FURST, JULIUS (1805-1873), Orientalist, was born of Jewish parents at Zerkowo in Posen, 12th May 1805. His friends designed him for the rabbinical profession, and at a very early age he had gained an extensive acquaintance both with Biblical and with Talmudical Hebrew. In his fifteenth year he entered the Berlin gymnasium, whence he passed to the university in 1825; but straitened circumstances compelled his return to Posen, long before the completion of his studies. He then taught for some time in the Jewish school at his native place, with the result that he experienced a growing feeling of repugnance to what was then regarded as rabbinical orthodoxy. In 1827 he was able to resume a university career at Breslau, where he studied theology and Oriental philology ; and in 1831 he removed to Halle, where he heard the lectures of Gesenius, Wegscheider, and Tholuck. He ultimately fixed his residence in Leipsic, where, after having taught privately for some years, ho obtained an appointment as lecturer in the university in 1839. From the year 1864 till his death, which occurred on the 9th of February 1873, he held the rank of professor. In 1835 he published the first part of the Lehrgebdude der arantaischen Idiome, a work which he did not live to complete ; and from 1837 to 1840 he was engaged upon his Concardantice, an admirable edition of Buxtorf's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance, with valuable appendices, in the preparation of which he was largely assisted by Dclitzsch. In 1851 appeared the Ilebraisches u. Cluddiiisches Ilandwiirterbucli., which reached a third edition in l876, and which has been translated into English by Dr Samuel Davidson (4th edition, 1871). Though a work of considerable merit, this cannot on the whole be said to have snperseded that of Gesenius. In particular its philological theories, and its method of reducing triliteral to biliteral roots, are not likely to meet with general acceptance among scholars. His Geschichte des Kareierthums appeared in 1865 ; and the Geschichte der Biblischen Literatur and des jiidisch-hellenischen, Schrifttkums, begun in 1867, was completed in 1870. Furst also edited a valuable Bibliotheca Judaica (1849-1863), and was the author of some other works of minor importance. From 1840 to 1851 he was also editor of Der Orient, a journal devoted to the language, literature, history, and antiquities of the Jews.