, Dort
(where he made the acquaintance of many of the delegates to the synod of
1619) and Geneva, and in all these places acquired a great reputation. In
1622 he published at Basel a _Lexicon Chaldaicum et Syriacum_, as a
companion work to his father's great Rabbinical Bible. He declined the
chair of logic at Lausanne, and in 1624 was appointed general deacon of the
church at Basel. On the death of his father in 1629, he was unanimously
designated his successor in the Hebrew professorship. From this date until
his death in 1664 he remained at Basel, declining two offers which were
made to him from Groningen and Leiden, to accept the Hebrew chair in these
two celebrated schools. In 1647 the governing body of the university
founded, specially for him, a third theological professorship, that of
"Commonplaces and Controversies," which Buxtorf held for seven years along
with the Hebrew chair. When, however, the professorship of the Old
Testament became vacant in 1654 by the death of Theodor Zwinger, Buxtorf
resigned the chair of theology and accepted that of the Old Testament
instead. He was four times married, his three first wives dying shortly
after marriage and the fourth predeceasing her husband by seven years. His
children died young, with the exception of two boys, the younger of whom,
Jakob (1645-1704), became his father's colleague, and then his successor,
in the chair of Hebrew. The same distinction fell to the lot of his nephew
Johann (1663-1732).

A considerable portion of Buxtorf's public life was spent in controversy
regarding disputed points in biblical criticism, in reference to which he
had to defend his father's views. The attitude of the Reformed churches at
that time, as opposed to the Church of Rome, led them to maintain many
opinions in regard to biblical questions which were not only erroneous, but
altogether unnecessary for the stability of their position. Having
renounced the dogma of an infallible church, it was deemed necessary to
maintain as a counterpoise, not only that of an infallible Bible, but, as
the necessary foundation of this, of a Bible which had been handed down
from the earliest ages without the slightest textual alteration. Even the
vowel points and accents were held to have been given by divine
inspiration. The Massoretic text of the Old Testament, therefore, as
compared either with that of the recently discovered Samaritan Pentateuch,
or the Septuagint or of the Vulgate, alone contai