Some Early Citizens of the Respublica Litterarum Sacrarum: Christian Scholars and the Masorah Before 1550

Traditional accounts of the development of Christian biblical scholarship in the sixteenth century have rightly emphasized the role played by Elijah Levita and his Massoreth ha-Massoreth, which traced the evolution of the Hebrew text of the Bible. Elijah argued that the Masoretes, Jewish grammarians of the first millennium CE, had devised the vowel points and accents found in the Hebrew text and recorded the variant readings that appeared in its textual apparatus. In fact, the Syntagma of the English scholar Robert Wakefield, printed in 1534, brought together a wide range of relevant material from Jewish and Christian sources, explained it expertly and defended the accuracy of the Hebrew text. Informed discussion of the Hebrew text in Christian scholarship began long before Elijah’s book appeared.