1 They have felt, however, that the task which they had undertaken could not be rightly discharged by merely adding new knowledge to the old, or by substituting more recent opinions for others grown obsolete, or by any other form of superficial revision. Arrangements have been made whereby the rights connected with 'Robinson's Gesenius' are carried over to the present work, and exclusive authority to use the most recent German editions has been secured. The present Editors consider themselves fortunate in thus having the opportunity afforded by an evident demand. In Germany an attempt has been made to keep pace with advancing knowledge by frequent editions of the Handwörterbuch as well as by the brilliant and suggestive, though unequal, Wörterbuch of Siegfried and Stade (in 1892-93), but in England and America there has not been heretofore even so much as a serious attempt. Southern Arabia, and other old abodes of Semitic peoples, have contributed to a far more comprehensive and accurate knowledge of the Hebrew vocabulary in its sources, and its usage than was possible forty or fifty years ago.
Arabic, ancient and modern, Ethiopic, with its allied dialects, Aramaic, in its various literatures and localities, have all yielded new treasures while the discovery and decipherment of inscriptions from Babylonia and Assyria, Phœnicia, Northern Africa. Wide fields of research have been opened, the very existence of which was a surprise, and have invited explorers. The languages cognate with Hebrew have claimed the attention of specialists in nearly all civilized countries. The language and the text of the Old Testament have been subjected to a minute and searching inquire before unknown. In the meantime Semitic studies have been pursued on all hands with energy and success. The last English edition of Gesenius, prepared by Tregelles, and likewise including additions from the Thesaurus, dates as far back as 1859. This broad-minded, sound and faithful scholar added to the successive editions of the book in its English form the newest materials and conclusions in the field of Hebrew word-study, receiving large and valuable contributions in manuscript from Gesenius himself, and, after the latter's death, carefully incorporating into his translation the substance of the Thesaurus, as its fasciculi appeared.īut the last revision of Robinson's Gesenius was made in 1854, and Robinson died in 1863. In 1824 appeared Gibbs' translation of the Neues Hebräisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch, issued by Gesenius in 1815, and in 1836 Edward Robinson published his translation of the Latin work of 1833. The results of Gesenius' most advanced work were promptly put before English-speaking students. The Thesaurus philologicus Criticus Linguæ Hebrææ et Chaldææ Veteris Testamenti, begun by Gesenius some years earlier, and not completed at his death, was substantially finished by Roediger in 1853, although the concluding part, containing Indices, Additions and Corrections, was not published until 1858. Libros representing a much riper stage of his lexicographical work than his earlier Hebrew dictionaries, was published in 1833, and the corresponding issue of his Hebräisches und Chaldäisches Handwörterbuch öber das Alte Testament, upon which the later German editions more or less directly depend, appeared in 1834. His Lexicon Manuale Hebraicum et Chaldaicum in V. Wilhelm Gesenius, the father of modern Hebrew Lexicography, died in 1842. The need of a new Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament has been so long felt that no elaborate explanation of the appearance of the present work seems called for. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt, Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology in the Union Theological Seminary.īoston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company. Regius Professor of Hebrew, and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.Ĭharles A. Davenport Professor of Hebrew and the Cognate Languages in the Union Theological Seminary.
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