f.t.: Praecepta mosaica sexcenta atq; tredecim, cu succinta... expositione Sebastianus Munsterus...

Sebastian Muenster (Munsterus; 1489–1552), German Hebraist and reformer. Born in Ingelheim, Muenster entered the Franciscan order in 1505. Turning to the study of Hebrew, he became a pupil of Conrad Pellicanus in Basle from about 1510 and of Elijah Levita, whose major grammatical works he translated and edited from 1525. Next to Johann Reuchlin Muenster was the outstanding Christian Hebraist of the 16th century. He taught Hebrew at Heidelberg (1524–28) and, by the time he was appointed professor of Hebrew at Basle University (1528), had become a Protestant. Unlike Pellicanus, Muenster was a prolific author and translator. He reissued Reuchlin's De rudimentis Hebraicis and published about 40 works, including Epitome Hebraicae grammaticae (1520); Institutiones Grammaticae in Hebraeam Linguam (Basle, 1524); Chaldaica Grammatica (Basle, 1527), the first Aramaic grammar by a Christian, based on the Arukh of Nathan b. Jehiel of Rome; a list of the 613 Command ments (Basle, 1533) culled from the Sefer Mitzvot Katan of Isaac b. Joseph of Corbeil; translations of Josippon, and of works by David Kimhi and E. Levita; and a grammar of rabbinic Hebrew (Basle, 1542). His outstanding Hebraica Biblia (2 vols, Basle, 1534–35), which is provided with an original Latin text independent of the Vulgate, represents the first Protestant translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Latin. Like Paulus Fagius, Muenster translated into Hebrew the Apocryphal Book of Tobit (Basle, 1542), which later reappeared in the London Polyglot Bible (1654–57). His Hebrew version (with annotations) of the Gospel of St. Matthew ("Torat ha-Mashi'ah," Basle, 1537), dedicated to Henry VIII of England, was the first Hebrew translation of any portion of the New Testament. Muenster's use of Jewish polemical literature in the preparation of his Hebrew edition of Matthew outraged Guillaume Postel, who bitterly attacked his fellow Hebraist in the concluding section of his De orbis terrae concordia.... Muenster was also a mathematician, cosmographer, and cartographer. He annotated the Latin version of Abraham b. Hiyya's astronomical and geographical work, Zurat ha-Arez (Basle, 1546).