BROUGHTON, HUGH°

BROUGHTON, HUGH ° (1549–1612), English Puritan, Hebraist, and controversialist. Broughton studied at Cambridge from 1569, learning Hebrew from A.R. Chevalier; he lived and lectured in London from 1579 to 1589, and thereafter lived mainly in Germany and Holland (Middelburg). Much of his energy was devoted to the defense of the scriptural chronology of his first book (Concent of Scripture, London, 1588), to the proposal of a new English Bible translation, and to the castigation of the resultant King James' Version (1611). Broughton also worked on a Hebrew New Testament, but published only Apocalypse (Book of Revelations) (Middelburg?, 1610). His lectures on chronology at St. Paul's Cathedral attracted weekly audiences of 100, and he exhibited enough Jewish scholarship to engage in controversy at Frankfurt in 1590 with R. Elijah *Loans. This resulted in Hebrew correspondence from David *Reuveni of Constantinople, which, together with his reply, was published in English, Latin, and Greek (Amsterdam, 1606, etc.). He was apparently interested in Jewish conversion, and published his controversy with R. David "Farar" on Jesus' genealogy in Latin (1605) and English (Amsterdam, 1608). Broughton's works were republished incompletely by J. Lightfoot (London, 1662), with a prefixed "Life"; manuscript material, largely relating to Bible translation, is held at the British Museum (Mss. Sloan 3088, Harley 1525; Lansdowne Catalog, pp. 220, 331, 332).

bibliography:

Roth, Mag Bibl, 256, 343–4; S. Greenslade (ed.), Cambridge History of the Bible (1963), 164–5; 167–8. add. bibliography: odnb online.

[Raphael Loewe]