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The Hebrew Concordance, John Taylor, London 1754

First Edition - Extra Wide Margins

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Details
  • Lot Number 53433
  • Title (English) The Hebrew Concordance, Adapted to the English Bible; Disposed after the Manner of Buxtorf
  • Note Extra Wide Margins
  • Author John Taylor of Norwich
  • City London
  • Publisher J. Waugh and W. Fenner
  • Publication Date 1754
  • Estimated Price - Low 500
  • Estimated Price - High 1,000

  • Item # 2391086
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Description

Physical Description

First edition, frontispiece, title page (in red & black), dedication leaf, [7] (Preface & List of words omitted in Buxtorfs Concordance), [4] (Lis of Subscribers), 1-1221; Title page (in red & black), [2] (Preface), 1226-2595, (124) Index, (78) Index Vocum Hebbraicarum, [7] (Supplement to the explication of some of the roots in the Corcordance), [20] (Easy Rules for reading Hebrew), [2] (List of Subscribers since the publication of the first volume; & ERRATA) pp., tall folio, 415:255 mm., wide mnargins, light age and damp staining. A very good copy bound in recent cloth over boards.

 

Detail Description

The Hebrew Concordance with English translation and explanation.

John Taylor (1694–1761) was an English dissenting preacher, Hebrew scholar, and theologian. Taylor began his education for the dissenting ministry in 1709 under Thomas Dixon at Whitehaven, where he drew up for himself a Hebrew grammar (1712). From Whitehaven he went to study under the tutor Thomas Hill, son of the ejected minister Thomas Hill, near Derby. Leaving Hill on 25 March 1715, he took charge on 7 April of an extra-parochial chapel at Kirkstead, Lincolnshire, then used for nonconformist worship by the Disney family. He was ordained (11 April 1716) by dissenting ministers in Derbyshire. In 1726 he declined a call to Pudsey, Yorkshire.

In 1733 he moved to Norwich, as colleague to Peter Finch, son of Henry Finch. So far Taylor had not deviated from dissenting orthodoxy, though hesitating about subscription. According to a family tradition, given by William Turner, on settling at Norwich he went through Samuel Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) with his congregation, adopted its view, and came forward (1737) in defense of a dissenting layman excommunicated for heterodoxy on this topic by James Sloss (1698–1772) of Nottingham, a pupil of John Simson. On 25 February 1754 Taylor laid the first stone of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich, opened 12 May 1756, and described by John Wesley (23 December 1757) as 'perhaps the most elegant one in all Europe,' and too fine for 'the old coarse gospel.'[1] In his opening sermon, Taylor, who had received (6 April) the diploma (dated 20 January) of D.D. from the University of Glasgow, disowned all names such as Presbyterian and the like, claiming that of Christian only; a claim attacked by a local critic, probably Grantham Killingworth, writing as a Quaker, under the name of 'M. Adamson.’

His classical knowledge, according to Edward Harwood, was 'almost unrivaled,' but Samuel Parr found fault with his latinity. His Hebrew Concordance of 1754–7 was both a concordance (based on earlier works) and a lexicon of Hebrew, and was his unaided work. In 1751 he issued proposals for its publication, after more than thirteen years' work. The subscription list to the first volume (1754) contains the names of twenty-two English and fifteen Irish bishops, and the work is dedicated to the hierarchy. Based on Johann Buxtorf the Elder and Noldius (Christian Nolde),[2] the concordance is arranged to serve the purposes of a Hebrew-English and English-Hebrew lexicon, and also attempt to fix the primitive meaning of Hebrew roots.

 

Johannes Buxtorf I (1564–1629), Hebraist, professor of Hebrew at the University of Basle. He was also called "the elder," or "the father" (to distinguish him from his son Johannes Buxtorf II). Buxtorf devoted himself to compiling an edition of the Hebrew Bible with the Aramaic Targum, Masoretic Text, and the most important Jewish commentaries. He employed two Jewish scholars for this work. Buxtorf secured the right of residence for the scholars from the Basle authorities, since, at that time, no Jews were allowed to live there. Buxtorf contended that the masoretic vocalization and cantillation marks are of very ancient origin. He also accepted Elijah Levita's conception that the Hebrew canon was the product of Ezra and the men of the great assembly. His Bible research brought him into the field of rabbinical literature, of which he possessed a rich collection. He maintained a correspondence with Jewish scholars in Germany, Holland, and Constantinople, as well as with non-Jewish Hebrew scholars. Many of his letters are preserved at the library of the University of Basle and are an important source for the study of the spiritual conditions of his time. His famous Hebraic library, which was supplemented by his son and grandsons, became part of the Basle Public Library (1705).

Among his most important works are: (1) a textbook of Hebrew (Praeceptiones Grammaticae Hebraicae, 1605), which ran into 16 editions, one of them in English translation (London, 1656); (2) several Hebrew vocabularies and lexicons: Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum (1607), Concordantiae Bibliorum Hebraicae (1632); Lexicon Chaldaicum Talmudicum completed by his son (1640) which, although unreliable, served for generations as a guide for Christian scholars in their Jewish studies; (3) a catalog of his Hebrew books (with 324 entries); (4) a treatise on Hebrew abbreviations, and (5) a collection of over 100 Hebrew letters of medieval scholars (Institutio Epistolaris Hebraica, 1610). Buxtorf's attitude toward the Jews, as voiced in his work Juden Schuel (1603), was negative. This book enjoyed several editions and was known in its Latin version by the name Synagoga Judaica.

 

Hebrew Description

 

References

Cross, F.L. and E. A. Livingstone, eds. "John Taylor." The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. WIkipedia