Davidson, Benjamin

Davidson, Benjamin an English Oriental scholar, was born of Jewish parentage. In 1845 he was in connection with the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews, and in 1847 was appointed principal of the college founded by that society for training missionaries for the Jews. He died in London in 1871. Besides assisting in the edition of the Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance, he is the author of the Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon: — Syriac Reading Lessons, with Analysis: — Chaldee Reading Lessons: — and joint author of Arabic Reading Lessons. But his chef d'oeuvre is his posthumous work, A Concordance of the Hebrew and Chaldee Scriptures (Lond. 1876), the most complete Hebrew concordance hitherto issued. The order of the books is here retained uniformly, and also that of the personal inflections of the verb. The suffixes are, moreover, expressed in detail. At the end of the volume a list of particles is given. (B.P.)