Ferdinand, Philip

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FERDINAND, PHILIP

FERDINAND, PHILIP (1556–1599), English Hebraist. Ferdinand, who was born in Poland as a Jew, lived for some time in Constantinople. He became in turn a Roman Catholic and a Protestant, and then went to England, where he taught Hebrew first at Oxford and then at Cambridge. In 1597 he published in Cambridge Haec sunt verba Dei, a Latin translation of the 613 Commandments and of other excerpts from rabbinical literature. In 1598 he went to teach Hebrew at Leiden, where the Christian historian and philologist Joseph Scaliger was one of his pupils. He died soon afterwards.

bibliography:

Stein, in: Essays… J.H. Hertz (1942), 397–412; dnb, s.v.; H.P. Stokes, Studies in Anglo-Jewish History (1913), 209–11. add. bibliography: odnb online.

[Cecil Roth]

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