BENHAM, WILLIAM: Church of England; b. at Westmeon (16 m. n.e. of Southampton), Hants, Jan. 15, 1831. He was educated at St. Mark's College, Chelsea, and King's College, London (Theological Associate, 1857), and was a village schoolmaster from 1849 to 1852, and a private tutor from 1853 to 1858. He was ordered deacon in 1857 and ordained priest in the following year, and after acting as tutor in St. Mark's College from 1857 to 1864, was editorial secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge from 1864 to 1867, and professor of modern history in Queen's College, London, from 1864 to 1871. He was successively curate of St. Lawrence, Jewry, London (1865-67), vicar of Addington (1867-73), St. John the Baptist, Margate (1873-80), and Marden, Kent (1880-82), as well as Six-Preacher of Canterbury Cathedral from 1872 to 1888, and Boyle Lecturer in 1897. From 1882 he was rector of St. Edmund's, Lombard Street, and was honorary canon of Canterbury from 1885. He was also rural dean of East City from 1903. In theology he was a Broad-church disciple of F. D. Maurice. Died at London July 30, 1910. His works are: The Gospel of St. Matthew, with Notes and a Commentary (London, 1862); English Ballads, with Introduction and Notes (1863); The Epistles for the Christian Year, with Notes and Commentary (1864); The Church of the Patriarchs (1867); Companion to the Lectionary (1872); A New Translation of Thomas a Kempis' "Imitatio Christi" (1874); Readings on the Life of our Lord and His Apostles (1880); How to Teach the Old Testament (1881); Annals of the Diocese of Winchester (1884); A Short History of the Episcopal Church in America (1884); The Dictionary of Religion (1887); and Old St. Paul's Cathedral (1902). He collaborated with R. P. Davidson and with C. Welsh in Mediœval London (1901); and edited the Life of Archbishop Tait (London, 1891); The Writings of St. John, in the Temple Bible (1902), and the Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature.

BENJAMIN OF TUDELA (a town of Navarre, on the Ebro, 160 miles n.e. of Madrid): Properly Benjamin ben Jonah, a Spanish rabbi, who in 1160 (or 1165; cf. Grätz, Geschichte der Juden, vi, note 10) left home and traveled through Catalonia, southern France, Italy, Greece, the islands of the Levant, Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia to Bagdad; thence he proceeded to Egypt by way of Khuzistan, the Indian Ocean, and Yemen; and finally returned to Spain in 1173. The information which he gathered with great diligence not only concerning the places visited, but also of adjoining lands, was written down in a Hebrew work (Massa'oth shel rabbi Binyamin, "Itinerary of the Rabbi Benjamin"), which is one of the most famous of early books of travel. Benjamin was credulous, perhaps deficient in general information, and interested primarily in things Jewish; his book abounds in errors and absurdities, but it does not, justify the charge of deliberate falsification, and it contains much that is true and valuable not only concerning the numbers, status, and dispersion of the Jews of the twelfth century, but also concerning general history, political conditions, trade, descriptions of places, and the like.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The "Itinerary" was first published at Constantinople in 1543; then Ferrara, 1558; Freiburg, 1583; and many times subsequently. Arias Montanus end C. l'Empereur issued the text with a Latin translation, the former at Antwerp, 1575; the latter at Leyden, 1633. An English translation (from the Latin of Arias Montanus) was published in Purchas's Pilgrims, London, 1625, and is given in Bohn's Early Travels in Palestine, London, 1848. Others (with text) are by A. Asher, 2 vols., London, 1840-41, and M. N. Adler, London, 1907, the latter based on a British Museum MS. which differs considerably from other copies. A Germ. transl., with text, notes, etc., by L. Grünhut and M. N. Adler, was published at Frankfort, 2 vols., 1903-04. Consult also M. N. Adler, in the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, Oct., 1894.