Another review of "I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue"

I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED THE HOLY TONGUE, by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, is reviewed in the Jerusalem Post:

A Hebrew revival

07/21/2011 17:40 By MOSHE SLUHOVSKY

Two historians convincingly make the case that Renaissance scholar Isaac Casaubon, best known for expertise in Greek and Latin, was an industrious Hebraist.


Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), one of the greatest scholars of the late Renaissance, is hardly remembered today. In his time, though, this son of French Calvinist refugees living in Geneva was regarded by some as “the most learned man in Europe.” He held positions as professor of Hebrew in Geneva and Montpelier, was a librarian to the king of France, and ended his life in Oxford, England, as a personal friend of King James I and a friend by correspondence of all the leading members of the early 17th-century Republic of Letters.

[...]

The authors admit that Casaubon was only a second-tier Hebraist. But his use of Hebrew illuminates the contribution of people like him not to philology per se, but to a revolution in theology and historiography. He was, they rightly point out, one of the first to realize the (currently self-evident) view that a better understanding of Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity and late Hellenism cannot be achieved without a thorough familiarity with, and respect for, all religious cultures and all languages of the period.

Another review and additional background are noted here.