Abraham Ecchellensis

1600-1664. Maronite* scholar. Surnamed from his birthplace Hekel (Ecchel) on the Syrian slopes of Mt. Hermon, he was a brilliant student at the Maronite college in Rome, where he obtained philosophical and theological doctorates. His valuable contributions to Le Jay's Polyglot Bible* (Arabic, Latin of Ruth, Arabic of III Maccabees) were cut short by an unfortunate jealous quarrel with his collaborator Gabriel Sionita. His immense labors included compiling, translation, philosophy, church history, and Christian biography (see L. Petit in Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. I). Though a man of prodigious scholarship, he is expertly judged (like many students of minutiae) to have failed in critical faculty or total synthetic grasp.