JEBB, JOHN (1736-1786), English divine, was educated at Cambridge, where he was elected fellow of Peterhouse in 1761, having previously been second wrangler. He was a man of independent judgment and warmly supported the movement of 1771 for abolishing university and clerical subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. In his lectures on the Greek Testament he is said to have expressed Socinian views. In 1775 he resigned his Suffolk church livings, and two years afterwards graduated M.D. at St Andrews. He practised medicine in London and was elected F.R.S. in 1779.
Another John Jebb (1775-1833), bishop of Limerick, is best known as the author of Sacred Literature (London, 1820).
JEBB, SIR RICHARD CLAVERHOUSE (1841-1905), English classical scholar, was born at Dundee on the 27th of August 1841. His father was a well-known barrister, and his grandfather a judge. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He won the Porson and Craven scholarships, was senior classic in 1862, and became fellow and tutor of his college in 1863. From 1869 to 1875 he was public orator of the university; professor of Greek at Glasgow from 1875 to 1889, and at Cambridge from 1889 till his death on the 9th of December 1905. In 1891 he was elected member of parliament for Cambridge University; he was knighted in 1900. Jebb was acknowledged to be one of the most brilliant classical scholars of his time, a humanist in the best sense, and his powers of translation from and into the classical languages were unrivalled. A collected volume, Translations into Greek and Latin, appeared in 1873 (ed. 1909). He was the recipient of many honorary degrees from European and American universities, and in 1905 was made a member of the Order of Merit. He married in 1874 the widow of General A. J. Slemmer, of the United States army, who survived him.
Jebb was the author of numerous publications, of which the following are the most important: The Characters of Theophrastus (1870), text, introduction, English translation and commentary (re-edited by J. E. Sandys, 1909); The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeus (2nd ed., 1893), with companion volume, Selections from the Attic Orators (2nd ed., 1888); Bentley (1882); Sophocles (3rd ed., 1893) the seven plays, text, English translation and notes, the promised edition of the fragments being prevented by his death; Bacchylides (1905), text, translation, and notes; Homer (3rd ed., 1888), an introduction to the Iliad and Odyssey; Modern Greece (1901); The Growth and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry (1893). His translation of the Rhetoric of Aristotle was published posthumously under the editorship of J. E. Sandys (1909). A selection from his Essays and Addresses, and a subsequent volume, Life and Letters of Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb (with critical introduction by A. W. Verrall) were published by his widow in 1907; see also an appreciative notice by J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, iii. (1908).
JEBEIL (anc. Gebal-Byblus), a town of Syria pleasantly situated on a slight eminence near the sea, about 20 m. N. of Beirut. It is surrounded by a wall 1½ m. in circumference, with square towers at the angles, and a castle at the south-east corner. Numerous broken granite columns in the gardens and vineyards that surround the town, with the number of ruined houses within the walls, testify to its former importance. The stele of Jehawmelek, king of Gebal, found here, is one of the most important of Phoenician monuments. The small port is almost choked up with sand and ruins. Pop. 3000, all Moslems.
The inhabitants of the Phoenician Gebal and Greek Byblus were renowned as stonecutters and ship-builders. Arrian (ii. 20. 1) represents Enylus, king of Byblus, as joining Alexander with a fleet, after that monarch had captured the city. Philo of Byblus makes it the most ancient city of Phoenicia, founded by Cronus, i.e. the Moloch who appears from the stele of Jehawmelek to have been with Baalit the chief deity of the city. According to Plutarch (Mor. 357), the ark with the corpse of Osiris was cast ashore at Byblus, and there found by Isis. The orgies of Adonis in the temple of Baalit (Aphrodite Byblia) are described by Lucian, De Dea Syr., cap. vi. The river Adonis is the Nahr al-Ibrahim, which flows near the town. The crusaders, after failing before it in 1099, captured “Giblet” in 1103, but lost it again to Saladin in 1189. Under Mahommedan rule it has gradually (D. G. H.) decayed.
JEBEL (plur. jibāl), also written Gebel with hard g (plur. gibāl), an Arabic word meaning a mountain or a mountain chain. It is frequently used in place-names. The French transliteration of the word is djebel. Jebeli signifies a mountaineer. The pronunciation with a hard g sound is that used in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic.