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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)",
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    "title": "KIMHI",
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    "verified_text": "kimhi, or qimhi, the family name of three jewish grammarians and biblical scholars who worked at narbonne in the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th, and exercised great influence on the study of the hebrew language. the name, as is shown by manuscript testimony, was also pronounced _kamhi_ and further mention is made of the french surname petit. joseph kimhi was a native of southern spain, and settled in provence, where he was one of the first to set forth in the hebrew language the results of hebraic philology as expounded by the spanish jews in their arabic treatises. he was acquainted moreover with latin grammar, under the influence of which he resorted to the innovation of dividing the hebrew vowels into five long vowels and five short, previous grammarians having simply spoken of seven vowels without distinction of quantity. his grammatical textbook, _sefer ha-zikkaron_, \"book of remembrance\" (ed. w. bacher, berlin, 1888), was marked by methodical comprehensiveness, and introduced into the theory of the verbs a new classification of the stems which has been retained by later scholars. in the far more ample _sefer ha-galuy_, \"book of demonstration\" (ed. matthews, berlin, 1887), joseph kimhi attacks the philological work of the greatest french talmud scholar of that day, r. jacob tam, who espoused the antiquated system of menahem b. saruq, and this he supplements by an independent critique of menahem. this work is a mine of varied exegetical and philological details. he also wrote commentaries--the majority of which are lost--on a great number of the scriptural books. those on proverbs and job have been published. he composed an apologetic work under the title _sefer ha-berith_ (\"book of the bond\"), a fragment of which is extant, and translated into hebrew the ethico-philosophical work of bahya ibn paquda (\"duties of the heart\"). in his commentaries he also made contributions to the comparative philology of hebrew and arabic. moses kimhi was the author of a hebrew grammar, known--after the first three words--as _mahalak shebile ha-daat_, or briefly as _mahalak_. it is an elementary introduction to the study of hebrew, the first of its kind, in which only the most indispensable definitions and rules have a place, the remainder being almost wholly occupied by paradigms. moses kimhi was the first who made the verb _paqadh_ a model for conjugation, and the first also who introduced the now usual sequence in the enumeration of stem-forms. his handbook was of great historical importance as in the first half of the 16th century it became the favourite manual for the study of hebrew among non-judaic scholars (1st ed., pesaro, 1508). elias levita (q.v.) wrote hebrew explanations, and sebastian munster translated it into latin. moses kimhi also composed commentaries to the biblical books; those on proverbs, ezra and nehemiah are in the great rabbinical bibles falsely ascribed to abraham ibn ezra. david kimhi (c. 1160-1235), also known as _redaq_ (= r. david kimhi), eclipsed the fame both of his father and his brother. from the writings of the former he quotes a great number of explanations, some of which are known only from this source. his _magnum opus_ is the _sefer miklol_, \"book of completeness.\" this falls into two divisions: the grammar, to which the title of the whole, _miklol_, is usually applied (first printed in constantinople, 1532-1534, then, with the notes of elias levita, at venice, 1545), and the lexicon, _sefer hashorashim_, \"book of roots,\" which was first printed in italy before 1480, then at naples in 1490, and at venice in 1546 with the annotations of elias. the model and the principal source for this work of david kimhi's was the book of r. jonah (abulwalid), which was cast in a similar bipartite form; and it was chiefly due to kimhi's grammar and lexicon that, while the contents of abulwalid's works were common knowledge, they themselves remained in oblivion for centuries. in spite of this dependence on his predecessors his work shows originality, especially in the arrangement of his material. in the grammar he combined the paradigmatic method of his brother moses with the procedure of the older scholars who devoted a close attention to details. in his dictionary, again, he recast the lexicological materials independently, and enriched lexicography itself, especially by his numerous etymological explanations. under the title _et sofer_, \"pen of the writer\" (lyk, 1864), david kimhi composed a sort of grammatical compendium as a guide to the correct punctuation of the biblical manuscripts; it consists, for the most part, of extracts from the _miklol_. after the completion of his great work he began to write commentaries on portions of the scriptures. the first was on chronicles, then followed one on the psalms, and finally his exegetical masterpiece--the commentary on the prophets. his annotations on the psalms are especially interesting for the polemical excursuses directed against the christian interpretation. he was also responsible for a commentary on genesis (ed. a. gunsburg, pressburg, 1842), in which he followed moses maimonides in explaining biblical narratives as visions. he was an enthusiastic adherent of maimonides, and, though far advanced in years, took an active part in the battle which raged in southern france and spain round his philosophico-religious writings. the popularity of his biblical exegesis is demonstrated by the fact that the first printed texts of the hebrew bible were accompanied by his commentary: the psalms 1477, perhaps at bologna; the early prophets, 1485, soncino; the later prophets, ibid. 1486. his commentaries have been frequently reprinted, many of them in latin translations. a new edition of that on the psalms was begun by schiller-szinessy (_first book of psalms_, cambridge, 1883). abr. geiger wrote of the three excursuses kimhis in the hebrew periodical _ozar nehmad_ (vol. ii., 1857 = a. geiger, _gesammelte schriften_, v. 1-47). see further the _jewish encyclopedia_. (w. ba.) kin (o.e. _cyn_, a word represented in nearly all teutonic languages, cf. du. _kunne_, dan. and swed. _kon_, goth _kuni_, tribe; the teutonic base is _kunya_; the equivalent aryan root _gan_-to beget, produce, is seen in gr. [greek: genos], lat. _genus_, cf. \"kind\"), a collective word for persons related by blood, as descended from a common ancestor. in law, the term \"next of kin\" is applied to the person or persons who, as being in the nearest degree of blood relationship to a person dying intestate, share according to degree in his personal estate (see",
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