In Search of "the Genuine Word of God": Reception of the West-European Christian Hebraism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Renaissance by Rajmund Pietkiewicz (review)

The author, Rajmund Pietkiewicz, is professor of Old Testament Exegesis and the Hebrew language at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Wroclaw, Poland. His field of specialization is the study of biblical translations into Polish. He is the first who studied Hebraica in the Renaissance Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. His work in Polish of 2011 and 2012 is now available in English, translated by Monika and Jacek Szela.

The "Commonwealth" under consideration here is the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania and the fief lands of that commonwealth. The first mention of Hebraists appears around 1507, the date which marks the beginning of Pietkiewicz's study which ends with the year 1638, when the antitrinitarian printing house in Racov (Rakov) was shut down. This year (1638) marks the end of the Renaissance in Polish printing (18).

Chapter 1 provides an overview of Hebrew Studies in Renaissance Europe, including a subsection on Hebrew Studies among Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, Radicals, and Catholics. Chapter 2 focuses on Hebrew Studies in the Renaissance Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth including the reprinting of Christian Hebrew grammars in Cracow by foreigners such as the Dutch humanist Jan van den Campen (1490–1538), Philipp Michael Novenianus from Hassfurt in Bavaria (died 1563), and Francesco Stancaro from Mantua (ca. 1501–1574). Chapter 3, titled "Polish translations of the Hebrew Bible as a result of the reception of Renaissance Christian Hebraism," deals with the history of the translations of the Bible into Polish, the dispute over the use of the Vulgate or the Hebrew Truth, the issue of translating "sense by sense" or "word by word," and the sources of Polish translations of the Hebrew Bible. Twenty-nine examples from the Hebrew Bible follow, each of which offers the selected verse in the original Hebrew, Greek, Latin and in several Polish versions, such as the Calvinist Brest Bible (1563), the Lutheran Gdańsk Bible (1632), the Budny's Bible (1572; Szymon Budny, whose nationality is unknown, affiliated with the Radicals, Polish Brethren and Antitrinitarians, ca. 1533–ca. 1595) and the two Catholic Bibles, the first by Jan Nicz Leopolita of Cracow (1523–1572; Bible: Cracow 1561) and then by the Polish Jesuit Jakub Wujek (Cracow 1599), both using the Vulgate as their text basis.

This book is the most meticulous work on Eastern European Christian Hebraism for the Renaissance and Reformation time. Proof of that is the extensive bibliography which is divided in (1) Bible editions given in chronological order, (2) historical Sources, and (3) a comprehensive list contemporary Studies (233–312). Most welcome are the five indices of (1) personal names (313–324), (2) places (325–328), (3) topics (329–336), (4) biblical references including 3 Ezra, 4 Ezra and 3 Maccabees (337–340, and (5) "Others," which include, for example, references to the books of Johann Reuchlin or to the Index of Prohibited Books (341–343). Always helpful are illustrations of which there are more than twenty—for example, the Latin Psalter according to the Hebrew Truth by Jan van den Campen (Cracow, 1532, Fig. 5), the Brest Bible in Polish (Brest-Litovsk, 1563, Fig. 9 and Fig. 20), and the Gdańsk Bible in Polish (Gdańsk [Danzig], 1632, Fig. 10). The very helpful index of places facilitates, for instance, the study of the significance of the Eastern European cities like Gdańsk or Königsberg for Christian Hebraism. The book well deserved to have been translated into English as this theme has not been researched in English. It was printed with the financial support by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Pietkiewicz's book is...