Judah Leon Templo

Jacob Judah Leon Templo (1603 – after 1675) was a Jewish Dutch scholar, translator of the Psalms, and expert on heraldry, of Sephardic descent.

The author published a concise, comprehensive Spanish description entitled Retrato del Templo de Selomoh (Portrait of the Temple of Solomon) in Middelburg in 1642.

Augustus II, Duke of Brunswick, and more particularly his wife Elizabeth, wished a German translation of this description and entrusted the task to Johann Saubert of Helmstedt.

His last work was a Spanish paraphrase of the Psalms, which was printed with the text under the title Las Alabanças de Santitad (Amsterdam, 1671) and, as stated in the introduction, was written in seven months.

[1] Judah also drew more than 200 figures and vignettes to illustrate Talmudical subjects, which his son Solomon gave to Willem Surenhuis for his Latin translation of the Mishnah.

Reconstruction of Solomon's Temple based on Jacob Judah’s description, from Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz , Architectura civil recta y obliqua , Vol. III. Part I, Plate A.