Biblical Hebrew

History

The prehistory of Biblical Hebrew is attested through Early Northwest Semitic materials from 2350 BCE to 1200 BCE. During the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), Northwest Semitic languages including Hebrew differentiated noticeably, though early Biblical Hebrew was not highly distinct from Ugaritic and Canaanite of the Amarna letters. Hebrew developed in the latter half of the second millennium BCE in Canaan, between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

According to the Deuteronomic history, a unified Israelite kingdom split into Israel in the north and Judah in the south after a disputed succession. In 722 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel, and some Israelite elites escaped to Judah, which became a client state. In 586 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed Judah, exiling the Judahites and destroying Solomon's Temple.

The Achaemenid Empire later made former Judah the province Yehud Medinata, permitting exiles to return and rebuild the Temple. According to the Gemara, Hanina bar Hama said God sent the Jews to Babylon because Aramaic is similar to the language of the Torah. Aramaic became common in Galilee and Samaria, while Hebrew remained in Judah, though returning exiles brought Aramaic influence. Alexander the Great conquered Judah in 332 BCE.

During the Hellenistic period, Judea became independent under the Hasmonean dynasty, conquering nearby regions. The Roman Republic ended their independence, making Herod the Great ruler, and the province of Judaea was established in 6 CE. A revolt led to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135) led to the expulsion of Jews from Judea, the establishment of Syria Palaestina, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina.

Orthography

The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, from Khirbet Qeiyafa, dates to the 10th century BCE. This 15 x 16.5 cm trapezoid pottery sherd has five lines of ink text in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, written left to right, indicating Hebrew writing was still formative. Israelite tribes used a late form of the Proto-Sinaitic Alphabet around the 12th century BCE, which developed into Early Phoenician and Early Paleo-Hebrew as seen in the Gezer calendar (c. 10th century BCE). This evolved into the Paleo-Hebrew script in the 10th or 9th centuries BCE, distinguished from Phoenician by curving downstrokes, a concave-top Waw, and an x-shaped Taw.

The oldest Paleo-Hebrew inscriptions date to the mid-9th century BCE, including the Mesha Stele. This script was used continuously until the early 6th century BCE, then gradually fell into disuse during the Second Temple period and was abandoned after the Bar Kochba revolt. The Samaritans retained the ancient Hebrew alphabet, which became the modern Samaritan script.

Phonology

Scholars disagree on how certain Biblical Hebrew consonants were pronounced. The "emphatic" consonants were probably pharyngealized, though velarization is a possibility; this pharyngealization is considered a development within Central Semitic. Some think certain consonants were affricated, but evidence from Egyptian shows that by around 1000 BCE, the letter s replaced an earlier ṯ for Canaanite s, indicating Canaanite was already split into dialects. The northern Early Phoenician dialect, which influenced Greek, may have kept the affricate pronunciation until roughly 800 BCE, while southern dialects like Hebrew did not.

Originally, the letters ח and ע each stood for two sounds, one uvular and one pharyngeal, with no written distinction. Around 200 BCE, the uvular versions merged with their pharyngeal counterparts. This is seen in the Septuagint's Pentateuch, where Isaac and Rachel are spelled differently, but the distinction fades in later books and is absent from Ezra and Nehemiah.

The phoneme ś is not directly written in Hebrew but appears in later evidence: it is spelled with ש (also used for š) and later merged with ס. This allows three distinct phonemes to be identified: š (ש), ś (ש), and s (ס). The pronunciation of ś as [ɬ] comes from comparative data, like the Proto-Semitic source and early loanwords such as "balsam." In Late Biblical Hebrew, ś began merging with s, possibly due to Aramaic, becoming standard in Mishnaic Hebrew. All Jewish reading traditions now treat ś and s as identical, while Samaritan Hebrew merged ś with š instead.

Grammar

Medieval grammarians of Arabic and Hebrew sorted words into three categories: noun, verb, and particle, though some later grammarians added more. In Biblical Hebrew, adjectives and nouns are more closely related than in most European languages. The language follows typical Semitic morphology, built around roots—usually three consonants, sometimes two, and rarely four or five.

These roots are altered with affixes to create words, with verb patterns being more regular and productive than noun patterns. The most common prefix is mem, used for location nouns like מוֹשָׁב (assembly), tools like מַפְתֵּֽחַ (key), and abstract concepts like מִשְׁפָּט (judgement). Its vowel is usually a, but can shift, as in מוֹשָׁב from an earlier form.

The prefix tav marks the action of a verb, often derived from forms for verbs starting with yod, as in תּוֹדָה (thanksgiving). A prosthetic aleph appears in adjectives like אַכְזָב (deceptive) and in nouns starting with sibilants, such as אֶצְבַּע (finger), added for phonetic ease. The prefix ayin shows up in some four-consonant animal names, like עֲטַלֵּף (bat), עַכְבָּר (mouse), and עַקְרָב (scorpion), possibly as a prefix.

Did You Know?

• The earliest portions of the Hebrew Bible that can be dated are parts of Amos, Isaiah, Hosea, and Micah, from the late 8th to early 7th centuries BCE.
• After the Babylonian captivity, the Imperial Aramaic alphabet gradually replaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, becoming the source for the current Hebrew alphabet.