Sunday, April 20, 2008

Julia Greswell

Last fall Dave Reimer sent me a link to this book, thinking it would help me with my studies in the Hebrew Psalter, and it has.

Julia Greswell's Grammatical Analysis of the Hebrew Psalter, 1873, has been the perfect companion to my studies this winter in the Hebrew Psalter. It was written to help divinity students get through their Hebrew studies, and includes notes for each psalm and an index to all the vocabulary and forms in the Hebrew Psalter.

The "advertisement" for this book is as follows,
    I fear that it will be thought presumptuous in a Lady to undertake to write a work, the professed intention of which is to afford assistance to Beginners in the Study of Hebrew. It is, therefore, in the way of self-defence against any such charge of presumption, that I am induced to prefix to my volume the accompanying Letters, which have been received by my father, the Rev. Richard Greswell, from two very distinguished Hebrew Scholars, who have been pleased to express their opinion concerning the probable usefulness of my 'Grammtical Analysis of the Hebrew Psalter.'
The letters are by J. J. Stewart Perowne and R. Payne Smith who comments about the book,
    It will prove a great boon to Students preparing for the Divinity Schools at Oxford, and generally to those who wish to learn Hebrew. ... I think our students and the younger Clergy generally have reason to be very grateful to Miss Greswell for producing a work which will make the acquisition of Hebrew so much more easy; and I trust that it may aid in inducing a larger proportion of them to study that language in which so large a part of the Scripture is written.



4 comments:

Bob MacDonald said...

Thanks for this Suzanne - do you know of a resource that will accept a consonant string as a web service? Input: = a Hebrew word; Output = some information on form, parsing, usage etc.

J. K. Gayle said...

Suzanne,
Whenever some day you write your commentary on Ps 68, we want to read it!

Along the way, I hope you write a biography of Julia Greswell. Marion Ann Taylor's and Heather E. Weir's wonderful Let Her Speak for Herself: Nineteenth-Century Women Writing on Women in Genesis only give just a couple of lines. Greswell seems under the shadow of her father.

While you're at it, would you tell us more about Julia Evelina Smith Parker (and do you or anyone you know have a copy of her translation)? And about Helen Barrett Montgomery (and do you have her translation)? And about Helen Spurell (and do you have her translation)? (And is Daniel Wallace correct in his history of her, saying that it was not until 1885 that a woman translated the Bible?)

Suzanne McCarthy said...

Bob,

Sorry I don't.

Kurk,

My next post is already written referencing Let Her Speak for Herself. I went to school with Marion Taylor.

I know of the other women you mention except Helen Spurell.

Did you like the Ps. 68 stuff It is a rather obscure psalm.

J. K. Gayle said...

I did like your Ps. 68 postings. Rich, important, obscure too.

And thanks for your post on Let Her Speak for Herself, with the link to the introduction.