Some Preliminary Remarks on the Origins of Hebrew-Latin Lexicography

Abstract

The article deals with the beginnings of Hebrew-Latin lexicography and shows, on the basis of chosen examples, the decisive and understudied importance of the glossaries, more often than not interlinear or in the form of word-lists with one translation for each entry, in the vernacular. The tortuous process which led, emerging from the collaboration of Johannes Reuchlin and Konrad Pellikan, to the compilation and publication in print of the De rudimentis linguae Hebraicae, appeared in print in 1506, is briefly sketched and evaluated among other things in relation to the contemporary Hebrew-German and Hebrew-Latin glossaries, produced in Southern Germany in the circles of Johannes Boeschenstein and Caspar Amman. Although the Latin of the Vulgata is always present, explicitly or implicitly, in any lexicographical equivalence aimed at rendering the Latin semantic equivalent of a given Hebrew term, the lingua franca used by the Christian Hebraists for their exchanges with Jewish or converted informants, easily identified with a shared vernacular, must be kept in mind in order to understand the choices made by the lexicographers especially when they depart from the traditional rendering of the Biblical text.

Keywords

• Hebrew-Latin lexicography
• vernacular glossaries
• Christian Hebraists of the Renaissance