Parchon, Salomon Ben-abraham

Parchon, Salomon Ben-Abraham one of the earliest Jewish grammarians and lexicographers, who flourished about 1130 at Calatajud, in Aragon. He afterwards emigrated to the peninsula of Salerno, where he most probably died about 1180. Being anxious to furnish his co-religionists in Southern Italy with the results of the grammatical and exegetical labors of his brethren in Spain, Parchon compiled, in the year 1160, a Hebrew lexicon, entitled: מחברת הערו. Though it is substantially a translation of Ibn-Ganach's celebrated lexicon, SEE IBN-GANACH, yet Parchon also introduces in it the labors of Chajug, Jehudah Ha-Levi, Ibn-Ezra, etc., and explains many words by the aid of passages from the Targums, the Mishna, Tosefta, and the Talmud. The work is divided into two parts; the first containing a grammar of the Hebrew language, and the second a lexicon. It has been published by Stern (Presburg, 1844), with a valuable introduction by Rappaport, in which this erudite scholar gives a succinct history of the study of the Hebrew language, and of the different periods in which the great grammarians lived. Parchon also wrote a commentary on the Prophets and Hagiographa, which has not as yet come to light (comp. Steinschneider, Bibliographisches Handbuch [Leipsic, 1859], p. 108; Fuirst, Bibliotheca Judaica, 3:66).