material, The Jewish Encyclopedia has endeavored to present a faithful picture of what the Jews have done, not only for their own special literature, but also for the great literatures of the world in the various countries in which they have had their abode. Due attention has also been paid to the varied activity of the Jewish press.
Hebrew philology possesses peculiar interest. The history of the Hebrew alphabet, in its origin and changes, shows the relation of the Jews in the most ancient times too their Hebrew
Philology. Semitic neighbors, while its development follows certain lines of cleavage which indicate actual divisions among the Jewish people. Certain peculiarities of grammar and vocabulary, when traced historically to their source, determine whether the Jews developed their language solely on their own national lines or whether they borrowed from other nations, of their own or different stock. These points are brought out in the Encyclopedia under various general heads. Among the Jews Hebrew philology followed two distinct lines of development. The one was purely from within; for the desire to preserve the text of the Bible intact, for future generations, gave rise to the school of Masoretes, who laid the foundation upon which future scholars built. The other starts from without and is due to the influence of the Arabs, to whom the science of philology was (as Steinscheinder has said) what the Talmud was to the Jews. Under this influence and commencing with Saadia, a long line of grammarians and philologists appears, extending not only through Europe but into Africa and even into Persia.
Of course, an encyclopedia like the present can not confine itself to the philological work done by the Jews themselves. The Encyclopedia contains articles upon the chief non-Jewish Hebrew philologists, whether they were influenced by Jewish writers as were Reuchlin and his followers, or were not so influenced, as is the case with most of the modern school, Gesenius, Ewald, Stade, and others. This is all the more necessary as during the nineteenth century Jews themselves took but a small part in the philological study of their ancient tongue. The reverse, however, is true of the post-Biblical Hebrew. While in the Middle Ages only one dictionary of the Talmudic language was produced, the "Aruk" of Nathan ben Jehiel, in recent times and upon the basis of this splendid work, a band of Jewish scholars have made this subject peculiarly their own.
A great deal of attention is paid in this work to Jewish bibliography. From Bartolocci to Steinscheinder and his pupils, there is a vast amount of unclassified Jewish Bib-
liography bibliographical material. The Encyclopedia furnishes, for the first time, the ancient and the modern literature of many thousand topics in alphabetical order; and thus includes, besides complete dictionaries of the Bible, of the Talmud, and of the history and literature of the Jewish people, some approach to a handbook of Hebrew bibliography classified as to subjects, at least. Containing, as it does, however, the contributions of so many collaborators, this work has done its best to introduce some degree of uniformity in the methods of citation employed by the various scholars of different countries
With regard to proper names, it was found impossible in the present state of Hebrew bibliography to follow a consistent plan; the reader will understand this if he considers the fact that until the eighteenth century the Jews in many countries had no family names. The best-known forms of the names have been selected (to facilitate reference), but in all cases the variant forms have been indicated. It has not been thought wise to follow exclusively either Zedner’s system, as shown in his masterly "Catalogue of Hebrew Books in the British Museum." nor that of Steinscheinder, in that magnum opus of Hebrew bibliography, the "Bodleian Catalogue"; instead, what seemed to be the best features of the entire bibliographical literature have been combined.
Valuable information may be found concerning the most important Jewish libraries
