The Rabbi and the English scholar

Christian Interest in Jewish Kabbalah (contd.)

From: Simon Ockley, Introductio ad linguas orientales, Cambridge, 1706

Simon Ockley was educated at Queens’. In 1711 Ockley became a fellow at Jesus College. On display is his introduction to Semitic languages, written while he taught Hebrew at Queens’. It is open to a page explaining the Jewish numerical system gematria.

As to why he became a lecturer at Queens’, a contemporary wrote of Ockley as ‘being naturally inclin’d to the Study of the Oriental Tongues, he was, when about 17 years of Age, made Hebrew Lecturer in the said College, chiefly because he was poor and could hardly subsist.