Hebrew Language

Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. It was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a spoken language by their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans, before dying out after 200 CE. However, it was largely preserved as a liturgical language, featuring prominently in Judaism (since the Second Temple period) and Samaritanism. Having ceased to be a dead language in the 19th century, today's Hebrew serves as the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival. It is the only non-extinct Canaanite language, and is also one of only two Northwest Semitic languages still spoken, with the other being Aramaic.

The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as '' Lashon Hakodesh'' (, ) since ancient times. The language was not referred to by the name ''Hebrew'' in the Bible, but as ''Yehudit'' () or ''Səpaṯ Kəna'an'' (). Mishnah Gittin 9:8 refers to the language as ''Ivrit'', meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as ''Ashurit'', meaning Assyrian, which is derived from the name of the alphabet used, in contrast to ''Ivrit'', meaning the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

Hebrew ceased to be a regular spoken language sometime between 200 and 400 CE as it declined in the aftermath of the unsuccessful Bar Kokhba revolt, which was carried out against the Roman Empire by the Jews of Judaea. Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among societal elites and immigrants. Hebrew survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce and Jewish poetic literature. The first dated book printed in Hebrew was published by Abraham Garton in Reggio (Calabria, Italy) in 1475. With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, the Hebrew language experienced a full-scale revival as a spoken and literary language, after which it became the main language of the Yishuv in Palestine and subsequently the lingua franca of the State of Israel with official status.

According to ''Ethnologue'', Hebrew was spoken by five million people worldwide in 1998; in 2013, it was spoken by over nine million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second-largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans). Modern Hebrew is the official language of the State of Israel, while pre-revival forms of Hebrew are used for prayer or study in Jewish and Samaritan communities around the world today; the latter group utilizes the Samaritan dialect as their liturgical tongue. As a non-first language, it is studied mostly by non-Israeli Jews and students in Israel, by archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations, and by theologians in Christian seminaries.

Etymology

The modern English word "Hebrew" is derived from Old French , via Latin from the Ancient Greek () and Aramaic '''ibrāy'', all ultimately derived from Biblical Hebrew (), one of several names for the Israelite (Jewish and Samaritan) people (Hebrews). It is traditionally understood to be an adjective based on the name of Abraham's ancestor, Eber, mentioned in . The name is believed to be based on the Semitic root ''ʕ-b-r'' () meaning "beyond", "other side", "across"; interpretations of the term "Hebrew" generally render its meaning as roughly "from the other side f the river/desert—i.e., an exonym for the inhabitants of the land of Israel and Judah, perhaps from the perspective of Mesopotamia, Phoenicia or Transjordan (with the river referred to being perhaps the Euphrates, Jordan or Litani; or maybe the northern Arabian Desert between Babylonia and Canaan). Compare the word ''Habiru'' or cognate Assyrian ''ebru'', of identical meaning.

One of the earliest references to the language's name as "Ivrit" is found in the prologue to the Book of Ben Sira, from the 2nd century BCE. The Hebrew Bible does not use the term "Hebrew" in reference to the language of the Hebrew people; its later historiography, in the Book of Kings, refers to it as ‏יְהוּדִית ''Yehudit'' " Judahite (language)".

History

Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages.

According to Avraham Ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the period from about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a spoken vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile when the predominant international language in the region was Old Aramaic.

Hebrew was extinct as a colloquial language by Late Antiquity, but it continued to be used as a literary language, especially in Spain, as the language of commerce between Jews of different native languages, and as the liturgical language of Judaism, evolving various dialects of literary Medieval Hebrew, until its revival as a spoken language in the late 19th century.

Oldest Hebrew inscriptions

In July 2008, Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at that he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating from around 3,000 years ago. Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said that the inscription was "proto-Canaanite" but cautioned that "The differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear," and suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.

The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic period, the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon. Classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after the city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that, through the Greeks and Etruscans, later became the Roman script. The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places in which later Hebrew spelling requires them.

Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example, Proto-Sinaitic. It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back to Egyptian hieroglyphs, though the phonetic values are instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is called Canaanite, and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from that of Egyptian. One ancient document is the famous Moabite Stone, written in the Moabite dialect; the Siloam inscription, found near Jerusalem, is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Archaic Hebrew include the ostraca found near Lachish, which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE.

Classical Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew

In its widest sense, Biblical Hebrew refers to the spoken language of ancient Israel flourishing between the 10th century BCE and the turn of the 4th century CE. It comprises several evolving and overlapping dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are often named after important literary works associated with them.
* Archaic Biblical Hebrew, also called Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew, from the 10th to the 6th century BCE, corresponding to the Monarchic Period until the Babylonian exile and represented by certain texts in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases