Adam of Saint Victor (d.1146) was the most prominent Victorine Hebraist and his student, Herbert of Bosham (fl.1162–89), studied with Abraham ibn Ezra (d.c.1167) to acquire deeper grammatical understanding.
[2] In the thirteenth century, Hebrew learning declined among native Christians, while converts from Judaism mainly used their knowledge polemically against their co-ethnics.
[5] Among the prominent English Hebraists were Alexander Neckham (d.1217); Stephen Langton (d.1228), who composed a Hebrew–Latin dictionary of Biblical terms; William de la Mare (fl.1272–79), who was patronised by Robert Grosseteste (d.1253); and Roger Bacon (d.c.1292), who wrote a Hebrew grammar.
[2] It was not 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.
Conrad Gesner (d. 1565) was the first Christian to compile a catalogue of Hebrew books; Jacob Christmann (d. 1613) busied himself with the Jewish calendar, and Drusius (d. 1616) with the ethical writings of the Jews.
Their writings on the Bible were read by Schickard (1635), Humphrey Hody (d. 1706), and Richard Simon (d. 1712), while catalogues of Hebrew collections were published by Plantavitius (d. 1651), Le Long (d. 1721), and Montfaucon (d. 1741).
Jacques Basnage knew no Hebrew, but his L'Histoire de la Religion des Juifs was the first attempt at a complete presentation of the history of Judaism.
Johann Christoph Wolf (d. 1739), who, with the help of the Oppenheimer library, was able to produce his Bibliotheca Hebræa, which laid the foundation for all later works in Hebrew bibliography.
By the side of these stand Bashuysen (d. 1750), the translator and printer of Hebrew books; Reland (d. 1718), the first to use Talmudic material for the study of the geography of Palestine; the bibliographers Unger (d. 1719) and Gagnier (d. 1720), who gave Wolf his information regarding the manuscripts in the Bodleian; J. H. Michaelis (d. 1738) and Mai (d. 1732), who compiled a catalogue of the Uffenbach library; Baratier (d. 1740), the youthful prodigy, who wrote on Benjamin of Tudela; Mill (d. 1756), who treated rabbinical exegesis; and Wähner (1762), who described Hebrew antiquities.
Even Rabe, the translator of the Mishnah into German (d. 1798), Semmler, Michaelis, Tychsen (d. 1815), and Sylvestre de Sacy (d. 1838) can hardly be mentioned by the side of the humanists of previous centuries.
Interest in the text of the Bible caused some work to be done in the collecting of Hebrew manuscripts, especially by Benjamin Kennicott in England (1776–80) and Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi in Italy (1784–88).
During the second half of the 19th century, however, the idea gained currency that there was something to be learned by going back to the sources of this history; but only a very few of the universities made a place for this study in their curricula.
At the beginning of the 18th century David Rudolph of Liegnitz included Rabbinisch und Chaldäisch among the Oriental languages which he taught at Heidelberg; but he had few imitators; and in the 19th century, apart from a few stray courses, such as Emil Kautzsch's on Kimhi at Tübingen, Lagarde's on Al-Ḥarizi at Göttingen, and Strack's on the Mishnah at Berlin, the whole of rabbinic literature was ignored by European universities.
Abbé Pietro Perreau has done good service by his many articles on the literature of the Jews in the Middle Ages and by the assistance he has given to scholars from the Hebrew manuscripts at Parma; Martin Hartmann has translated and commentated the "Meteḳ Sefatayim" of Immanuel Frances (Berlin, 1894); Thomas Robinson has collected some good material in his The Evangelists and the Mishna (1859).
August Wünsche, in his "Erläuterung der Evangelien aus Midrasch und Talmud" (1878), enlarged the scope of the inquiry begun by Lightfoot; and his translations from the Midrash opened up the stores of ancient Jewish exegesis.
Weber's System der Altsynagogalen Palestinischen Theologie (1880) was, with all its failings, an honest attempt to understand the theology of the Synagogue, followed by Wilhelm Bousset in his Religiondes Judenthums im Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (1903).
Hermann Strack in Berlin demands special mention not only for his publications dealing with the literature of the Mishnah and the Talmud, but also on account of the fearless manner in which he has combated anti-Semitic prejudice, drawing his material directly from the original sources.
165), that in order to understand the Bible text itself a deep study of the Halakah is necessary, Christian writers on the life of Jesus continue their disregard of the primary sources.
[6] The following list of Christian Hebraists includes material taken from the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), compiled upon the basis of Steinschneider's article mentioned in the bibliography below.