The Biblical Philology of Daniel Heinsius (1619–1640)

Chapter 4 assesses the biblical annotations of Scaliger’s star pupil, Daniel Heinsius. Recognizing the increasing currency of biblical philology, Heinsius published two massive tomes displaying his New Testariment scholarship, his versatility in Greek, and his apparent mastering of Hebrew. Yet, the results of his studies were diffuse. Heinsius subjected himself to the control of the professors of theology of his own university, and he was reticent with his textual criticism. Instead, he concentrated on criticizing the work of Theodorus Beza and on advancing his theory that New Testament Greek was not merely koine Greek with Hebrew and Aramaic influences, but a ‘Hellenistic dialect’ spoken by the native Greek-speaking Jews. Heinsius’s annotations show that it is not useful to attempt to place biblical philology on a one-dimensional scale between orthodoxy on the one hand and radicalism on another, but also that mainstream philology was welcomed by many.