Samuel Bochart | |
|---|---|
 17th century portrait of Bochart | |
| Born | 10 May 1599 Rouen, Normandy, France |
| Died | 16 May 1667 (aged 68) Caen, Calvados, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Reverend |
| Known for | French Protestant biblical scholar |
Samuel Bochart (30 May 1599 – 16 May 1667) was a French Protestant biblical scholar, a student of Thomas Erpenius and the teacher of Pierre Daniel Huet. His two-volume Geographia Sacra seu Phaleg et Canaan (Caen 1646) exerted a profound influence on seventeenth-century Biblical exegesis.
Bochart was one of the several generations of antiquaries who expanded upon the basis Renaissance humanists had laid down, complementing their revolutionary hermeneutics by setting classical texts more firmly within the cultural contexts of Greek and Roman societies, without understanding of which they could never be fully understood.[1] Thus Bochart stands at the beginning of a discipline of the history of ideas that provides the modern context for all textual studies.
- ^ Peter N. Miller, "The "Antiquarianization" of Biblical Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653–57)" Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3, (July 2001).