Hebraism
(ˈhiːbreɪɪz(ə)m)
[a. F. hébraïsme (1567 in Hatz.-Darm.) or ad. mod.L. Hebraismus = late Gr. Ἑβρα{giuml}σµός, f. Ἑβρα{giumlacu}ζειν to Hebraize: see Hebrew and -ism.]
1. A phrase or construction characteristic of the Hebrew language; a Hebrew idiom or expression.
| 1570 Levins Manip. 146 Hebraisme, hæbraismus. 1645 Milton Tetrach. (1851) 237 The New Testament, though..originally writt in Greeke, yet hath nothing neer so many Atticisms as Hebraisms, and Syriacisms. 1712 Addison Spect. No. 405 ¶3 Our Language has received innumerable Elegancies and Improvements, from that Infusion of Hebraisms, which are derived to it out of the Poetical Passages in Holy Writ. 1844 Stanley Arnold (1858) I. vi. 228 To fill our pages with Hebraisms. |
2. A quality or attribute of the Hebrew people; Hebrew character or nature; the Hebrew method of thought or system of religion, Judaism.
| 1847 Emerson Repr. Men, Swedenborg Wks. (Bohn) I. 326 The book had been grand, if the Hebraism had been omitted, and the law stated without Gothicism. 1872 Chr. Wordsworth Comm. Rev. Pref. 149 note, The design of the Apocalypse is not to Hebraize Christianity but to Christianize Hebraism. 1888 Mrs. H. Ward R. Elsmere III. 12 In Hebraism of feature, and swarthy smoothness of cheek. |
b. Applied by Matthew Arnold to that mode of human thought and action of which the ancient Hebrew is taken as the type; the moral, as opposed to the intellectual, theory of life: cf. Hellenism.
| 1869 M. Arnold Cult. & Anarchy iv. (1875) 133 Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following not our own individual will, but the will of God, obedience, is the fundamental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we have attached the general name of Hebraism. |