This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net. As such, it is subject to the biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer and the biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer.
22 July 2022
A hapax legomenon, or simply, hapax, is a word which appears only once in the Hebrew Bible or some other corpus. In our case the concern is with the Hebrew Bible.
Hapaxes may be defined more or less strictly. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) puts it this way:
There are about 1,500 of these in the Old Testament; but only 400 are, strictly, 'hapax legomena'; i.e., are either absolutely new coinages of roots, or can not be derived in their formation or in their specific meaning from other occurring stems. The remaining 1,100, while appearing once only as a form, can easily be connected with other existing words..."
You can view that list here.
As with other pages migrated from biblicalambiguities.net, this page may contain material paraphrased or even outright copied without direct attribution from the KJV, RV, ASV, JPS (1917), WEB, NHEB, Kittel's BH, the pre-1923 volumes of the ICC series, or the commentaries on Genesis of Dillmann, Skinner, and Driver. More details on this policy can be found here: biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer and biblicalambiguities-translation-disclaimer.
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