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DRUSIUS (or VAN DEN DRIESCHE), JOHANN...

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Originally appearing in Volume V08, Page 607 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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DRUSIUS (or
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VAN DEN DRIESCHE), JOHANNES (1550-1616)
  ,
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Protestant divine, distinguished specially as an Orientalist and exegete, was born at Oudenarde, in Flanders, on the 28th of
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June 1550 . Being designed for the church, he studied Greek and Latin at Ghent, and philosophy at Louvain; but his
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father having been outlawed for his religion, and deprived of his estate, retired to England, where the son followed him in 1567 . He found an admirable teacher of
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Hebrew in Chevalier; the celebrated Orientalist, with whom he resided for some time at Cambridge . In 1572 he became professor of
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Oriental
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languages at Oxford . Upon the pacification of Ghent (1576) he returned with his father to their own country, and was appointed professor of Oriental languages at
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Leiden in the following
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year . In i585 he removed to Friesland, and was admitted professor of Hebrew in the university of
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Franeker, an office which he discharged with
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great honour till his
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death, which happened in
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February 1616 . He acquired so extended a reputation as a professor that his class was frequented by students from all the Protestant countries in
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Europe . His
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works prove him to have been well skilled in Hebrew and in Jewish antiquities; and in 1600 the states-general employed him, at a
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salary of 400 florins a year, to write notes on the most difficult passages in the Old Testament; but this
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work was not published until after his death . As the friend of Arminius, he, was charged by the orthodox and dominant party with unfairness in the execution of the task, and the last sixteen years of his
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life were therefore somewhat embittered by controversy . He carried on an extensive correspondence with the learned in different countries; for, besides letters in Hebrew, Greek and other languages, there were found amongst his papers upwards of 2000 written in Latin . He had a son, John, who died in England at the age of twenty-one, and was accounted a
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prodigy of learning . He had mastered Hebrew at the age of nine, and
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Scaliger said that he was a better Hebrew scholar than his father .

He wrote a large number of letters in Hebrew, besides notes on the

Proverbs of Solomon and other works . Paquot states the number of the printed works and
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treatises of the elder Drusius at
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forty-eight, and of the unprinted at upwards of twenty . Of the former more than two-thirds were inserted in the collection entitled Critici sacri, sive annotata doctissimorum virorum in Fetus et Novum Testamentum (Amsterdam, 1698, in 9 vols. folio, or
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London, 166o, in 10 vols. folio) . Amongst the works of Drusius not to be found in this collection may be mentioned—(1) Alphabetum Hebraicum vetus (1584, 4to); (2) Tabulae in grammaticam Chaldaicam ad usum juventutis (16o2, 8vo); (3) An edition of Sulpicius Severus (Franker, 1807, 121110) ; (4) Opuscula quae ad grammaticam spectant omnia (1609, 4to) ; (5) Lacrymae in obitum J . Scaligeri (1609, 4to) ; and (6) Grammatica linguae sanctae nova (1612, 4t0) .

End of Article: DRUSIUS (or VAN DEN DRIESCHE), JOHANNES (1550-1616)
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