PRINTERS' MARKS – Signets, coats of arms, or pictures printed, from engravings, at the end of a book or, later, on the title-page. Their use dates from soon after the invention of printing. The seals of the printers or the coats of arms of the...
PRIORITY – The rules as to priority among deeds conveying the lands of a grantor, or among bonds operating as liens upon all the obligor's lands, have been indicated under Alienation. It remains to speak as to priorities in the case of a...
PRISON – See Imprisonment.
PRIVACY, RIGHT OF – See Joint Owners; Neighboring Landowners.
PRIVATE WAY – See Right of Way.
PROCEDURE IN CIVIL CAUSES – No Judgment by Default. Jewish jurisprudence, both in Biblical and in Talmudic times, attached the greatest importance to the laws of property and to their faithful administration by the judges. In regard to the manner of...
PROCESS – See Procedure.
PROCURATOR AD CAPITULARIA JUDÆORUM – See Fiscus Judaicus.
PROCURATORS – Title of the governors who were appointed by Rome over Judea after the banishment of Archelaus in the year 6 C.E., and over the whole of Palestine after the defeat of Agrippa in the year 44. Though joined politically to Syria,...
PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS – See Evidence.
PROFANATION AND PROFANITY – See Cursing; Desecration.
PROFESSIONS (Statistics) – Until quite recent times the Jews were debarred from all professional occupations except that of medicine. Till entrance to the university was fully granted them, only a comparatively small number of Jews could enter the...
PROFIAT – Name used by Jews in Provence and northern Spain. In Hebrew it is written in various forms: , ; or , with the substitution of g for t, not uncommon in Romance languages ("Shebeṭ Yehudah," ed. Wiener, p. 112); in Provençal,...
PROGNOSTICATION – See Omen.
PROMETHEUS – See Adam; Fire.
PROMISSORY NOTES – See Exchange, Bills of.
PRONUNCIATION, MODERN, OF HEBREW – Like Syriac, and probably under its influence, Hebrew has been handed down with a twofold pronunciation, the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic. The former is usually traced to Babylonia, the latter to Palestine. There are at present...
PROOF – See Evidence.
PROPAGANDA LITERATURE – See Polemics and Polemical Literature.
PROPERTY – See Chattels; Real, Estate.
PROPHET, FALSE – Classes of False Prophets. Deuteronomy is the only book containing laws concerning the false prophet (xiii. 2-6 [A. V. 1-5], xviii. 20-22). He is designated there as "prophet, or a dreamer of dreams," and it is in accordance...
PROPHETS AND PROPHECY – Biblical Data and Critical View: Though many ancient peoples had their prophets, the term has received its popular acceptation from Israel alone, because, taken as a class, the Hebrew prophets have been without parallel in human...
PROSBUL – An abbreviated form of the Greek phrase πρὸς βουλῇ βουλευτῶν ("before the assembly of counselors"; comp. Schürer, "Hist. of the Jewish People," etc., Eng. ed., division ii., vol. i., p. 362, who favors the derivation from...
PROSELYTE – The "Ger." Term employed generally, though not exclusively, in the Septuagint as a rendering for the Hebrew word "ger," designating a convert from one religion to another. The original meaning of the Hebrew is involved in some...
PROSER, MOSER – Russian Hebraist; born at Keidani, government of Kovno, Jan. 1, 1840. Proser pursued the conventional course of Hebrew education and studied Talmud in various yeshibot. In 1858 he went to Wilna and prepared to enter the...