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The Historical Dictionary Project The Historical Dictionary Project (HDP) is the research arm of the Academy of the Hebrew Language. It aims to encompass the entire Hebrew lexicon throughout its history; that is, to present every Hebrew word in its morphological, semantical, and contextual development from its first appearance in written texts to the present.
Shortly after the founding of the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1953, the president of the Academy renewed the previously suggested idea of creating a historical dictionary of Hebrew. In 1954, the Academy's plenum placed the dictionary on its agenda, and, in 1959, the HDP got underway following deliberations at the Academy and in scholarly forums. The HDP's initial step was to locate all the Hebrew texts from the post-biblical period on in order to create detailed catalogues known as sourcebooks. From the start, the HDP's founder Naftali Tur-Sinai/Torczyner decided to implement the use of a computer to process the material. Thus, concurrent with the founding of the HDP, what is now the Computer Section came into being.
The HDP has two lexicographical sections: the Ancient Literature Section and the Modern Literature Section . The Computer Section is directly involved in the computerization of each section's data and the creation of a database for each. Initially, each literary work is typed into the computer. The text is then broken down into words and a dictionary entry is created for each. On the basis of the lexical entries a database was created in concordance form containing all the literary contexts in which the entry word occurs in chronological order. The composers of the lexical entries for the dictionary-in-the-making utilize the database in order to choose the most appropriate examples to illustrate each word's meaning.
A seventy-five-page-long sample of the projected dictionary entry for this root appeared in Lesonenu Vol. 46, 1982 (excluding indexes and statistical data). If this represents the length of a single entry, the potential user may well wonder at the dimensions of the completed dictionary and whether it will be user-friendly or even affordable by any but the largest libraries. The question of the feasibility of updates also arises for a work of this size. Let us hasten to note, however, that it is precisely at this juncture that advanced computer technology is being utilized to the fullest. We envision the Academy as a national lexicographical center of Hebrew. As our knowledge expands, the dictionary is updated, thus creating a "national library" of the entire Hebrew lexicon. The use of computer technology has made the debate between those who called for separate dictionaries for different periods and those who called for an all-inclusive dictionary obsolete. It enables the creation of modular entries for each specific historical period and their combination with other entries for the same word to create a historical continuum. Computer technology also eliminates the necessity to consult many heavy volumes. Information from the Historical Dictionary will be accessible through electronic means: users will be able to contact our computer center and receive the required information tailored to their specific needs via personal computer.
Since the biblical lexicon has been the subject of study throughout the ages and has been described in many dictionaries from the medieval age to the present, the Historical Dictionary begins with the post-biblical period. The Ancient Literature Section has compiled all Hebrew literary works from the closing of the biblical canon to the end of the Geonic period, and these works have been exhaustively recorded in the Ancient Literature Database. The section's aim is to identify every single written Hebrew word from antiquity and to create a national archive of the Hebrew lexicon available from the best manuscripts in libraries worldwide. When we speak of ancient literature we must recognize that in the majority of cases the original copies are no longer extant. The sole material that accurately reflects ancient Hebrew is that found in epigraphic and archeological contexts: ancient funerary inscriptions, synagogue dedicatory inscriptions, coins, and seals. Only this material has reached us without the intervention of copyists. The scrolls discovered in caves on the shores of the Dead Sea also provide an accurate witness of ancient Hebrew. The majority of ancient Hebrew literature has, however, reached us in later copies. Some works were copied hundreds of times, one copy from another, leading to many scribal errors. The copyists also inserted "corrections" in places where they no longer understood the original text, thus obscuring the original language. Accordingly, the Ancient Literature Section attempts to locate the earliest witnesses of these works, the best manuscripts available from the pre-Gutenberg era, those least marred by deliberate or unintentional changes introduced by later copyists. The texts have been edited and processed in line with the best witness to their transmission - as established by scholarly research. The Ancient Literature Section has nearly concluded the processing of all the works appearing in its sourcebook. Moreover, the computerized concordance of these works is nearing completion: the massive corpus has been analyzed into lexical entries and roots have been determined for each entry, and a distinction has been made between homophonic roots. The already-processed texts have yielded some 5,500,000 citations. Ancient Literature
Database Modern Literature Section The Modern Literature Section, which began to function in 1969, takes as its starting point Hebrew works from the early German Haskalah period (mid-eighteenth century). Its sourcebook saw publication in 1977. The Modern Literature Section processes the Hebrew lexicon wherever and in whatever literary genre Hebrew was written: belles-lettres, science, rabbinics, journalism, and periodical literature, among others. Guiding principles: With the inauguration of this section, the board of the HDP established two guiding principles: 1. Unlike the Ancient Literature Section this section would process selected works only, since it is impossible and unnecessary to process each and every work, or even one percent of the material printed in Hebrew in recent times for the purposes of the Historical Dictionary. In practical terms, this means that only one to three works by each modern Hebrew writer could be selected, with the exception of Mendele Mokher Sefarim (also: Moicher Sforim), Hayyim Nahman Bialik, and Shmuel Yosef Agnon - whose complete works have been processed. 2. It is the earliest printed version of each selected work that forms the basis for the concordance. In practical terms this means searching for the earliest published versions of hundreds of Agnon's stories, each of Ahad ha-Am's essays, and of Bialik's poems, for example. Each text is edited prior to its computerization and is proofread two to three times after it is has been entered. What has been done to date? At present, 540 treatises of varying length have been entered into the computer. These represent the works of 71 authors and comprise some 8,852,000 words. Of these a computerized dictionary concordance of 202 treatises containing some 3,047,000 words has been compiled.
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