Study of the Hebrew language

As Hebrew studies is defined as the scientific study of the Hebrew language. The Hebrew studies as an academic discipline is now generally part of the subjects of theology, Semitic and Jewish Studies.

History

As the founder of Hebrew Studies in Christian Europe applies the German humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), who studied the Hebrew language in the Jewish court physician Jacob ben Jehiel Loans and eventually published an ancient Hebrew grammar with glossary in 1506 itself. In the Arab world the scientific study of Hebrew grammar as early as the 9th/10th had. Century, for example, used by the Jewish translators Saadia Gaon, of which also the then Muslim Spain and Sicily were affected. The systematic study of the Hebrew language goes back to the Masoretes, who commented on the text of the Hebrew Bible and knew it the text with additional auxiliary character.

Even if the Jews themselves reviled the work of Reuchlin as primitive and amateurish, it aroused general interest in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament Bible research and science. Reuchlin also stood up for the rights of Jews and against the destruction of Jewish books.

Another early Hebraists the Jewish scholar Elijah Levita apply (1469-1549) and the Christian reformer Paul Fagius ( 1504-1549 ). 1542, the two researchers jointly issued out a four-language dictionary in Isny ​​. Levita wrote a Jewish- German grammar for this issue. In this circle also included Sebastian Münster (1488-1552) and Georg Witzel (1501-1573), of his " eulogy of the Hebrew language," wrote at the time.

Althebraistik

The Althebraistik explores the so-called classical Hebrew as the language of ancient Israel and of the Tanakh or Old Testament from its beginnings at the end of the 2nd millennium BC to about 200 AD