the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

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=====Was Hebrew Ever A Dead Language?=====

According to some definitions a dead language is one that has no native speakers. By another definition, a dead language is one that may have no native speakers but is nevertheless still in limited use for certain purposes such as religious texts or academic studies. By this definition, [[Hebrew]] was a dead language for nearly 2,000 years, from the second century BCE to the late 19th century CE. 

Several factors led to the decline of Hebrew as a spoken language. According to some sources, it had been in a slow decline since possibly around 200 BCE, but ultimately met its fate during the [[wp>Jewish–Roman_wars]], culminating in the  Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 CE, which resulted in a crushing defeat and ultimately a mass Roman enslavement of the Jews.

After the wars, the Jewish culture was ground under the heel of the Romans. Many Jewish settlements were destroyed, and many Jews exiled from their homeland, with the Romans imposing harsh restrictions on Jewish cultural practices. As a consequence, many Jews adopted Aramaic, Greek, or Latin as their primary languages. However, despite the efforts of Rome, the Hebrew language was never completely extinct, for though it was forced underground, it was preserved and used secretly by many Jewish communities around the world for religious ceremonies prayers, and private literary reading.

It is important to note that by the second century CE the Hebrew language now existed only in a stripped down and static form, encapsulated in the holy books and other religious educational literature. The exact content itself and interpretative nature of the religious teachings during this period varied greatly, given rise to what are now referred to as sects or even cults within ancient Judaism, all of which drew upon various aspects of the extant scriptures. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes are three of the most well-known, at least in name, although their actual beliefs and practices remain far from clear. This period is unique for the number of sects founded and maintained, a phenomenon which may be explained precisely due to the lack of a common ubiquitous understanding of the texts in question. Rather, the vagaries of the language itself and the specific works themselves gave rise to myriad interpretations of the texts. This can only occur when there is a substantial fluidity to the language, as is the case during times of rapid etymological evolution. It was during this period that the Merkabah Mysticism became a popular interpretation, with many of the flying objects described by the prophets Ezekiel, Daniel and others during the Babylonian era began to be reexamined through a physical frame of reference. (see my book //[[https://www.amazon.ca/UFOs-Bible-Ken-Goudsward/dp/1989940080|UFOs In The Bible]]// for more on this fascinating topic) 

During this early period, the language was saved only by the written word, but due to natural linguistic evolution and aided by the widespread immigration of the Jews, a wide variety of accents and pronunciation variants came to exist withing the language, and the verbal language became somewhat less standardized.

The limited usage of the language necessitated a variety of explicit programs to encourage literacy within the populace. Beginning around 500 CE, the Masoretes devised a clever system of [[diacritics]] in an attempt to aid in memorization of the holy scriptures. This was deemed to be necessary, probably because language's lack of usage in everyday speech had stripped the written words of much of its semantic value. It is exceedingly difficult to memorize long passages of text written in a language in which the reader is not verbally fluent, even if they do understand many of the written words.

By the 10th century, several distinctive Jewish cultures had formed in Central Europe, notably the Ashkenazi Jews centered in Germany. This distinct cultures spoke a blend of Hebrew and German which eventually became known as Yiddish. Similar processes occurred elsewhere resulting in other dialects. By this time, the language(s) was (were) vastly different from the ancient form in which the holy Hebrew texts had originally been penned. In the 12th century various Kabalistic sects emerged in Europe, adapted from earlier forms of Jewish mysticism and was later further reinterpreted during the Jewish mystical renaissance in 16th-century Ottoman Palestine. Through these movements, Hebrew literary works such as the Zohar were composed.

But it was not until the late 19th century that work began in earnest to revive Hebrew as a commonly spoken language. These efforts were spearheaded by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, leader of the Zionist movement, but the new Hebrew was markedly different from the ancient language. Ben-Yehuda and his followers created new words, grammar rules, and pronunciation guides for modern Hebrew, based in part on the ancient and medieval sources, and adding many borrow words from other languages. The Zionists encouraged Jewish immigrants to Palestine to adopt Hebrew as their common language, establishing schools, newspapers, and institutions that used Hebrew. By the time Israel declared its independence in 1948, Hebrew was one of its official languages, along with Arabic. Today, Hebrew is spoken by about nine million people, mostly in Israel, but also in Jewish communities around the world.

So, to summarize, Hebrew was once a dead language, but it was revived and is now a living language. This resurrection is a testament to the resilience and creativity of the Jewish people. It must be noted however that many changes in politics, theology, doctrinal belief and a multitude of pragmatic reasons all played their roles in the long evolution of what we think of as the Hebrew language and it would be a grave mistake to project modern conceptions back upon the original ancient texts.

There are few artifacts still in existence from the early Hebrew period. Most people are at least vaguely aware of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which date from around 200 BCE, when the language was most likely starting to fade from use. Only a few older artifacts remain, mostly in very fragmentary form. It is very difficult to determine from these small fragments how much the language has changed between then and now, but even within these fragments there is clear evidence that the text itself has changed, as well as the canonical content of the corpus. 

The oldest surviving texts currently known from the Hebrew Bible are the Ketef Hinnom scroll fragments. Dating from around 600 BCE they are roughly contemporary to many of the Old Testament prophets and the Babylonian exile. These particular texts are arguably Hebrew, but are written in the Paleo-Hebrew script, rather than the Aramaic-derived Jewish square script Hebrew alphabet. This original script, looked different and most likely sounded different as well. It could be argued then that the original Old Testament texts were written not in Hebrew, but in a Canaanite variant that would eventually evolve into Hebrew a few hundred years later. This Canaanite-alphabet-based proto-Hebrew is unquestionably a dead language.

Any attempt to interpret the ancient Hebrew texts must therefore be approached with the assumption that rather than projecting modern ideas onto an ancient artifact, the texts must be allowed to speak for themselves. The way to do this is to use data driven analytical methods to uphold internal contextual consistency above any preconceived notions handed down by earlier translators and especially above any religious doctrinal considerations.