RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Hebrew Language
century, and Elias Levita (d. 1549). At this time the humanists began to busy themselves with Hebrew. The way was broken by the preachermonk Peter Nigri (1477), the priest Johannes Bohm (1490), Konrad Pellican (1501-04), and Reuchlin (1506). The lexical and grammatical works of the elder Buxtorf (d. 1629) closed this period, in which the Christian world sought to reproduce Jewish learning.
A new advance was begun through the stimulus of the Polyglot Bibles, in which the study of Arabic was revived. Eminent in this period were De Dieu (d. 1642), Castell (d. 1685), Albert Schultens (d. 1750), N. W Schroder (d. 1798), Alting (d. 1679), and Danz (d. 1727), the last two of 7. Modern whom employed comparison of other Works on Semitic languages. Besides these, the Hebrew, works of J. D. Michaelis in lexicography are especially to be noted, upon the basis of which nineteenth century labors have been largely based. Hebrew owes a great debt to W Gesenius (d. 1842), who, while using the other Semitic tongues, sought to obtain as much light upon forms as the Hebrew itself afforded. H. Ewald sought in his very full grammar to attain deeper insight into the development of the language. Bottcher (d. 1863) and Olshausen sought to carry out more completely the empirical methods of Gesenius. Stade carries the reduction of developed forms to their ground -form in synthetic fashion. Lexicography is developed in the works of Siegfried and Stade and in the works of Brown, Driver, and Briggs (1906). The treatises of Lagarde and Barth are of special value, especially that of Barth, in which he parallels the nouns partly with verbal preterites and partly with imperfects, and so brings out a useful principle. (F. Buhl.)
II. Hebrew Literature in General: Ethnically speaking, the term Hebrew literature not only connotes the books of the Old Testament, 1. The Old but includes the Apocrypha (q.v.), the Testament later pseudepigraphic books (seePsEUDa National epigrapha), the writings of Josephus Literature, and Philo (qq.v.), the Talmud and the Targums (qq.v.; also see Bible Versions, A. V.). This discussion is necessarily limited to the Hebrew literature of the Old Testament. Thus limited, the term Hebrew literature covers what may be called the classic books of a nation. This, in turn, involves other implicates, one of the most important and suggestive of which is that this body of writings is an evolution, the product of different ages, the work of many individuals, even of whole schools or tendencies, therefore expressing changing ideals under differences of environment and condition, and employing a wide range of literary form. It would be expected that, as in the case of other national literature, Hebrew writings would not remain wholly unaffected by the peoples which conditioned the national life of the Israelites, this influence coming out even in those portions which most closely expressed its ideals — a fact which recent study has confirmed. But one has not to go far m the investigation of this literature before discovering that the body of writings included within the Old Testament is not all of Hebrew writings
existent and available in the period which the Old Testament covers. To phrase it differently, the Old Testament is a selected literature — not selected, however, in the sense that it was deliberately chosen to represent Hebrew thought and feeling, but rather selected by its own fitness, persisting by its own right to live because of its appeal to the heart and conscience of the people to whom it came and because of its complete expression of their varying hopes, fears, and convictions. And this exclusive position was won not without a struggle. For nearly three centuries other books strove for admission to this circle of writings, were for a time admitted and used by the Jewish diaspora, but were finally rejected by what, outside of the Roman and Greek branches of the Christian Church, is regarded as the best judgment of the Hebrew race with its Palestinian traditions behind it. It is a remarkable fact that the one book of Hebrew production which bears any trace of the author's hope that it would be included among the canonical books did not succeed in forcing its entrance (cf. Ecclus., Prologue). And that other literature was once available becomes evident when one notes references to such writings as the book of Jasher (Josh. x. 13), the book of the wars of Yahweh (Num. xxi. 14), the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel (II Kings x. 34 and often), and numerous other works quoted as sources in various parts of the extant literature (cf. C. F. Kent, Student's Old Testament, ii. 10 sqq.; New York, 1905).
As comprising a national literature, therefore, the Old Testament possesses the characteristics and varieties which inhere in the literature 2. Variety of a nation. It is in prose and in of Literary poetry; it contains myth, legend, his- Form and tory, legislation, oratory, epistolary Contents, literature, drama, parable, proverb, fable, idyl, philosophy, praise and prayer, patriotic national pieces, and portions universal in their application. Its writings betray at one time individualistic peculiarities of style and vocabulary and preferences for certain methods of expression; at another, they display the general tendencies of a school existing through generations. It includes the perfervid outpourings of the impassioned worshiper and the deliberate musings of a reflective philosopher. There are utterances hot from the furnace of passion, and polished, even labored and artificial, poems of the study. God, man, and Satan appear as speakers within its pages. Representing the externalization of a nation's history, it contains recollections of the pastoral life, mirrors the fresh, buoyant, and heroic period when a home was in the winning, registers the age of the adoption and formation of institutions, records the pride of achievement of eminence among the peoples, shows the depression of decadence and the rise of religious skepticism, and echoes the groan of extinction of national life. Indeed, this literature runs the entire gamut of national and of individual emotion as well as of literary form. Among the sacred books of the world's faiths, none is nearly so rich in its variety of form, content, and expression as the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.
Hebrew Language