Hebrew Studies

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As Hebrew Studies is defined as the scientific study of the Hebrew language . Hebraistics as a university discipline is mostly part of the subjects theology , Semitic and Jewish studies .

history

The systematic occupation with the Hebrew language goes back to the Masoretes , who commented on the text of the Hebrew Bible and provided the text with additional auxiliary symbols. In the Arab region, which at that time also included Spain and Sicily, the academic study of Hebrew grammar began as early as 9/10. Century, for example by the Jewish translator Saadia Gaon .

The German humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) is considered to be the founder of Hebrew studies in Christian Europe. He studied the Hebrew language with the Jewish court doctor Jacob ben Jechiel Loans and finally published an old Hebrew grammar with a glossary in 1506 . Even if Jewish scholars disparaged Reuchlin's work as primitive and amateurish, it aroused general interest in Hebrew linguistic research and Old Testament biblical studies . Reuchlin also stood up for the rights of Jews and against the destruction of Jewish books.

Other early Hebraists are the Jewish scholar Elijah Levita (1469–1549) and the Christian reformer Paulus Fagius (1504–1549). In 1542 the two researchers jointly published a four-language dictionary in Isny . Levita wrote a Hebrew-German grammar for this edition. In this circle also included Sebastian Munster (1488-1552) and Georg Witzel (1501-1573), who wrote a "eulogy of the Hebrew language." In 1590 the Marburg professor Otto Walper published a detailed Hebrew grammar. In the Catholic area, Heinrich Uranius (1492–1572) from Emmerich was known for his Hebrew grammar (1541).

In Florence, the Dominican Girolamo Savonarola founded a language school at the monastery of San Marco in Florence, from which several important Hebraists emerged: Santi Pagnini (approx. 1470-approx. 1536), who wrote numerous textbooks and encyclopedias, and Sante Marmochino († 1548), who in 1538 published the meticulously compiled “Bibbia nuovamente tradotta dalla hebraica verità in lingua thoscana”. Other important Hebraists of the Dominican order were Agostino Giustinani († 1536), who taught Hebrew and Arabic at the University of Paris from 1518, and Sixtus of Siena (1520–1569).

Franz Praetorius (1847–1927), who taught oriental studies at the University of Breslau from 1880, was one of the most important Hebraists of the 19th and 20th centuries .

Ancient Hebrews

Ancient Hebrew studies research into the so-called classical Hebrew as the language of ancient Israel and the Tanakh or the Old Testament from the beginning at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. Until around 200 AD

literature

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Elias H. Füllenbach , Biblical and Hebrew studies of Italian Dominicans of the 15th and 16th centuries , in: Bibelstudium und Sermon im Dominikanerorden. History, ideal, practice , ed. by Viliam Stefan Doci and Thomas Prügl, Rome 2019 (= Dissertationes Historicae, Vol. 36), pp. 255–271.
  2. Jürgen W. Schmidt : No case of “ritual blood drawing” - the criminal trials against the rabbinate candidate Max Bernstein in Breslau in 1889/90 and their sexual psychological background. In: Specialized prose research - Crossing borders. Volume 8/9, 2012/2013 (2014), pp. 483-516, here: p. 496.