Eighteenth-century scholars studied Arabic to illuminate the Bible

Evidence

Michaelis was a believer in Arabic in the service of Hebrew studies and he proposed an expedition to Arabia Felix (effectively the modern Yemen), as the South Arabian dialect was distinct from the Arabic spoken elsewhere in the peninsula and ‘knowing that it is this form of Arabic, which we learned, that has been the most important tool to date in understanding the Hebrew language, what illumination can we not expect to be cast over the Bible, the most important book of ancient times, by learning the Eastern Arabian dialects, as well as we know the Western?’ — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 233

Categorization

• SEED: Prompts a piece on how major fields of study crystallize around instrumental ends that are later forgotten — biblical exegesis as the original parent of modern Arabic studies.

Related

• Michaelis subordinated Arabic study to biblical understanding (similarity 0.88)
• Biblical textual criticism drove the era’s Arabic scholarship (similarity 0.86)
• Expedition members treated living Arabs as evidence about ancient Hebrews (similarity 0.82)
• Seventeenth-century Arabic learning centered on scripture and lexicons. (similarity 0.82)
• Western scholars of Arabic long studied the classical language over living dialects (similarity 0.81)
• ‘Arabist’ once meant someone reading Greek only through Arabic (similarity 0.81)
• Protestants treated biblical language study as a path to salvation. (similarity 0.81)
• Western study of Islamic texts long ignored living Muslims and their culture (similarity 0.80)
• Early Arabic scholarship served Bible study, not the study of Islam itself. (similarity 0.80)
• Arabist and Islamic studies resisted the revision that reformed other area studies (similarity 0.80)
• Early Arabic study in Europe served Christian scripture and ritual (similarity 0.79)
• Erpenius used Turkish dictionaries to improve Arabic scholarship, though Europeans scorned Turkish itself (similarity 0.78)