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Hapax legomena
HMHéctor Molano · Sep 24, 2019, 10:08 PM · Last modified: Sep 28, 2026, 11:38 AM
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Does anybody have information about hapax legomena? for example: how the BHS use them? why the Hebrew writers use them? how a particular book use them? are there any relation with other cultures? I will appreciate some ideas, thoughts, and recommendations
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Hapax legomena is a technical term for words that occur only once, either in a book or in the whole corpus. Nothing more, nothing less. There are several studies on hapax legomena in the Hebrew Bible, because the problem of knowing what the words might mean.
BHS in general does not put any special emphasis on these, but most of them are marked in the masora parva using the letter lamed. But this marking includes also rare spellings etc.
From the point of view of the ancient Hebrew authors, I do not think that most of them (perhaps even all) considered using hapax legomena by purpose, but just happened to use a word only once.
Some "classical" studies are
Harold Cohen, Biblical Hapax legomena in light of Accadian and Ugarit, SBLDiss 37 (1978)
Frederik Greenspahn, Hapax legomena in biblical Hebrew. SBLDiss 74 (1984)
Hope this helps,
Seppo