Page:A Hebrew and English Lexicon (Brown-Driver-Briggs).djvu/15

 A list of abbreviations was issued with Part I. This has been now revised and enlarged, and it is hoped that by its aid the abbreviations made necessary by the fullness of reference, on the one hand, and the requirements of space, on the other, will be quite intelligible.

Thanks are due to many scholars who have shown an interest in the work, and have contributed to its value by their suggestions. Prominent among these are Professor Hermann L. Strack, D. D., of Berlin; Professor George F. Moore, D. D., of Harvard University; and, for the Biblical Aramaic, Stanley A. Cook, Esq., of Cambridge, who has kindly read the proofs of the Aramaic Appendix, and made various additions and improvements. Dr. Eberhard Nestle, of Maulbronn, Professors Theodor Nöldeke, of Strassburg, Henry Preserved Smith, D. D., of Amherst, Mass., Thomas Kelly Cheyne, D. D., of Oxford, Richard J. H. Gottheil, Ph. D., of Columbia University, New York, A. F. Kirkpatrick, D. D., and William Emery Barnes, D. D., of Cambridge, T. W. Davies, of the University College of North Wales, and Max Margolis, of the University of California, as well as Mr. H. W. Sheppard, of Bromley, Kent, and others, have laid the Editors under obligation by sending important comments, or lists of corrections. Any further communications which may advance the cause of Hebrew scholarship, and promote a more thorough comprehension of the Old Testament Scriptures by supplying material for a possible future edition of the Lexicon, will be cordially welcomed.

It is impossible to bring this Preface to a close without especial reference to the relations between the Editors and their Publishers, in America and in England. The new Hebrew Lexicon owes its origin to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, of Boston, Mass., holders of the copyright of ‘Robinson's Gesenius,’ and long its publishers. The present editors were authorized by them to undertake the work as a revision of that book. The late Mr. Henry O. Houghton, senior member of the firm, gave the project his especial attention, devoting much time to personal conference with the American editors, and making a visit to Oxford for a discussion of the matter with Professor Driver, and with the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, whose co-operation he secured. It is a matter of deep regret that his life was not spared to see the completion of an enterprise in which he took so sympathetic an interest. We desire to record our appreciation of that interest, and of the considerate patience with which he—and the other members of this publishing-house both before and since his death—have met the delays in finishing the work.

We are under similar obligations to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press. Since assuming a share in this enterprise they have shown unfailing regard for it as a serious contribution to Hebrew learning. The Editors have many courtesies to acknowledge from successive Secretaries of the Clarendon Press, the late Master of Pembroke, Professor Bartholomew Price, D. D., P. Lyttleton Gell, Esq., and C. Cannan, Esq.

We desire to express our thanks to the printers, to whose painstaking care in the composition—made complicated and difficult by the great variety of type, including half a dozen founts of foreign characters—in the correcting and in the press-work, the excellent appearance of the page is due; to Horace Hart, M. A.,