CAMPEN, JOHANNES VAN°

CAMPEN, JOHANNES VAN° (also Campensis, de Campo, Transislanus; 1490–1538), Dutch Hebraist and theologian. Van Campen, who may have begun to learn Hebrew during his school years, was a student of J. Reuchlin and studied also at the new Trilingual College of the University of Louvain, which had been established at Erasmus' initiative. There he became professor of Hebrew, but later he traveled in Germany, Poland, Italy, and Switzerland where he taught Hebrew. In 1528, while still in Louvain, he published his Hebrew grammar, and in the same year in Leyden, a treatise on masoretic Hebrew, based upon the work of elijah levita . His Latin paraphrase of the Hebrew text of Psalms (Nuremberg, 1532) attracted considerable attention and was translated into several languages, including English (1539). Van Campen also published a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes (Paris, 1532). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Steinschneider, in: ZHB, 2 (1897), 95 no. 129; Biographie Nationale … de Belgique, 10 (1888–89), 371–2; H. de Vocht, History of the Foundation and Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense, 1 (1951), 503–5; 2 (1953), 120–2; 549–50; 3 (1954), 154–208, 373. (Joseph Elijah Heller)