FERDINAND, PHILIP:
By: Joseph Jacobs
Hebrew teacher; born in Poland about 1555; died at Leyden, Holland, 1598. After an adventurous career on the Continent, during which he became first a Roman Catholic and afterward a Protestant, he went to Oxford University, and later removed to the University of Cambridge, where he was matriculated Dec. 16, 1596. He claimed a pension from the "Domus Conversorum," which was paid Feb. 3, 1598, and receipted for by him in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. The same year he was attracted to Leyden by Joseph Scaliger, who obtained a professorship for him. Scaliger himself acknowledges having learned much from Ferdinand, in the short time he was at Leyden. Ferdinand's only publication was a translation of the six hundred and thirteen commandments as collected by Abraham ben "Kattani" in the Bomberg Bible (Cambridge, 1597).
- Dict. National Biog.;
- Wood, Athenœ Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, i. 677;
- Cooper, Athenœ Cantabrigienses, ii. 239;
- Scaliger, Epistolœ, pp. 208, 594, Leyden, 1627;
- Transactions Jew. Hist. Soc. Eng. i. 27.
