Meaning of HEBREW (Language)

Hebrew belonged to the group of Semitic languages. Ancient inscriptions and documents, including the Ebla cuneiform tablets (see MARDIKH [TELL]), the Moab stele, and the Phoenician inscriptions, are evidence that the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and Moabites spoke in a language not far removed from Hebrew.

A form of early Hebrew appears on the Ras Shamra tablets (15th or 16th century BC). The Hebrew alphabet is made up of 22 consonants. Originally, it was written without the points currently used for vocalization. These are after the exile, already within the Christian era.

Vowel points were invented by the Masoretes to fix the pronunciation, as Hebrew was no longer used as a living language among the people. With the exception of certain parts of the books of Daniel and Ezra and certain other passages of the Bible written in Aramaic, the entire OT was originally written in Hebrew.

All languages have periods of growth and change. The same thing happened in various periods of the OT, with an evolution occurring in the Hebrew language before biblical Hebrew. Ancient Hebrew was subdivided into dialects (cf. shibolet and sibolet in Judges 12:6).

Before the deportation to Babylon, the biblical language was relatively pure, while during and after the exile Aramaic influences were felt on Hebrew, and ended up supplanting Hebrew as the commonly spoken language.

Written Hebrew persisted in the form of Aramaic transcription, which is called Square Hebrew. This is the language of the Torah (Hebrew Bible) and the Mishnah, a biblical commentary written around the year 200 AD.

Rabbinic Hebrew, the language of Jewish theologians in the Talmud, constitutes a later linguistic evolution. Throughout the Middle Ages, Hebrew remained a language in scholarly circles. Its ultimate form is modern Hebrew, currently spoken in the state of Israel, where it is the official language.

In the time of our Lord Jesus Christ, Aramaic, and not Hebrew, was the commonly spoken language (Mark 5:41). However, Hebrew was used as a liturgical language and on special occasions (cf. Acts 21:40-22:2). Grammatically, Hebrew is a fairly simple language.

As for verbs, they revolve around a root, with two tenses: the perfective and the imperfective. The root can be modified to indicate seven different forms of action: passive and active voice, optional, imperative, participle, and construct and absolute infinitives.

Nouns, both nouns and adjectives, lack declension. Its cases are formed, as in Spanish, with the help of prepositions that establish their internal relationships in the sentence, forming concrete cases. The syntax is rigid, and the sequence of the words in the sentence determines its meaning, which does not allow emphatic nuances in the style of Spanish.