Diodati, Giovanni. - Protestant exegete, born in Geneva in 1576 to a Lucchese family that had emigrated there, and died there on 3 Oct. 1649. At the age of only 21 he obtained the chair of Hebrew language and later that of theology, which he held for 40 years in his native city. A friend of Paolo Sarpi, he translated Sarpi’s *History of the Council of Trent* into French (Geneva 1621).
He became famous for his Italian translation of the Bible, first printed in Geneva in 1607, corrected and reprinted in 1641, and subsequently reproduced in numerous editions by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The version has its merits, more in the Old Testament than in the New, since he knew Hebrew better than Greek; yet in many passages the translator’s Protestant tendency is evident. Thus “Ave, gratia plena” (Lk 1:28) is rendered “Ben ti sia, o favorita,” and in Acts 1:22, where the Catholic translation has “Paul and Barnabas, after fasting and prayer, appointed presbyters for them,” Diodati renders it: “And after they had, by common vote, appointed elders for each church,” etc. He also published a French translation of the Bible (Geneva 1644), but it did not meet with success, as well as a Commentary (ibid. 1649).