11 Facts About Petrus Cunaeus

Petrus Cunaeus was the pen name of the Dutch Christian scholar Peter van der Kun.

Petrus Cunaeus was introduced to rabbinic studies and Aramaic by Johannes Drusius.

In 1612, Petrus Cunaeus became a professorof Latin, in 1613 of politics, and in 1615 of jurisprudence, a position he held until his death.

Petrus Cunaeus wrote at the peak of Protestant interest in Jewish texts for their political as well as religious authority.

Petrus Cunaeus was among the leading Christian scholars of Jewish texts of a generation that included the Frenchman Joseph Scaliger, Hugo Grotius, and Bonaventure Vulcanius in the Netherlands, Johannes Buxtorf, father and son in Germany and; England, John Selden and Daniel Heinsius in England.

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Petrus Cunaeus corresponded with such contemporary Jewish scholars as Menasseh ben Israel.

Petrus Cunaeus is best remembered for his book De Republica Hebraeorum in which he described the ancient Hebrew kingdom as a model of republican government.

Petrus Cunaeus the Bible was a legal and juridical model for the functioning of an independent state.

For Petrus Cunaeus, who was the leading expert of his era on Josephus, Josephus' Jewish Antiquities and Contra Apion, as well as Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, the Talmud, and the Bible together provided information demonstrating that Hebrew State was of a higher order than the Greek or Roman states.

Hebrew Republic, as Petrus Cunaeus saw it, was a virtuous community of republican small-hold farmers, kept that way by the Biblical law that every fiftieth year all land transactions become null with the property returning to the family of the original owner.

Petrus Cunaeus closed the book with an appeal for tolerance and sympathy towards contemporary Jews.