Jean Mercier (Hebraist)

Front page of the Procheiron or Hexabiblos of Constantine Harmenopoulos(1320 - 1380/1385), Lyon 1587 edition by Jean Mercier, translated to Latin from Byzantine Greek.

Jean Mercier, Latin Joannes Mercerus (Uzès ca. 1510 – 1570) was a French Hebraist.

He was a pupil of the less known François Vatable, and succeeded Vatable as professor of Hebrew at the Collège Royal.^[1] His students included Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, and Pierre Martinius who became professor at La Rochelle. Mercier was Lecteur du Roi from 1546 onwards.^[2]

He fled to Venice because of his sympathies with Protestantism, but returned to France and died of the plague.

Works

• Aramaic grammar Tabulae in grammaticen linguae Chaldaeae (Paris, 1560)
• De notis Hebraeorum liber (1582), revised by Jean Cinqarbres
• Commentary on Genesis (Geneva, posthumous 1598), published by Théodore de Bèze

Translations

• Bishop Jean du Tillet's Italian manuscript of the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew (Paris, 1555)
• Translation of Constantine Harmenopoulos Hexabiblos or Procheiron (Lyons, 1556, reprinted in 1580, 1587)
• Talmudic selections: Libellus de abbreviaturis Hebraeorum, tam Talmudicorum quam Masoritarum et aliorum rabbinorum (Paris, 1561)
• Hebrew Jonah with commentary of David Kimchi Jonas cum commentariis R. David Kimhi (1567)
• Translation of Abraham Ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Ten Commandments (Lyons, ca. 1567)
• Notes to Santes Pagnini's Oẓar Leshon ha-Kodesh (Lyons, 1575)
• Translation of Targum Jonathan on the Prophets

References