Willem Smits
Flemish biblical scholar
Willem Smits (1704 – 1 December 1770) was a Dutch Franciscan orientalist and exegete.
Biography
Smits was born in Kevelaer in the Duchy of Guelders. He entered the Order of Friars Minor at the age of eighteen. As a religious, he devoted himself to the study of the Bible and biblical languages, eventually being appointed a lector.
From 1732 to 1744, he published, at Antwerp, several biblical theses dealing with questions of textual criticism and chronology. In one of these, Isagoge Romano-Catholica ad textum hebraeum..., he argues that the Latin Vulgate is substantially a faithful translation of the original Hebrew; and in another, Isagoge Romano-Catholica ad textum graecum vulgo LXX. . ., that the Septuagint is preferable to the actual Hebrew text.
At the request of Thomas Philip Wallrad de Hénin-Liétard d'Alsace, then Archbishop of Mechelen, Smits undertook the translation of the entire Bible into Dutch. The title is: Biblia Sacra Vulgatae editionis, versione belgica, notis grammaticalibus, literalibus, criticis, ... elucidata per FF. Minores Recollectes musae philologico-sacri antwerpiensis.
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This entry incorporates text from “Willem Smits” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.