Abstract
Anti-Jewish polemical works such as William of Bourges' Liber bellorum Domini incorporate transliterated Hebrew into their argumentation for the purpose of providing Christians who were unable to read the Hebrew alphabet with ammunition in their disputations against the Jews. The biblical commentaries of Andrew of St. Victor, Herbert's contemporary, also include Hebrew words in transliteration only. This total absence of Hebrew characters in his works has been one of the factors which led some scholars to conclude that Andrew knew only the rudiments of the Hebrew alphabet and grammar. The lack of Hebrew script in the Psalterium makes it impossible to judge Herbert's knowledge of Hebrew orthography directly, but, intriguingly, the spelling system used in his transliterations gives us some idea of his grasp of the language and may also indicate, to some extent, how Hebrew was pronounced in Western Europe at the time.Keywords: Hebrew; Herbert; Jews; Psalterium; Western Europe; William of Bourges
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