Biblical Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew (עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית Ivrit Miqra'it or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא Leshon ha-Miqra), also called classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of Hebrew, a Canaanite Semitic language spoken by the Israelites in the area known as Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea.

The first five books of the Torah, and most of the rest 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, around the time of the Babylonian captivity.

The term "Hebrew" was not used for the language in the Bible, which was referred to as שפת כנען (sefat kena'an, i.e. language of Canaan) or יהודית (Yehudit, i.e. Judaean), but the name was used in Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts.

The forms of the Hebrew in the Talmud can be divided into Classical Hebrew for direct quotations from the Hebrew Bible, and Mishnaic Hebrew can be further sub-divided into Mishnaic Hebrew proper (also called Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which was a spoken language, and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a literary language only.

The Hebrews adopted the Phoenician alphabet around the 12th century BCE, which developed into the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

In the Early Iron Age, the Phoenician alphabet is used to write Northwest Semitic languages, more specifically early Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Hebrew and Old Aramaic.

Biblical Hebrew (עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית Ivrit Miqra'it or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא Leshon ha-Miqra), also called classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of Hebrew, a Canaanite Semitic language spoken by the Israelites in the area known as Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea.

The term Israelite is the English name for the descendants of the biblical patriarch Jacob in ancient times, which is derived from the Greek Ἰσραηλῖται, which was used to translate the Biblical Hebrew term b'nei yisrael, יִשְׂרָאֵל as either "sons of Israel" or "children of Israel".

This was retained by the Samaritans, who use the descendent Samaritan alphabet to this day.

Biblical Hebrew Šomerim "Guardians" (singular Šomer) comes from the Hebrew Semitic root שמר, which means "to watch, guard".

The Northwest Semitic languages, including Hebrew, differentiated noticeably during the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), although in its earliest stages Biblical Hebrew was not highly differentiated from Ugaritic and the Canaanite of the Amarna letters.

It has been used by scholars of the Hebrew Bible to clarify Biblical Hebrew texts and has revealed ways in which the cultures of ancient Israel and Judah found parallels in the neighboring cultures.

Biblical Hebrew (עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית Ivrit Miqra'it or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא Leshon ha-Miqra), also called classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of Hebrew, a Canaanite Semitic language spoken by the Israelites in the area known as Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea.

Millions learn these as a second language (or an archaic version of their modern tongues): many Muslims learn to read and recite the Qur'an and Jews speak and study Biblical Hebrew, the language of the Torah, Midrash, and other Jewish scriptures.

The Northwest Semitic languages formed a dialect continuum in the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), with Phoenician and Aramaic on each extreme.

Phoenician was a language originally spoken in the coastal (Mediterranean) region, then called "Pūt" (in Phoenician and Egyptian), "Canaan" (in Biblical Hebrew, Old Arabic, and Aramaic), "Phoenicia" (in Greek and Latin).

Verbs were marked for voice and mood, and had two conjugations which may have indicated aspect and/or tense (a matter of debate).

Some languages (such as Albanian, Bengali, Fula, Tamil, Sanskrit, Icelandic, Swedish, Biblical Hebrew and Ancient Greek) have a middle voice, which is a set of inflections or constructions which is to some extent different from both the active and passive voices.

Hebrew continued to be used as a literary and liturgical language in the form of Medieval Hebrew, and Hebrew began a revival process in the 19th century, culminating in Modern Hebrew becoming the official language of Israel.

The term "Modern Hebrew" has been described as "somewhat problematic" as it implies unambiguous periodization from Biblical Hebrew.

Default word order was verb–subject–object, and verbs inflected for the number, gender, and person of their subject.

Another Semitic language, Biblical Hebrew, uses VSO, as in Genesis 1:1, seen here, and many other places in the Tanakh:

Biblical Hebrew as recorded in the Hebrew Bible reflects various stages of the Hebrew language in its consonantal skeleton, as well as a vocalic system which was added in the Middle Ages by the Masoretes.

These texts are almost exclusively in Biblical Hebrew, except for some Biblical Aramaic passages in the books of Daniel and Ezra.

Hebrew is classed with Phoenician in the Canaanite subgroup, which also includes Ammonite, Edomite, and Moabite.

Edomite was a Canaanite language, very similar to Hebrew, spoken by the Edomites in southwestern Jordan and parts of Israel in the 1st millennium BC.

Hebrew as spoken in the northern Kingdom of Israel, known also as Israelian Hebrew, shows phonological, lexical, and grammatical differences from southern dialects.

Israelian Hebrew (or IH) is a proposed northern dialect of biblical Hebrew (BH).

However, the Aramaic alphabet gradually displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet for the Jews, and it became the source for the modern Hebrew alphabet.

The meteg is only used in Biblical Hebrew, not Modern Hebrew.

The Hebrews adopted the Phoenician alphabet around the 12th century BCE, which developed into the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.

The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (Hebrew: ), also spelled Palaeo-Hebrew alphabet (P-H), was the script used in the historic kingdoms of Israel and Judah, specifically when recording the Hebrew language.

According to the Gemara, Hebrew of this period was similar to Imperial Aramaic; in Pesahim, Tractate 87b, Hanina bar Hama said that God sent the exiled Jews to Babylon because "[the Babylonian] language is akin to the Leshon Hakodesh".

Old Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew both form part of the group of Northwest Semitic languages, and during antiquity, there may still have been substantial mutual intelligibility.

These scripts originally only indicated consonants, but certain letters, known by the Latin term matres lectionis, became increasingly used to mark vowels.

According to the Gemara, Hebrew of this period was similar to Imperial Aramaic; in Pesahim, Tractate 87b, Hanina bar Hama said that God sent the exiled Jews to Babylon because "[the Babylonian] language is akin to the Leshon Hakodesh".

In its narrow sense, Lashon Hakodesh refers not to the Hebrew language in its entirety, but rather to the Biblical Hebrew only.

In Biblical Hebrew, ' means "sword", and the verb ' means "to arm".

Some Qumran texts written in the Assyrian script write the tetragrammaton and some other divine names in Paleo-Hebrew, and this practice is also found in several Jewish-Greek biblical translations.

The letters, properly read from right to left (in Biblical Hebrew), are:

While the Tiberian, Babylonian, and Palestinian reading traditions are extinct, various other systems of pronunciation have evolved over time, notably the Yemenite, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Samaritan traditions.

Sephardi Hebrew (or Sepharadi Hebrew) is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jewish practice.

While the Tiberian, Babylonian, and Palestinian reading traditions are extinct, various other systems of pronunciation have evolved over time, notably the Yemenite, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Samaritan traditions.

Ashkenazi Hebrew is the pronunciation system for Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew favored for liturgical use and study by Ashkenazi Jewish practice.

While the Tiberian, Babylonian, and Palestinian reading traditions are extinct, various other systems of pronunciation have evolved over time, notably the Yemenite, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, and Samaritan traditions. In addition, the Samaritan reading tradition is independent of these systems, and was occasionally notated with a separate vocalization system.

Samaritan Hebrew is a reading tradition used liturgically by the Samaritans for reading the Ancient Hebrew language of the Samaritan Pentateuch, in contrast to Biblical Hebrew (the language of the Masoretic Jewish Pentateuch).

Biblical Hebrew (עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית Ivrit Miqra'it or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא Leshon ha-Miqra), also called classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of Hebrew, a Canaanite Semitic language spoken by the Israelites in the area known as Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea.