Johannes Leusden (April 26, 1624, Utrecht

Utrecht (city)

Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

 - September 30, 1699, Utrecht) was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 Calvinist theologian and orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

. He studied in Utrecht and Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

 and was a Professor of Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 in Utrecht.

Leusden was one of the most prominent Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 experts of his time, and wrote several works about the Bible and about Hebrew philology

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

 (Philologus Hebraeus, 1656; Philologus Hebraeo-Mixtus, 1663; Philologus Hebraeo-Latino-Belgicum, 1668; Philologus Hebraeo-Graecus, 1670; Korte Hebreusche en Chaldeusche taalkonst, 1686). In 1660, together with the Amsterdam rabbi and book printer Joseph Athias

Joseph Athias

Joseph Athias was a rabbi and publisher of the Hebrew Bible.Born in Spain, probably in Córdoba, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, he settled in Amsterdam. In 1661 and 1667 he issued two editions of the Hebrew Bible. Though carefully printed, they contain a number of mistakes in the...

, he published his Biblia Hebraica, the first edition of the Hebrew Bible with numbered verses.