Classical or Biblical Hebrew

Classical or Biblical Hebrew is the ancient form of the Hebrew language, in which the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was written, and which the ancient Israelites spoke. It is not spoken in its pure form today, although it is studied by religious Jews for practical application and deeper understanding in their studies of the Torah and its commentaries. It is also studied by linguistic scholars and historians.

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.

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.

Biblical Hebrew is further divided into the so called 'Golden Age' Hebrew (1200 BCE to 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 illu (אִלוּ) replacing lū (לוּ). Another shibboleth between the two, is the use of the relative pronoun ʾšr (אשר) (introducing a Restrictive clause, 'that') in the earlier period, being replaced with the prefix š- (ש-) in the later, both being used in Mishnaic and Modern Hebrew.

Roman Era Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew, has further grammatical influences from Greek and Parsi, mainly through the dialect of Aramaic which was the Lingua franca of the area at the time.

Descendant languages

Phonology

 

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

Name Letter Phoneme(s) (IPA)
’āleph א [ʔ]
bêt ב [b], [v]
gîmel ג [ɡ], [ɣ]
dālet ד [d], [ð]
hē ה [h], zero
wāw ו [w], zero
zayin ז [z]
chet ח [ħ]
tēt ט [tˁ]
yōd י [j], zero
kaph כ, ך [k], [x]
lāmed ל [l]
mēm מ, ם [m]
nûn נ, ן [n]
sāmech ס [s]
‛ayin ע [ʕ]
pēh פ, ף [p, [f]
tsādēh צ, ץ [sˁ]
qōp ק [kˁ] (or possibly [q])
rēš ר [r]
śîn/šîn ש [ɬ], [ʃ]
tāw ת [t], [θ]

Biblical Hebrew had a vowel system based on the cardinal vowels /i u e o a/, which occurred in short, long, and extra-long forms. I 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" ones, ə, ă, ĕ, and ŏ (all but the schwa, /ə/ seem to have been allophonic).

Historical sound changes

As Biblical Hebrew (BH) evolved from Proto-Semitic (PS) it underwent a number of mergers[1],[2]:

  • PS */ð/ and */z/ merged as BH /z/
  • PS */θ/ and */š/ merged as BH /š/
  • PS */θ̣/, */ɬ̣/, and */ṣ/ merged as BH /ṣ/
  • PS */s/ and */ɬ/ merged as BH /s/ (but were spelled with different letters, samekh and sin respectively)
  • PS */ɣ/ and */ʕ/ merged as BH /ʕ/
  • PS */x/ and */ḥ/ merged as BH /ḥ/

Greek transcriptions provide evidence that Biblical Hebrew maintained the proto-Semitic consonants gh, kh for longer than the writing system might suggest. Thus `Amorah is transcribed as Gomorrha in Greek, whereas `Eber is transcribed as Eber with no intrusive g; since comparative Semitic evidence shows that proto-Semitic *gh and *` both became `ayin in later Hebrew, this suggests that the distinction was still maintained in Classical times.

Resources

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.

  1. ^  S. Moscati et al. (1964). An Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages, Phonology and Morphology, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
  2. ^  G. Bergsträsser. (1983). Introduction to the Semitic Languages. Translated by Peter T. Daniels. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.
  3. ISBN 1565632060 Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon by Francis Brown, S. Driver, C. Briggs

External links