Fagius, Paulus°
FAGIUS, PAULUS°
FAGIUS, PAULUS ° (Paul Buechelin ; 1504–1549), Hebraist. Born at Rheinzabern, in the Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, he was professor of theology at Strasbourg and later of Hebrewat Cambridge. He studied Hebrew with Wolfgang Capito and with Elijah Levita, whom he invited to supervise the Hebrew press he established in Isny (Bavaria). He translated the following Hebrew books into Latin: Elijah Levita's Tishbi (Isny, 1541; Basle, 1557) and Meturgeman (Isny, 1542); the Talmud tractate Avot (Isny, 1541). He edited a Hebrew version of the book of Tobit with a Latin translation (Isny, 1542); the Alphabet of Ben Sira (Isny, 1542), and David Kimhi's commentary to Psalms 1–10 (Constance, 1544). He edited several chapters of Targum Onkelos (Strasbourg, 1546) and wrote an exegetic treatise on the first four chapters of Genesis. ("Exegesis sive expositio dictionum hebraicarum literalis et simplex in quatuor capita Geneseos," Isny, 1542). He was the author of an elementary Hebrew grammar (Constance, 1543) and translated an anonymous booklet by a converted Jew, who endeavored, with reference to Jewish sources, to prove the truth of Christianity (Liber Fidei, Isny, 1542; a short extract, under the title Parvus Tractatulus, appeared in the same year in the Hebrew Prayers edited by Fagius). Some parts of the same text had been already published and translated by Sebastian Münster in 1537. He began the republication of a revised edition of the concordance Me'ir Nativ. After his migration to England, where he died, this work was completed by Antonius Reuchlin (Basle, 1556).
bibliography:
L. Geiger, Das Studium der hebraeischen Sprache in Deutschland (1870), 66; Steinschneider, Cat Bod, 977, no. 5048; 3080, no. 9397; idem, in: rej, 4 (1882), 78–87; 5 (1882), 57–67; idem, in: zhb, 2 (1897), 149–50, no. 178; Perles, Beitraege, index; M. Stern, Urkundliche Beitraege ueber die Stellung der Paepste zu den Juden (1893), no. 159; J.-B. Prijs, Die Basler he bräischen Drucke (1964), 82–83, 500; A.M. Habermann, in: Alei Sefer, 2 (1976), 97–104; R. Peter, in: Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, 59 (1979), 385–390; L.T. Stuckenbruck, in: G.G. Xeravits and J. Zsengeller (eds.), The Book of Tobit (2005), 194–219.
[Giulio Busi (2nd ed.)]