B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Hello everybody. Glad to be here in this insightful forum.

I have a question for you. I understand that Hebrew is a very old language and that for many years it wasn't even spoken. So, how did the Hebrew lexicons come into being? I've heard of the BDB and the Strong's, but how did these fellows understand the meanings of all those words, and what ancient sources did they use? I know that some ancient languages were decoded using sources like the Rosetta Stone, but I don't know whether it was the case for Biblical Hebrew.

Thanks in advance.

Norman,

According to this article from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, the earliest "lexicon" was a dictionary of Hebrew proper names, ascribed to Philo of Alexandria in the 3rd century CE. From the article:

Traditional literature, beginning with the tannaitic Midrash, contains, of course, numerous lexical comments on the words of the Bible; and this literature, including the old Bible translations, must be regarded as the earliest and most important source of Hebrew lexicology.

There is a lot more in the article. Since 1906 there may have been additional discoveries, of course. But perhaps one of the other members knows about this.

Hope this helps.

I don’t know when the first dictionaries for Hebrew were written, but the oldest still in common usage was written by Gesenius in the early 1800s where he broke with tradition in more than one way. In the mid 1800s Davidson published his analytical lexicon.

From what I read, there were lexicons published during the medieval period when all words were collected under supposed verbal roots. Gesenius was the first to list them in alphabetical order.

Though Hebrew was not spoken since before the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, it continued to be used in the same manner as medieval Latin, therefore it was never completely forgotten. Its continued use provided the basis upon which the earliest lexicons were written.

In more modern times there has been a rediscovery of ancient, forgotten languages similar to Biblical Hebrew which can be used to cross-reference meanings, concordances that allow us to compare all uses of words in one place, and now electronic tools that allow even more options. All of these tools are now used to write Biblical Hebrew to English lexicons.

All of this is based on the fact that though Hebrew was for a long time no longer spoken as a native tongue, and Biblical Hebrew still isn’t, it was never forgotten.

Karl W. Randolph.

I imagine most of the people who wrote the Hebrew lexicons knew Greek, and if you know Greek, the LXX is a de-facto Hebrew lexicon. I use it all the time.

Mark Lightman

Thanks for all your answers. Let me apologise for replying so late, but I had some technical issues only solved today.

I found the article provided by Kirk very useful and illustrative. This information helps me lots, because I erroneously thought that Hebrew lexicons were a product of archaeological research in the XIX century, but now I know that there is a long and rich tradition of Hebrew philology. What seems striking to me is that Spain being such a great centre of Hebrew studies didn't produce a Hebrew-Spanish lexicon in use to these days (apart from the argon of Jacob Rodríguez); in fact, as a native Spanish speaker, I've had to rely on English and Latin translations.