BOESCHENSTAIN, JOHANNES (sometimes spelled Boeschenstein):
German Hebraist; born at Eslingen in 1472; said to have been of Jewish parentage, this statement, however, being denied by himself. He was among the earliest to revive the study of Hebrew in Germany, having been a pupil of Moses Möllin and a teacher of Hebrew at Ingolstadt in 1505, at Augsburg in 1513, and at Wittenberg in 1518. He produced an elementary grammar at Augsburg in 1514, another at Wittenburg, 1518 (second edition, Cologne, 1521), and in 1520 edited Moses Ḳimḥi's 
at Augsburg, whither he had returned. During a wandering life he taught Hebrew at Nuremberg, Antwerp, and Zurich; at the last-named place having the reformer Zwingli among his pupils.
Boeschenstain gave particular attention to the Jewish prayers; publishing a German translation of some, in 1525, under the title "
, Vil Guter Mahnungen," and, in the same year, at the end of his edition of Ruth, the prayers for the dead. The Jewish grace before and after meals he translated in 1530.
- L. Geiger, Das Studium der Hebräischen Sprache in Deutschland, 1870, pp. 54, 135;
- Allg. Deutsche Biographie, iii. 184;
- J. Perles, Beiträge zur Gesch. der Hebräischen und Aramäishen Studien, pp. 27 et seq., 212;
- Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. col. 803 and Add.;
- idem, Handbuch, p. 23;
- Zusätze, p. 358;
- Zeit. für Hebr. Bibl. ii. 54 (with full bibliography).
