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Samuel David Luzzatto, Prolegomena to a Grammar of the Hebrew Language
Translated for the first time, with annotations and useful additions, this long under-appreciated work of S. D. Luzzatto is now available to modern scholars. A history of both Hebrew and Hebrew scholarship, it is replete with valuable information and insight.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
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March 31, 2013
Aaron Rubin chose to do something rather unusual, something which could only be a labor of love. Who else would translate a 170 year old semi-obsolete introduction to Hebrew? I can completely get on board with any lover of the great Shadal, being one myself.
Rubin does the world a service, breathing life into an old work, true, but one which is still quite tasty. Luzzatto (Shadal) cooked this up for his students at the Rabbinical College in Padua. No book like it existed, so he wrote it (in his spare time, one almost imagines). The first part is basically an introduction to Hebrew, as Shadal understood it, the history of a language. Basically he thought that Hebrew's older Semitic ancestor was Aramaic; or to be more precise, there was an older ancestor of both Aramaic and Hebrew, and this ancestor language was much more like Aramaic than Hebrew, and he marshals much compelling evidence, albeit not a theory which could quite stand up to the discovery of more Semitic languages than he could have known. This was meant to counteract the overreliance on Arabic at the time, and Shadal was indeed correct that Arabic is not the key to Hebrew. It is worth mentioning that he prefers the term "Triliteral" to "Semitic" to describe these languages, and I think he has a good point. He disertates on Mishnaic Hebrew (a living, not invented, language) and includes many interesting asides.
In addition, Shadal included a very long essay on the history of the study of Hebrew from about the time of the first Christian Hebraists; he lists dozens, both Christian and Jewish. His list is probably the most comprehensive one ever assembled, and he explains the merits and demerits of many of these scholars, and calls out a few for liberally stealing from Jewish Hebraists, but also gives fair credit where it is due and when Christian Hebraists exceeded Jewish ones.
Finally, the book includes Shadal's theories of accentuation, some of which are quite interesting. Ba'alei keriah take note!
Rubin acknowledges his predecessors - two generally unavailable partial translations, one in English and one in Hebrew. And he is exceedingly meticulous in his translation, sacrificing literary quality to be faithful to the Italian original - scrupulously so. For example, the Italian alphabet does not have the letter J. So when Shadal lists things alphabetically, in the original it would skip from I to K - and Rubin preserves this type of listing. Finally, Rubin fills in the gaps Shadal left and improves on Shadal's listing of Hebraists, adding further information, and creating entries for people Shadal mentioned but gave no listing for - and everything is set off so you know what is original and what is Rubin.
Rubin does the world a service, breathing life into an old work, true, but one which is still quite tasty. Luzzatto (Shadal) cooked this up for his students at the Rabbinical College in Padua. No book like it existed, so he wrote it (in his spare time, one almost imagines). The first part is basically an introduction to Hebrew, as Shadal understood it, the history of a language. Basically he thought that Hebrew's older Semitic ancestor was Aramaic; or to be more precise, there was an older ancestor of both Aramaic and Hebrew, and this ancestor language was much more like Aramaic than Hebrew, and he marshals much compelling evidence, albeit not a theory which could quite stand up to the discovery of more Semitic languages than he could have known. This was meant to counteract the overreliance on Arabic at the time, and Shadal was indeed correct that Arabic is not the key to Hebrew. It is worth mentioning that he prefers the term "Triliteral" to "Semitic" to describe these languages, and I think he has a good point. He disertates on Mishnaic Hebrew (a living, not invented, language) and includes many interesting asides.
In addition, Shadal included a very long essay on the history of the study of Hebrew from about the time of the first Christian Hebraists; he lists dozens, both Christian and Jewish. His list is probably the most comprehensive one ever assembled, and he explains the merits and demerits of many of these scholars, and calls out a few for liberally stealing from Jewish Hebraists, but also gives fair credit where it is due and when Christian Hebraists exceeded Jewish ones.
Finally, the book includes Shadal's theories of accentuation, some of which are quite interesting. Ba'alei keriah take note!
Rubin acknowledges his predecessors - two generally unavailable partial translations, one in English and one in Hebrew. And he is exceedingly meticulous in his translation, sacrificing literary quality to be faithful to the Italian original - scrupulously so. For example, the Italian alphabet does not have the letter J. So when Shadal lists things alphabetically, in the original it would skip from I to K - and Rubin preserves this type of listing. Finally, Rubin fills in the gaps Shadal left and improves on Shadal's listing of Hebraists, adding further information, and creating entries for people Shadal mentioned but gave no listing for - and everything is set off so you know what is original and what is Rubin.
Displaying 1 of 1 review