Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben-Yehuda

Front Cover
William Horbury
A&C Black, 1999 M01 1 - 337 pages
The study of the Hebrew language has been a major preoccupation of many Jews and non-Jews since ancient times. This book fully illuminates this fascinating history.

Substantial sections of the book deal with the Second Temple period, when Hebrew was cultivated alongside the Aramaic and Greek vernaculars; the Roman empire; the medieval period, with special attention to the Karaite Jews and their characteristic Hebrew, the Renaissance and early modern period, including the efflorescence of Christian Hebrew study in Italy and northern Europe; and the revival of Hebrew in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, in Palestine under the British mandate, and in modern Israel.

Experts in various periods collaborate to make this book a valuable introduction to an area lacking a comprehensive survey.

--Wido Van Peursen, Bibliotheca Orientalis LVII No.5/6 (September-December 2000)

"To find in one volume such a large sample of distinguished British scholars writing on a rather forgotten topic is doubtless a brilliant display of the state of scholarship on Jewish Studies in the United Kingdom at the end of the century, and it creates in the reader a sense of optimism."
--Angel Saenz Badillos, Journal of Jewish Studies 52.1 (Spring 2001)>

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
1
Joachim Schaper
15
Hebrew Study in Ben Siras Beth Midrash
27
Hebrew and its Study at Qumran
38
The Ancestral Language of the Jews in 2 Maccabees
68
St Jerome and the Meaning of the HighPriestly
90
Hebrew and Aramaic in the Dialogue of Timothy
106
The Hebrew Matthew and Hebrew Study
122
Alexander Neckams Knowledge of Hebrew
207
Christian Hebrew Scholarship in Quattrocento Florence
224
the Father of English
234
Some Points of Interest in SixteenthCentury
249
The Amsterdam Translation of the Mishnah
257
Samson Raphael Hirschs Use of Hebrew Etymology
271
A Jewish Usurper among Christian Hebraists?
279
the Experiences
293

Hebrew Formulae and Names
135
A Thousand Years of Hebrew in Byzantium
147
The Knowledge of Hebrew among Early Karaites
165
The Karaite Tradition of Hebrew Grammatical Thought
186
Hebrew in Mandatary Palestine
300
Select Bibliography
319
Index of Places
331
Copyright

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About the author (1999)

William Horbury is Professor of Jewish and Early Christian Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.

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