Background
Johannes was born on 25 December in 1564.
protestant authority on hebrew and rabbinical literature
Johannes was born on 25 December in 1564.
Johannes was educated at Marburg and Herborn.
While at Herborn he helped Piscator, professor of theology at that university, prepare a Latin translation of the Old Testament. He later pursued his studies of Oriental languages and rabbinical literature at the universities of Heidelberg, Basel, Zurich, and Geneva. In 1589 he was placed in charge of Hebrew studies at the University of Basel and was formally installed as professor of Hebrew there in 1591. He was recognized by Protestants as the foremost authority in his field. His works include Manuale Hebraicum et Chaldaicum (1602) and Juden SchülSchul (1603). The latter work was translated into Latin as Synagoga Judaica (1604); in it he described the beliefs and religious practices of the Jews. He also wrote Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum cum breve lexico rabbinico philosophico (1607), De abbreviaturis Hebraicis (1613), Biblia Hebraica cum paraphrasi Chaldaica et commentariis rabbinorum (4 vols., 1618-1619), and Tiberias, sive commentarius masorethicus (1620). Buxtorf devoted 20 years of his life to the preparation of a Chaldaic, Talmudic, and Rabbinic dictionary. Before he could complete it he died in Basel, Sept. 13, 1629, but this work and others were completed by his son, Johannes Buxtorf the Younger.