Humphrey Hody (1659 – 20 January 1707) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

scholar and

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

Life

He was born at

Odcombe Odcombe is a village and civil parish in south Somerset, England, west of the town of Yeovil, with a population of 759 in 2011. The upper part of the village, Higher Odcombe, sits on the crest of the hill, while the lower part, Lower Odcombe, ...

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lor ...

in 1659. In 1676 he entered

Wadham College, Oxford Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road. Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy ...

, of which he became a fellow in 1685. In 1692 he became chaplain to Edward Stillingfleet,

bishop of Worcester A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

, and for his support of the ruling party in a controversy with Henry Dodwell regarding the non-juring bishops he was appointed chaplain to Archbishop

John Tillotson John Tillotson (October 1630 – 22 November 1694) was the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury from 1691 to 1694. Curate and rector Tillotson was the son of a Puritan clothier at Haughend, Sowerby, Yorkshire. Little is known of his early youth ...

, an office which he continued to hold under

Thomas Tenison Thomas Tenison (29 September 163614 December 1715) was an English church leader, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1694 until his death. During his primacy, he crowned two British monarchs. Life He was born at Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, the son a ...

. In 1698 he was appointed regius professor of

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

at Oxford, and in 1704 was made

archdeacon An archdeacon is a senior clergy position in the Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, St Thomas Christians, Eastern Orthodox churches and some other Christian denominations, above that of mo ...

of Oxford.

Works

In 1684 he published ''Contra historiam Aristeae de LXX. interpretibus dissertatio'', in which he argued that the so-called "

Letter of Aristeas The Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates is a Hellenistic work of the 3rd or early 2nd century BC, considered by some Biblical scholars to be pseudepigraphical. Harris, Stephen L., ''Understanding the Bible''. (Palo Alto: Mayfield) 1985; André Pel ...

", containing an account of the production of the

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond t ...

, was the late forgery of a Hellenic

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

originally circulated to lend authority to that version. The dissertation was generally regarded as conclusive, although Isaac Vossius published an angry and scurrilous reply to it in the appendix to his edition of ''

Pomponius Mela Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera (now Algeciras) and died AD 45. His short work (''De situ orbis libri III.'') remained in use nearly to the year 1500. It occupies less ...

''. In 1689 Hody wrote the ''Prolegomena to the Greek chronicle of

John Malalas John Malalas ( el, , ''Iōánnēs Malálas''; – 578) was a Byzantine chronicler from Antioch (now Antakya, Turkey). Life Malalas was of Syrian descent, and he was a native speaker of Syriac who learned how to write in Greek later ...

'', published at Oxford in 1691. In 1701 he published ''A History of English Councils and Convocations'', and in 1703 in four volumes ''De Bibliorum textis originalibus'', in which he included a revision of his work on the Septuagint, and published a reply to Vossius. A work, ''De Graecis Illustribus'', which he left in manuscript, was published in 1742 by Samuel Jebb, who prefixed to it a Latin life of the author.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hody, Humphrey 1659 births 1707 deaths People from South Somerset (district) English theologians Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford Regius Professors of Greek (University of Oxford) Archdeacons of Oxford Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford Humphrey