Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 23 - Rev. Jean Pierre Stehelin
Rev. Jean Pierre Stehelin, F.R.S., born in 1688, was in 1729 one of the Comité Ecclesiastique, and was minister of several French churches from 1727 till his death in 1753. He printed a Treatise on Transubstantiation, “ou extrait de plusieurs sermons prononcés dans la Chapelle de Hammersmith.” He was famous as a linguist, having mastered the following languages:— “Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, French, German, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, Chaldean, Gothic, Old Tudesco or Druid, Anglo-Saxon, besides Spanish, Portuguese, and Welsh.” (See London and Scots Magazine for 1753.)
He is well known to collectors through his rare volumes, valued by the booksellers at £3, 10s., entitled, “Rabbinical Literature, or the Traditions of the Jews, contained in their Talmud and other mystical writings; likewise the opinions of that people concerning the Messiah, and the time and manner of His Appealing; with an inquiry into the origin, progress, authority, and usefulness of those Traditions,” two vols., 1748. I applied to an unfailing source—The Rev. Dr. A. B. Grosart’s library—and found that a very nice copy is there. The fortunate possessor describes the work as a collection of the quaintly absurd yet not altogether unmeaning usages of the ritualistic Jews, well put together, evidencing extensive reading, and occasionally introducing a pathetic legend.
The surname Stehelin, is connected with the military service. In 1790 Colonel Stehelin was Lieutenant-Governor of the Royal Military Academy. In 1818 Major-General Edward Stehelin, of the Royal Artillery, wrote to John Mackintosh, Esq., Assistant-Surgeon, recalling “the great zeal and attention paid by you in the execution of your duty as a medical officer under my command in the West Indies,” and “a series of almost continued heavy rains while the operations were carrying on against the island of Martinique in the year 1809.” In the Times, August 1846, an advertisement appeared:— “The next of kin of the undermentioned will hear of something to their advantage by applying to Brundrett, Randall, Simmons, and Brown, 10 King’s Bench Walk, Temple, London, agents for the Registrar of the Supreme Court, Madras, namely, Captain E. B. Stehelin, H.M. 41st regiment Foot, 1827.”