Symposium on Robert and Thomas Wakefield and the Study of Hebrew in England in the Sixteenth Century
Description
The brothers Robert and Thomas Wakefield were perhaps the earliest pioneers in Hebrew studies in sixteenth-century England. Appointed reader in Hebrew at Oxford in 1529, Robert was influential in the campaign for the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon based on the Levitical prohibitions; he argued that the Hebrew Bible could be used effectively to buttress Henry's case. Thomas, who inherited Robert’s books after the latter’s death in 1533, became the first regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge in 1540 and held the position until his death in 1575. A conservative in religion, however, he was barred from teaching for most of his career. The surviving books of the brothers, many heavily annotated, provide a powerful insight into the study of Hebrew in England and the controversies to which it was yoked, in particular the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into English. The brothers deserve the close contextualizing analysis they have not heretofore received.
