JONA, JĒHŪDHĀH, ben JĪSHĀQ. — A converted rabbi, known in Italy as Giovanni Battista Giuda Giona or, more briefly, Battista, born to Jews from Spain in Safed (Galilee) on 28 October 1588 and died in Rome on 26 May 1668. As a rabbi he visited the cities of Italy, then went to Poland and subsequently to Amsterdam; in Hamburg he held the office of dajjān (“judge”). He received Baptism in Warsaw in 1625; thereafter, sent by the king of Poland to Constantinople to purchase gems there, he was captured by the Cossacks, from whom he was ransomed by the ambassador of Venice. He then came to Italy, taught Hebrew and Aramaic at the Academy of Pisa, and finally settled in Rome, where for approximately 25 years he was instructor of catechumens, professor of Hebrew at the Archiginnasio and at the Collegio di Propaganda; from 1650 he was a writer for the Vatican Library and interpreter of the Holy See for the Semitic languages. He was
His most important work is the translation into Hebrew (from Latin) of the four Gospels: Bērīth bādhāšāh, with a preface by Pope Clement IX (in-fol., Rome 1668); it is the earliest after that of Elia Hutter (Nuremberg 1600). He also published, in Hebrew and Latin, an extensive discourse read at the College of Propaganda on Pentecost 1653: Dērāf. Protoplastorum remedium, Messiae adventus, ac igneus Spiritus Sancti super Apostolos descensus (Rome 1653). His Limmādh ham-mēšīhām (“Doctrine of the Christians”) is the Hebrew version of the catechism of St. R. Bellarmino, with the Italian text and notes drawn from rabbinical writings, printed by Propaganda (Rome 1658); in the 2nd ed. (there 1661; reprinted 1664), he added, against the detractors of the version, a reply: Note d'alcuni errori della tradutione hebraica nel testo della dottrina christiana e nelle annotazioni aggiunte dall'autore di quella.