Alting, Jacobus°
ALTING, JACOBUS°
ALTING, JACOBUS ° (1618–1679), Dutch theologian and Hebraist. Born in Heidelberg, Alting studied Oriental languages and theology in Groningen, Utrecht, and Leiden. In Emden (1638–39) he read Jewish literature with a Jewish teacher named Gumprecht b. Abraham. During his journey to England (1641–43) he was ordained priest of the Church of England and studied Arabic at Oxford with *Pococke. In 1643 he succeeded Gomarus as professor of Oriental languages at the University of Groningen, where in 1667 he became professor of theology. His works (Opera Omnia, 5 vols., ed. by his friend and disciple Balthasar Bekker, Amsterdam, 1687) include a manual of Syriac and Aramaic (Groningen, 1676) and a – didactic rather than descriptive – Hebrew grammar (Fundamenta punctationis linguae sacrae, 1654; Dutch translation, 1664) dedicated to *Buxtorfii and *Hottinger, with whom he conducted a scholarly correspondence. As a theologian Alting advocated a purely biblical theology based on the interpretation of Hebrew Scripture. This approach brought him into a long-standing conflict with his scholastic-dogmatic colleague Samuel Maresius. For information on Jewish antiquities Alting drew on post-biblical Jewish sources.
bibliography:
A.J. van der aa., Biografisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden, 1 (1852), 214–18; W. van Bekkum, in: G. Veltri and G. Necker (eds.), Gottes sprache in der philoloigschen Werkstatt. Hebraistik vom 15. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (2004), 49–74; J.P. de Bie and J. Loosjes, Biographisch woordenboek van protestantsche godgeleerden in Nederland, 1 (1907), 107–27; W. van Bunge et al., The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Philosophers (2003), 18; W. Gesenius, Geschichte der hebraeischen Sprache und Schrift (1815), 122 ff.; P.C. Molhuysen et al., Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, 1 (1911), 96f.; P.H. Roessingh, Jacobus Alting. Een bijbelsch Godgeleerde uit het Midden der 17e Eeuw (1864); I.E. Zwiep, in: J. Noordgraaf and F. Vonk (eds.), Five Hundred Years of Foreign Language Teaching in the Netherlands 1450–1950 (1993), 40–45.
[Irene E. Zwiep (2nd ed.)]