Moses Kimhi

European scholar
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Also known as: Moses Kimchi, Moses Qimḥi, Remak
Quick Facts
Kimhi also spelled:
Kimchi, Kimḥi, or Qimḥi
Also called:
Remak (an acronym of Rabbi Moses Kimhi)
Died:
c. 1190, Narbonne?, Toulouse, Fr.
Also Known As:
Moses Kimchi
Remak
Moses Qimḥi
Notable Works:
“Mahalakh shevile ha-daʿat”
Notable Family Members:
father Joseph Kimhi
brother David Kimhi
Subjects Of Study:
Hebrew language
grammar

Moses Kimhi (died c. 1190, Narbonne?, Toulouse, Fr.) was a European author of an influential Hebrew grammar, Mahalakh shevile ha-daʿat (“Journey on the Paths of Knowledge”).

The elder son of the grammarian and biblical exegete Joseph Kimhi and teacher of his more renowned brother, David Kimhi, he shared with them the accomplishment of establishing Hebrew-language studies. His grammar was remarkably brief, which may account for its long popularity. It passed into Latin translation in 1508 and went into many editions for use by Christian Hebraists. He was the first to make the verb paqad (“to order”) a model for conjugation and introduced the now-usual sequence of stem forms. In the great rabbinical Bibles, his commentaries on Proverbs, Ezra, and Nehemiah are incorrectly attributed to Abraham ibn Ezra, one of the foremost Jewish scholars of medieval Spain.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.