Samuel Bochart

Samuel Bochart , born with Rouen the May 10th 1599 and died in Caen the May 16th 1667, was a scholar French, Minister for the reformed religion.

Its life

Wire of a protesting minister, this brilliance scholar supported three theses in theology with Sedan, Saumur and Leyde. It remains with Oxford after 1621 before settling with Caen in 1628.

This accomplished polyglot did not have less than seventeen foreign languages: Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, English, German, Flemish, Celtic, Arab, copte, Egyptian, Ethiopic, phenician, chaldéen, syriaque, Persan. He is the author of an Arabic dictionary of 30.000 words. He represented the Protestant with the Synod of Loudun of 1659. Its reputation will be worth an invitation of the Queen to him Christine of Sweden at her court in 1652. All the more notable fact as Samuel Bochart and Rene Descartes, the author of the Discourse on Method , were the only French personalities to be the subject of such an initiative.

It is also devoted to public disputations with the catholic theologists, as in 1628 with the Jesuit Véron, but the last to which it will be delivered, against his/her colleague of the Académie of Caen, Pierre-Daniel Huet, will be fatal for him: discussing with this last which had shown it defective translation of a manuscript of Origène on the Transsubstantiation, Samuel Bochart succumbed to an apoplexy the May 16th 1667 in full meeting of the Académie of Caen. Its contemporaries seemed, on this sad occasion, to take the party of late against the spirit of intransigence and baffle of Huet famous being “of these people against whom it is not possible to be right”.

This scientist, as all the scholars who are filled with enthusiasm for the object of their studies, saw only phenician everywhere and gave to the majority words other languages the most chimerical etymologies the phenicians. But near his contemporaries and until the beginning of the 19th century, Samuel Bochart enjoyed an immense reputation of Théologien, Géographe, Naturaliste and Philologue.

Recent quotations about it

“If its writings can seem more out-of-date than the Discourse on Method , one must admit the merit to him to have made leave the world phenician the medium of the mythologists amateurs of fables to have projected it, with glare, on the scene of the History. ”

Fatty Michel, Pierre Rouillard and Javier Teixidor, the Universe phenician , 1989 (1st ED.)

“Today still, the best historians agree to greet Samuel Bochart like the first in the world to have made a talk coherent and organized on the language and the colonies phenicians”

: Jean-Pierre Thiollet, I am called Byblos , 2005

Its work

Geographia Crowned, on the first ages of the world , Cadomi, typis $petri Cardonelli, 1646;
Of consiliandis in religionis negotio protestantibus , 1662;
Hiérozoïcon , 1663, history of all the animals quoted in the Bible;
Treated minerals, plants, precious stones whose Bible makes mention ;
Treated terrestrial paradise .

Its works were reprinted with Leyde in 1712, 3 volumes, folio.

Sources

Edward-Herbert Smith, Samuel Bochart: research on the life and the works of this author illustrates , Caen, Chalopin, 1833
L.D. Paumier, historical Éloge of Samuel Bochart, with additional notes on its life and its works , Rouen, Nicétas Periaux, 1840

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