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Bidding Information
Lot #    23938
Auction End Date    7/7/2009 10:30:30 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Elements of Hebrew Grammar
Author    [First Ed.] Charles Wilson
City    Edinburgh
Publisher    William Smellie
Publication Date    1782
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description
   First edition. xvii, 258 pp., 208:145 mm., wide margins, light age staining, stamps. A very good copy bound in modern half cloth over boards.
          
Detailed
Description
   Full title: Elements of Hebrew grammar to which is prefixed, a dissertation on the two modes of reading, with or without the points.

A first edition of a work on Hebrew grammar by Dr. Charles Wilson. He was born at Perth in 1744. He was ordained to the pastoral charge of Scone in 1774, where he laboured with acceptance till 1780, when, through the influence of the Earl of Kinnoul, Chancellor of the University, he was appointed to the Hebrew Chair in St. Mary's College. In thirteen years after, he was appointed to the more lucrative Chair of Ecclesiastical History in the same college. He died in September 1810, in his sixty-sixth year. He is also the author of The Book of the Apocrypha (Edinburgh, 1801).

Dr. Wilson is often quoted with regard to the question as to how many of the letters of the Hebrew letters are consonants. His opinion is as follows:... that I absolutely and unequivocally deny the position, that all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are consonants; and, after the most careful and minute inquiry, give it as my opinion, that of the twenty-two letters of which the Hebrew alphabet consists, five are vowels and seventeen are consonants. The five vowels by name are, Aleph, He, Vau, Yod, and Ain.

          
Reference
Description
   History of St. Andrews by Charles Roger (Edinburgh, 1949), p. 152; Wilson's Heb. Gram., pp. 6 and 8.
        
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Listing Classification
Period
  
18th Century:    Checked
  
Location
England:    Checked
  
Subject
Other:    Grammar
  
Characteristic
First Editions:    Checked
Language:    English, Hebrew
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica