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Biblical Hebrew, sometimes called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, in which the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh was written, and which the ancient Israelites spoke. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Hebrew language most commonly refers to Modern Hebrew; in historical contexts, it commonly refers to the Biblical Hebrew language. ... Tanakh (‎) (also Tanach, IPA: or , or Tenak) is an acronym that identifies the Hebrew Bible. ... An Israelite is a member of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, descended from the twelve sons of the Biblical patriarch Jacob who was renamed Israel by God in the book of Genesis, 32:28 The Israelites were a group of Hebrews, as described in the Bible. ...

It is not spoken in its pure form today, although it is studied by religious Jews – as well as Christian theologians, linguists and Israeli archaeologists – for practical application and deeper understanding in their studies of the Torah and its commentaries. Jews usually learn it when studying ancient scriptures. Classical Hebrew is taught in most if not all public schools in Israel. Topics in Christianity Movements · Denominations Ecumenism · Preaching · Prayer Music · Liturgy · Calendar Symbols · Art · Criticism Important figures Apostle Paul · Church Fathers Constantine · Athanasius · Augustine Anselm · Aquinas · Palamas · Luther Calvin · Wesley Arius · Marcion of Sinope Pope · Archbishop of Canterbury Patriarch of Constantinople Christianity Portal This box:      Christian theology is reasoned discourse concerning... Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ... Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... The Torah () is the most important document in Judaism, revered as the inspired word of God, traditionally said to have been revealed to Moses. ...

Biblical Hebrew is easily read by anyone familiar with modern Hebrew. The differences between Biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew are mainly in grammar, modern vocabulary, and Biblical Hebrew's distinct writing style. Although Modern and Biblical Hebrew's grammar laws are often very different, parts of Biblical Hebrew are often used in literary Modern Hebrew. Elements of Biblical Hebrew are also often used in conversation and in the Israeli media.

Some devout Jews believe that the Torah is the literal word of God written in fire. [1] The Hebrew Language is referred to by them as ləˌʃoːn-haqˈqoːdeʃ (לשון הקודש‎), "The Holy Language/Tongue." The Torah () is the most important document in Judaism, revered as the inspired word of God, traditionally said to have been revealed to Moses. ...

Definition

This article describes the Biblical dialects of Hebrew. These flourished between the 12th and 6th centuries BCE and comprise all of the Hebrew Bible but for several Aramaic sections and isolated loanwords. 11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Targum Hebrew Bible is a term that refers to the common portions of the Jewish canon and the Christian canons. ...

The precise meaning of the term Biblical Hebrew varies with context and may refer to any of the following:

• all Hebrew dialects found in the Hebrew Bible, including the Archaic Biblical, Biblical, and Late Biblical Hebrew dialects
• the Hebrew of only the corpus of the Hebrew Bible itself, not including other texts - such as inscriptions - that use related Hebrew dialects
• Tiberian Hebrew, also called Masoretic Hebrew, which is an early-medieval vocalization of the Hebrew Bible's ancient consonantal text

From a linguistic point of view, the Classical Hebrew language is usually divided into two periods: Biblical Hebrew, and Roman Era Hebrew, having very distinct grammatical patterns. “Hebrew” redirects here. ... Tiberian Hebrew is an oral tradition of pronunciation for ancient forms of Hebrew, especially the Hebrew of the Bible, that was given written form by masoretic scholars in the Jewish community at Tiberias in the early middle ages, beginning in the 8th century. ... Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ...

Biblical Hebrew is further divided into the so called 'Golden Age' Hebrew (before 500 BCE) and 'Silver Age' Hebrew (500 BCE to 60 BCE). Silver Age Hebrew has many borrowings from Aramaic, for example the use of the conditional particle ˈilluː (אִלּוּ) replacing luː (לוּ). Another shibboleth between the two, is the use of the relative pronoun ʔaˈʃer (אֲשֶר) (introducing a Restrictive clause, 'that') in the earlier period, being replaced with the clitic ʃe- (-שֶ) in the later, both being used in Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew. Centuries: 7th century BC - 6th century BC - 5th century BC Decades: 550s BC - 540s BC - 530s BC - 520s BC - 510s BC - 500s BC - 490s BC - 480s BC - 470s BC - 460s BC - 450s BC Events and Trends 509 BC - Foundation of the Roman Republic 508 BC - Office of pontifex maximus created... Centuries: 7th century BC - 6th century BC - 5th century BC Decades: 550s BC - 540s BC - 530s BC - 520s BC - 510s BC - 500s BC - 490s BC - 480s BC - 470s BC - 460s BC - 450s BC Events and Trends 509 BC - Foundation of the Roman Republic 508 BC - Office of pontifex maximus created... Gaius Julius Caesar suppressed an uprising and conquered all of Lusitania for Rome Creation of the First Triumvirate, an informal political alliance between Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great and Marcus Licinius Crassus (or 59 BC) the Seleucid Kingdom comes to an end with the last two Emopors being murdered on... Aramaic is a group of Semitic languages with a 3,000-year history. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. ... In syntax, the concept of restrictiveness applies to a variety of syntactical constructions. ... In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ... The Modern Hebrew language is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. ...

Roman Era Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew, was further influenced by Greek and Persian, mainly through the dialect of Aramaic which was the Lingua franca of the area at the time. The Roman Era is a period in Western history, when ancient Rome was the center of power of the world around the Mediterranean Sea, where Latin was the lingua franca. ... The Mishnaic Hebrew language or Rabbinic Hebrew language is the ancient descendant of Biblical Hebrew as preserved by the Jews after the Babylonian captivity, and definitively recorded by Jewish sages in writing the Mishnah and other contemporary documents. ... “Farsi” redirects here. ... Aramaic is a Semitic language with a four-thousand year history. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ...

Modern evolutions, or adaptions, of Classical Hebrew are in active use today, mostly in the form of various modern Jewish dialects of Hebrew, as well as Samaritan Hebrew language, which is used primarily by the Samaritans. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ... The Samaritan Hebrew language is a descendant of Biblical Hebrew as pronounced and written by the Samaritans. ... For other uses, see Samaritan (disambiguation). ...

As Biblical-Hebrew vocalization is derived from the Masoretic system applied to ancient texts, Biblical Hebrew is somewhat a mixture of these elements. It is the mixed language that is discussed in this article.

Descendant languages

• Samaritan Hebrew language (liturgical)
• Mishnaic Hebrew language (Jews)
• Tiberian Hebrew language (liturgical)
• Yemenite Hebrew language (liturgical)
• Sephardi Hebrew language (liturgical)
• Ashkenazi Hebrew language (liturgical)
• Modern Hebrew (State of Israel)

The Samaritan Hebrew language is a descendant of Biblical Hebrew as pronounced and written by the Samaritans. ... The Mishnaic Hebrew language or Rabbinic Hebrew language is the ancient descendant of Biblical Hebrew as preserved by the Jews after the Babylonian captivity, and definitively recorded by Jewish sages in writing the Mishnah and other contemporary documents. ... Tiberian Hebrew is an oral tradition of pronunciation for ancient forms of Hebrew, especially the Hebrew of the Bible, that was given written form by masoretic scholars in the Jewish community at Tiberias in the early middle ages, beginning in the 8th century. ... The Yemenite Hebrew language or Temani Hebrew language is a descendant of Biblical Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. ... The Sephardi Hebrew language is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jewish practice. ... Ashkenazi Hebrew is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Ashkenazi Jewish practice. ... “Hebrew” redirects here. ...

Phonology

The phonology as reconstructed for Biblical Hebrew is as follows (from Lambdin, with modifications):

Biblical Hebrew had a vowel system based on the cardinal vowels /i u e o a/, which occurred in short, long, and extra-long ^{[citation needed]} forms. Some follow Lambdin's use of macrons to mark long vowels and circumflexes to mark extra-long ones. Aside from these vowels, there were also four "reduced", extra-short ones, ə, ă, ĕ, and ŏ (all but the schwa, /ə/ seem to have been allophonic). Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... A macron, from Greek (makros) meaning large, is a diacritic ¯ placed over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long. ... The circumflex ( ˆ ) (often called a caret, a hat or an uppen) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek, French, Dutch, Esperanto, Norwegian, Romanian, Slovak, Vietnamese, Japanese romaji, Welsh, Portuguese, Italian, Afrikaans and other languages, and formerly in Turkish [citation needed]. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus (bent... The International Phonetic Alphabet uses a breve, , to indicate a vowel with less than nomal duration. ... The IPA symbol for the Schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ...

Historical sound changes

Consonantism

As Biblical Hebrew (BH) evolved from Proto-Semitic (PS) it underwent a number of mergers^[1],^[2]: Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical proto-language of the Semitic languages. ...

• PS */ð/ and */z/ merged as BH /z/
• PS */θ/ and */ʃ/ merged as BH /ʃ/
• PS */θˁ/, */ɬˁ/, and */sˁ/ merged as BH /sˁ/
• PS */ɣ/ and */ʕ/ merged as BH /ʕ/¹⁾
• PS */x/ and */ħ/ merged as BH /ħ/¹⁾
• PS */w/ and */j/ merged as BH /j/ in word-initial position; > Ø between vowels
• PS */ʕ/ > BH Ø (with compensatory lengthening) in the syllable coda
• PS *-/át/ > BH -/áː/ in the ending of the feminine; not in the status constructus).
• PS */h/ > BH Ø between vowels in the pronominal suffix (with contraction, see below).

1) Greek transcriptions (see also "Various names in Hebrew and Greek".) provide evidence that Biblical Hebrew maintained the proto-Semitic consonants /ɣ/, /x/ for longer than the writing system might suggest. Thus ʿǍmōrāh (עֲמוֹרָה) is transcribed as Gómorrha (Γόμορρα) in Greek, whereas ʿĒḇer (עֵבֶר) is transcribed as Éber (Ἔβερ) with no intrusive g; since comparative Semitic evidence shows that proto-Semitic */ɣ/ and */ʕ/ both became `ayin (ע) in later Hebrew, this suggests that the distinction was still maintained in Classical times. Similarly Raħēl (רָחֵל) is transcribed as Rhakhḗl (Ῥαχήλ), whereas Yisˁħāq (יִצְחָק) becomes Isaák (Ἰσαάκ).

Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... The status constructus or construct state is a noun form occurring in Afro-Asiatic languages. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Syneresis. ... 11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Targum Hebrew Bible is a term that refers to the common portions of the Jewish canon and the Christian canons. ... Sodom redirects here. ... Eber (עֵבֶר, Standard Hebrew , Tiberian Hebrew , Arabic: هود) is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. ... or Ayin is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic (in abjadi order). ... This article is about the Biblical character. ... Sacrifice of Isaac, a detail from the sarcophagus of the Roman consul Junius Bassus, ca. ...

Vocalism

• PS */á:/ > BH /o:/; in word-final position > /a:/
• PS */a:/ > BH /a:/
• PS */í:/ > BH /i:/ or, before ה ח ע, /i:^a/ (páṯaḥ furtivum);

in word-final position regularly > /ɛ:/

• PS */ú:/ > BH /u:/ or, before ה ח ע, /u:^a/(páṯaḥ furtivum)
• PS */ó:/ > BH /o:/
• PS */o:, u:/ > BH /u:/;

in an open syllable before a following */o:/ > BH /i:/

• PS */a, i, u/ > Ø in word-final position
• PS */a, i, u/ in open unstressed syllables > Ø ("šəwa mobile") two or more syllables before the stressed syllable;

before or after א ה ח ע > /^a/ ("ḥāṭēp̄ pátaḥ") or, if the adjacent syllable has /^{e, ɛ}/ or /^{o, ɔ}/, /^ɛ/ ("ḥāṭēp̄ s^eḡōl") and / ^ɔ/ ("ḥāṭēp̄ qāmeṣ") respectively;

in verbs also in the second syllable of the word if the following syllable is stressed;

in nouns in the second syllable of status constructus > /^ə/ (the consonant carrying the š^eəwa is marked with "dāḡēš dirimens" or the following consonant is fricative, indicating that it was preceded by a vowel).

