Have you ever wanted a detailed Hebrew lexicon to research the Hebrew scrolls beyond what Strong’s Concordance and Brown Drivers’ Briggs offers? If you ever dig into the original scrolls, and want to really get fluent on the Hebrew Grammar and language, somewhere along the way you may hear about Benjamin Davidson’s Analytical Hebrew & Chaldee Lexicon. As I’m going through the Ancient Hebrew archives I recorded with Jeff Benner of the Ancient Hebrew Research Center 10 years ago, I heard Jeff refer to Benjamin Davidson’s work as “Excellent”. I went and researched and found four FREE digital copies of his works which you can download into PDF format or various other formats. I downloaded their jp2.zip format and converted all their jp2 files into regular jpg picture files. At some point I might be able to publish all this on WYLH.org since all of this is NOT COPYRIGHTED and therefore is in the public domain.
This dictionary is what I think we’ve been wanting, except there is no easy-to-use digital format where we can quickly use a software program to find a word quickly. But it appears, after briefly reviewing this book, that this book does in fact seem to cover every single unique spelling in the Hebrew scrolls and goes into a great level of detail on the grammar of each, etc.. So if there was ever a book that needed to be truly digitized-this is it. This makes the Strong’s # system pale in comparison in regards to information. This gives way more information on the words in the Hebrew scrolls and I am hoping to learn how to use this book to better research information in the Hebrew scrolls. Perhaps possibly digitize this so others can benefit from Benjamin Davidson’s work as well.
There are many Hebrew grammar books one could use and I’m sure I need to take the plunge into Hebrew language more to learn the grammar and really get learned, but at some point I could see this book being the main source of training in the Hebrew language to really get into the nitty-gritty details on every single word and truly “learn Biblical Hebrew”. I am fairly amazed at the wealth of knowledge in this book!
One of the digital versions says something in the publisher advertisement or something like that which indicates this work may have taken Benjamin Davidson well over 7 years of hard work (and this was in the 1800’s before computers existed). Here are three links from which you can also download FREE PDF versions. The JP2 versions they offer can be converted to JPG using a free program called IrfanView https://www.irfanview.com if you also install the IrfanView JPG2000 plugin. In plain people speak – JP2 is a compressed version of JPG which makes the JPG files half the size. You can convert the JP2 files to JPG using irfanview or just view them IN irfanview if you install the IrfanView JPG2000 plugin.
Perhaps at some point, I can publish these pictures and the files on WYLH.org also.
1848 – University of Toronoto: https://archive.org/details/analyticalhebrew00daviuoft
1855 – The Library of Congress: https://archive.org/details/analyticalhebrew00davi
1876 – Princeton Theological Seminary Library: https://archive.org/details/concordanceofheb00davi
1876 – Cornell University Library: https://archive.org/details/cu31924058517586
Some PDF files from one source may show 2 pages on one PDF page whereas another source (like University of Toronto) will show one book page per PDF page. The Cornell University PDF looks like it is white paper instead of old paper, possibly indicating a more recent printing for that book, but not all the PDFs appear identical so scan the books for differences!
Apparently, Benjamin Davidson was also a believer in the Messiah! (Source: Bernstein, A. 1999. Jewish Witnesses for Christ. Jerusalem: Keren Ahvah Meshihit. https://archive.org/details/somejewishwitnes37734gut )
Happy Hebrew Studying!