7. Modern Works on Hebrew

A new advance was begun through the stimulus of the Polyglot Bibles, in which the study of Arabic was revived. Eminent in this period were De Dieu (d. 1642), Castell (d. 1685), Albert Schultens (d. 1750), N. W. Schroder (d. 1798), Alting (d. 1679), and Danz (d. 1727), the last two of whom employed comparison of other Semitic languages. Besides these, the works of J. D. Michaelis in lexicography are especially to be noted, upon the basis of which nineteenth century labors have been largely based. Hebrew owes a great debt to W. Gesenius (d. 1842), who, while using the other Semitic tongues, sought to obtain as much light upon forms as the Hebrew itself afforded. H. Ewald sought in his very full grammar to attain deeper insight into the development of the language. B6ttcher (d. 1863) and Olshausen sought to carry out more completely the empirical methods of Gesenius. Stade carries the reduction of developed forms to their ground-form in synthetic fashion. Lexicography is developed in the works of Siegfried and Stade and in the works of Brown, Driver, and Briggs (1906). The treatises of Lagarde and Barth are of special value, especially that of Barth, in which he parallels the nouns partly with verbal preterites and partly with imperfects, and so brings out a useful principle.

(F. Buhl.)