Weingreen, Jacob
WEINGREEN, JACOB
WEINGREEN, JACOB (1908–1995), Hebrew and Bible scholar. Born in Manchester, he graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, where he became professor of Hebrew in 1939 and served until his retirement in 1978. During the period immediately following World War ii, he served as director of education in the Displaced Persons' Camp in Bergen-Belsen.
Weingreen's best-known publication, A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew, was published in 1939 and remained in general use 50 years later. A French edition, Hébreu Biblique, appeared in 1984. His other works included Classical Hebrew Composition (1957), From Bible to Mishna – The Continuity of Tradition (1976), and Introduction to the Critical Study of the Text of the Hebrew Bible (1982). His writings, as well as his teaching, were distinguished by their lucidity.
He received many honors and was president of the Society for Old Testament Studies, Great Britain and Ireland (1961), of the British Association of Jewish Studies (1976), and governor of the Irish Times Trust from 1974.
An abiding interest in archeology led to his foundation of what, on his retirement, was named the Weingreen Museum of Biblical Antiquities in Trinity College, Dublin. His contention that the Book of Deuteronomy is not, as widely believed, one of the main sources of the Pentateuch, because it bears the characteristic of a mishnah, caused a stir among biblical scholars.
[Asher Benson]