Gaffarel, Jacques°
GAFFAREL, JACQUES°
GAFFAREL, JACQUES ° (1601–1681), French Catholic theologian and Hebrew scholar. Gaffarel, who was particularly interested in kabbalistic literature, published a description of the manuscripts used by *Pico della Mirandola (Paris, 1651). Gaffarel's writings include: (1) Les tristes pensées de la fille de Sion sur les rives de l'Euphrate (ibid., 1624); (2) Abdita divinae cabalae mysteria contra sophistarum logomachiam defensa (ibid., 1625; translated into French by Samuel b. Ḥesed as Les profonds mystères de la Cabale divine, Paris, 1912); and Jom jhwh, Dies Domini (ibid., 1629; according to *Steinschneider the fictitious author's name Elḥa b. David was invented by Gaffarel). He also published, with an introduction – without the author's consent – the Historia de gli riti Hebraici by Leon *Modena, whom he had met in Venice in 1633. His Curiosités inouyés sur la sculpture talismanique des Persans; Horoscope des Patriarches et lecture des estoilles (first published in 1632 or 1637) was published in a Latin translation with an extensive commentary by M.G. Michaelis (Hamburg, 1676).
bibliography:
Wolf, Bibliotheca, 1 (1715), 223; 2 (1721), 1244; 3 (1727), no. 223; Steinschneider, Cat Bod, 919 no. 4526; G. Scholem, Bibliographia Kabbalistica (1933), 51 no. 396–400; S. Stern, Der Kampf der Rabbiner gegen den Talmud im 17. Jahrhundert (1902), 184; Biographie Universelle, 15 (1856), 347.
[Joseph Elijah Heller]