The Kabbalistic Scholars of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible

Front Cover
This work places the Syriac New Testament in the Antwerp Polyglot within a new appreciation of sixteenth century Catholic Syriac and Oriental scholarship. The Spanish antecedents of the Polyglot and the role of Montano in its production are evaluated before the focus is turned upon the Northern Scholars who prepared the Syriac edition. Their motivation is shown, particularly in the case of Guillaume Postel, to derive from both Christian kabbalah and an insistent eschatological timetable. The principles of Christian kabbalah found in the Polyglot are then shown to be characteristic also of Guy Lefevre de la Boderie's 1584 Paris edition of the Syriac New Testament dedicated to Henri III. This work completes the account of sixteenth century Syriac bibles begun in the companion volume "Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation" which also appears with Brill.
 

Contents

The Notion of a Polyglot
1
Hebrew Studies and Kabbalistic Influence
19
Masius
39
The Role of Postel in the Antwerp Polyglot
49
Guy Lefèvre de la Boderie
61
Chapter Six Plantin and the Antwerp Project
67
The Syriac New Testament and Associated Kabbalistic Material
77
The Censura
93
Chapter Nine The 1584 Paris Syriac New Testament
101
Chapter Ten Finale
121
Bibliography
123
Index
137
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Robert J. Wilkinson, PhD (2003) in History, University of the West of England, read Oriental Studies at Cambridge. He is Research Fellow at Wesley College, Bristol. His Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation (Brill) is appearing as a companion volume to this.

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