bacon, and identified by S. R. Hirsch with an Augustinian monk who lived about 1150, must at least have been able to read the Bible in the Hebrew original. Bacon himself (b. c. 1210) was "a tolerable Hebrew scholar."

It was not, however, until the end of the 15th century that the Renaissance and the Reformation, while awakening a new interest in the classics, brought about a return to the original text of Scripture and an attempt to understand the later literature of the Jews. Hieronymus Buclidius, the friend of Erasmus, gave more than 20,000 francs to establish a Hebrew chair at Louvain; as the chair of Hebrew at the University of Paris, Francis offered the chair to Elijah Levita, the friend of Cardinal Ægidius of Viterbo, who declined to accept it. Cardinal Grimani and other dignitaries, both of the state and of the Church, studied Hebrew and the Cabala with Jewish teachers; even the warrior Guido Rangoni attempted the Hebrew language with the aid of Jacob Mantino (1526). Pico de la Mirandola (d. 1494) was the first to collect Hebrew manuscripts, and Reuchlin was the first to write a dictionary and short grammar of the Hebrew language (1506). A more detailed grammar was published by Otto Walper in 1590. But interest still centered wholly around the Bible and the expository literature immediately connected therewith.

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