• PS */á/ > BH /a:/ in open syllables (sometimes /a/, /ɛ/)
• PS */a/ > BH Ø;

immediately before the stress > /a:/ (”qāmeṣ antetonicum”);

in closed syllables > /i/

• PS */í, ú/ > BH /e:, o:/ or, before ה ח ע, /e:^a, o:^a/ ("páṯaḥ furtivum");

in closed syllables in verbal forms > /e, o/ or, before ה ח ע, /a/;

in syllables that were closed already in Proto-Semitic > /a/ ("Philippi’s law")

• PS */i/ > BH /i/ or, before or after ה ח ע, /a/;

immediately before the stress > /e:/ ("ṣērē antetonicum")

• PS */u/ > BH Ø ("š^eəwa mobile") or /^ɔ/ (”ḥāṭēp̄ qāmeṣ”);

in closed syllables > /ɔ/ ("qāmeṣ qāṭān") or, before a geminated consonant, /u/

• PS */áw/ > BH /a:w/
• PS */aw/ > BH /o:/
• PS */áy/ > BH /ay/ or in an open syllable, /e:/ or, in word-final position, /ɛ:/
• PS */ay/ > BH /e:/
• Contractions after loss of PS */h/ in the pronominal suffix:

*/-a-hu:/ > /-o:/

*/-a-ha:/ > /-a:/

*/-a-hɛm/ > /-a:m/

*/-e:-hɛm/ > /-e:m/

*/-i:-hu:/ > /-i:w/

*/-i:-hɛm/ > /-i:m/

*/-u:-hɛm/ > /-u:m/

*/-ay-hu:/ > /-a:w/

In linguistics and phonology, schwa is the tonally-neutral, mid-central unrounded vowel sound, exactly in the middle of the vowel chart. ... In linguistics and phonology, schwa is the tonally-neutral, mid-central unrounded vowel sound, exactly in the middle of the vowel chart. ...

Resources

• Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, Vicki Hoffer, and Rebecca Abts Wright, Biblical Hebrew: A Text and Workbook Yale Language Series; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989.
• Kautzsch, E. (ed.) Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar. Eng. ed. A. E. Cowley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910.
• Lambdin, Thomas O. Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971.
• Würthwein, Ernst. The Text of the Old Testament (trans. Erroll F. Rhodes) Grand Rapids: Wm.B.Eardmans Publishing. 1995. ISBN 0-8028-0788-7.

Emil Friedrich Kautzsch (1841-1910) was a German Hebrew scholar and biblical critic, born at Plausen (Saxony). ...

Notes

1. ISBN 1-56563-206-0 Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon by Francis Brown, S. Driver, C. Briggs

Wiesbaden is a city in central Germany. ... Year 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar). ... Peter T. Daniels is a scholar of writing systems. ... Winona Lake is a town located in Kosciusko County, Indiana. ...

External links

• History of the Hebrew Language
  • History of the Hebrew Language, David Steinberg
  • Biblical Hebrew Poetry and Word Play - Reconstructing the Original Oral, Aural and Visual Experience
  • Short History of the Hebrew Language, Chaim Rabin

• Grammar and Vocabulary
  • Basic Biblical Hebrew Grammar (introductory)
  • Basic Biblical Hebrew
  • The Kittel Hebrew Words Database (Second Ed.) Learn by use of flashcards 490 important Biblical Hebrew words.
  • Learn to write the Hebrew characters

Chaim Menachem Rabin (1915 - 1996）was an Israeli professor of Hebraic and semitic languages, of German origin. ...