Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Richard Bentley (1662-1742)

"I wrote, before I was twenty-four years old, a sort of hexapla, a thick volume in quarto, in the first column of which I inserted every word of the Hebrew Bible alphabetically; and, in five other columns, all the various interpretations of those words in the Chaldee, Syriac, Vulgate Latin, Septuagint, and Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, that occur in the whole Bible. This I made for my private use, to know the Hebrew, not from the late rabbins, but the ancient versions; when, bating Arabic, Persic, Ethiopic, I read over the whole Polyglot. And I made, too, another volume in quarto, of various lections and emendations of the Hebrew text, drawn out of these ancient versions, which, though done in those green years, would make a second part to the famous Capellus's Critica Sacra."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! He did all that before he was 24 and I've never heard of him before!

Anonymous said...

This sounds like Bentley was trying to get a Fulbright scholarship.

Anonymous said...

What did he do when he was 24 plus? Tell us ponas B.