Johannes Drusius

Johannes van den Driesche [or Drusius] (28 June 1550 – February 1616) was a Flemish Protestant divine, distinguished specially as an Orientalist, Christian Hebraist and exegete.

He was born at Oudenarde, in Flanders. Intended for the church, he studied Greek and Latin at Ghent, and philosophy at Leuven; but his father having been outlawed for his religion, and deprived of his estate, retired to England, where the son followed him in 1567. He found a teacher of Hebrew in Antoine Rodolphe Chevallier, with whom he resided for some time at Cambridge. In 1572 he became professor of Oriental languages at Oxford.

Upon the pacification of Ghent (1576) he returned with his father to their own country, and was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Leiden in the following year. In 1585 he removed to Friesland, and was admitted professor of Hebrew in the university of Franeker, an office which he discharged with great honour till his death. He acquired a reputation as a professor, and his class was frequented by students from all the Protestant countries in Europe.

He was learned in Hebrew and in Jewish antiquities; and in 1600 the states-general employed him, at a salary of 400 florins a year, to write notes on the difficult passages in the Old Testament; but this work was not published until after his death. As the friend of Jacobus Arminius, he was charged by the Contra-Remonstrant party with unfairness in the execution of the task, and the last sixteen years of his life were therefore marred by controversy.

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