Johannes Buxtorf the Elder was a prominent Christian Hebraist. Born in Westphalia in Germany, the son of a minister, he studied at Marburg and then at the Herborn Academy, a Calvinist institution of higher learning. He was professor of Hebrew for thirty-nine years at the university in Basel and was known by the title Master of the Rabbis. He is best known for his book, Synagoga Judaica, a study of the customs and culture of German Jewry.
In his De officiis, most discreet reader, Tullius Cicero writes that nothing can move us so powerfully as to see some form or kind of benefit, which must be esteemed all the more, the less it is of an…
These illustrated pages are from a manuscript copy of Sefer goralot (Book of Lots), a treatise on geomancy, which was a method of divination popular in the medieval world. The text was attributed…