Johann Philipp Baratier

Johann Philipp Baratier (1721—1740), German scholar, was born at Schwabach near Nuremberg on the 10th of January 1721. His early education was most carefully conducted by his father, the pastor of the French church at Schwabach, and so rapid was his progress that by the time he was five years of age he could speak French, Latin and Dutch with ease, and read Greek fluently. He then studied Hebrew, and in three years was able to translate the Hebrew Bible into Latin or French. He collected materials for a dictionary of rare and difficult Hebrew words, with critical and philological observations; and when he was about eleven years old translated from the Hebrew Tudela’s Itinerarium.

In his fourteenth year he was admitted master of arts at Halle, and received into the Royal Academy at Berlin. The last years of his short life he devoted to the study of history and antiquities, and had collected materials for histories of the Thirty Years War and of Antitrinitarianism, and for an Inquiry concerning Egyptian antiquities. His health, which had always been weak, gave way completely under these labours, and he died on the 5th of October 1740. He had published eleven separate works, and left a great quantity of manuscript.