Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Hebrew Language: Viewed in the Light of Assyrian Research
The facts here brought forward are of such fundamental importance, that I shall be grateful for any well-founded objections which may be urged against them. They mate rially change our views of the different degrees of affinity between the Semitic languages, and assign chiefly to Ara bic a position quite different from that which it has hitherto occupied. If we take a single Arabic verb like M as compared with the North Semitic 15-1, and consider the loss sustained by Arabic of so many ancient Semitic words (see Dillmann, Ethiopic Grammar, p. 5, note), and the nu merous in?ections of late origin, we are compelled to ad mit that Arabic cannot be the prototype of the other Se mitic languages, least of all of Hebrew. This opinion receives the fullest confirmation from Assyrian research. It is, therefore, time to abandon the ordinary practice of forcing the peculiar, often late, meanings of the Arabic words upon the much older Hebrew sister. The editors of the last editions of Gesenius's dictionary will perhaps now agree with me that in future it will no longer be sufficient to patch some new Assyrian pieces upon an old cloth, but that a thorough revision of every Hebrew stem and of every Hebrew word must be effected. This salutary refor mation of the Hebrew dictionary by means of Assyrian, so far from increasing the bulk of the lexiconl, will save much useful space by the removal 'of a mass of erroneous statements and worthless speculations.
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