en 



HEBREW LANGUAGE. 



HEBREW LANGUAGE. 



642 



der punischen Stelleu im Ponulus des Plautus ; ' Dessen, ' De Phce- 

 nicum et Poenorum inscriptionibus,' Berl. 1810 ; Dessen, ' Beinerk. iiber 

 phb'nizische und punische Munzen ; ' Gesenius in an Excursus entitled 

 ' Uber die phbniz. und punische Sprache und ihr V.erhaltniss zur 

 hebriiischen,' in his ' Geachichte der Hebr. Sprache ; ' (jasenius, ' Ver- 

 such iiber die malthesische Sprache,' 8vo, Leip. 1810 ; ' Palaogra- 

 phische Studien, iiber phoniz. und punische Schrift,' 4to, Leip. 1835 ; 

 E. R<5nan, ' Histoire Generate des Langues Semitiques,' Paris, 1855 ; 

 M. A. Levy, ' Phonizische Studien,' chiefly relating to Phoenician inscrip- 

 tions on gems, seals, &c., Breslau, 1858.) The long settlement of the 

 Hebrews in Egypt, and their forty years' wandering in the wilderness, 

 must have had an important influence upon their language ; but the 

 number of Egyptian words received into it appears to have been 

 small. 



Many critics have divided the history of the language into iour 

 periods : I. From Abraham to Moses. II. From Moses to Solomon. 

 III. From Solomon to the Babylonish captivity. IV. From the 

 Babylonish captivity to its final extinction as a spoken language. But 

 there are in reality only two periods in which any difference can be 

 traced in the language ; the first extending from the time of Moses to 

 the reign of Hezekiah, and the second from the reign of Hezekiah to 

 its final extinction aa a spoken language. The language in which the 

 Pentateuch is written differs so little from that of David, Solomon, and 

 Isaiah, who lived many centuries after the time of Moses, that many 

 critics, supposing it impossible that a language should have remained 

 stationary for so many centuries, have maintained that none of the 

 books of the Old Testament were written previous to the time of 

 David and Solomon. It is not very easy to disprove this opinion ; but 

 the remarks of Ewald on this subject appear worthy of attention. He 

 observes in his ' Hebrew Grammar,' 7 (Eng. trans.), that " the 

 Hebrew language in the first four books of the Pentateuch, which con- 

 tain records of unquestionable antiquity, partly by Moses or from his 

 time, appears already, a few minutiae exeepted, fully developed. 



" From Mosea until about the year 700 it underwent two changes ; 

 for aa the structure of the Semitic language is in general more simple, 

 so also is it less changeable than that of languages of greater develop- 

 ment, as Sanskrit ; to which is to be added, that in that period the 

 Hebrews did not experience those influences which materially affect a 

 language ; they did not advance much in civilisation, were never long 

 subjected to nations of foreign tongue, and lived almost entirely sepa- 

 rated from all nations, especially from nations of foreign language. 

 Their language, therefore, advanced little in development, but it also 

 suffered little from corruption. There are, however, in those books of 

 the Pentateuch some certainly important differences which afterwards 

 disappear, and many differences of that kind have become less distin- 

 guishable by us, because the more modern punctuation has treated all 

 words according to one standard, and that the standard of the language 

 at a late period." The study of the Hebrew language appears to have 

 been greatly promoted by the schools of the prophets, which were 

 founded by Samuel ; and it is to the influence of these schools that we 

 are probably indebted for the lyric poems of David and the didactic 

 and amatory poetry of Solomon. 



The conquests of the Assyrians and Chaldacana from about n.c. 720 

 tended to introduce the Aramaean language into Palestine. It appears 

 from Isaiah (xxxvi. 12) that the principal people in Judaea, even in the 

 reign of Hezekiah, found it necessary to study Aramaean. The Ara- 

 miean colonies (2 Kings, xvii. 24), which were planted in tue kingdom 

 of Israel to supply the place of the Israelites who had been carried into 

 Assyria by Shalmaneser, must have caused the spread of the Aramjcan 

 language in the northern parts of Palestine even before the destruction 

 of the kingdom of Judah. The long residence of the Jews in Babylon 

 after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, caused the 

 extinction of the Hebrew as a spoken language, at least among the 

 common people. After their return to Judxa, according to the edict 

 of Cyrus, it appears from a passage in Nehemiah (viii. 8), '.that the 

 common people did not understand the Scriptures when read to them 

 in the Hebrew language. But Hebrew continued to be spoken by the 

 upper classes for a considerable time after the Babylonish captivity. 

 The prophecies of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, who lived in the 

 latter part of the 6th century, are written in tolerably pure Hebrew. 

 The inscriptions of the corns of the Maccabees are in Hebrew ; and the 

 Hebrew language does not appear to have been discontinued in writing 

 and conversation among the upper classes till the century preceding the 

 birth of Christ. 



But the Hebrew, from the period of its extinction as a spoken lan- 

 guage, has been always more or less cultivated by the Jews. After the 

 destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, numerous schools were 

 established by the Jews, in which their language and literature were 

 taught. Of these schools the most celebrated were those of Tiberias 

 and Babylon. The Mishna, which contains the traditions of the Jews 

 and interpretations of the Scriptures, is supposed to have been com- 

 piled in the latter part of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd century, 

 by Rabbi Jehuda. The Mishna was considered from this period one 

 of the principal works of Hebrew literature, and the rabbis of Tiberias 

 and Babylon wrote numerous commentaries upon it. These commen- 

 taries were at length collected into two separate works, and entitled 

 the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds. The Jerusalem Talmud 

 appears to have been compiled in the 3rd or 5th century, by Rabbi 



AKTS AND SCI. DIV. VOI. IV. 



Jochonan ; and the Babylonian Talmud in the 6th century, by Rabbi 

 Asci. Each Talmud is divided into two parts : the Mishna, or text ; 

 and the Gemara, or commentary. The ' Mishna ' has been edited by 

 Sureuhusius, 6 vols. fol., Amst., 1698. The Babylonian Talmud was 

 published at Berlin and Frankfort, 12 vols. fol., 1715 ; and the Jeru- 

 salem Talmud at Amsterdam, fol., 1710. To the same schools we are 

 also indebted for the system of punctuation and accents which we have 

 in the Hebrew Bible. This system, which no-.doubt represents faith- 

 fully the traditional interpretation of the Scriptures and pronunciation 



of the language by the Jews, is entitled Masora (iTTlDO), that is, 



" tradition." It is uncertain how long the school of Tiberias lasted ; 

 but the Babylonish school was broken up by the Arabs A.D. 1040, after 

 a long period of prosperity, and most of the scholars took refuge in 

 Spain, where they founded schools in most of the principal cities. 

 These schools produced a succession of writers, of whom the most 

 celebrated was Maimonides [MAIMOMDES, in BIOG. DIV.], who lived at 

 the latter end of the 12th century. After remaining in Spain for 

 nearly four centuries, they were banished by the Christians in 1492. 



'The Christians paid very little attention to the Hebrew language 

 before the Reformation. The publications of the Buxtorfs in the 17th 

 century tended to diffuse the language among Christians, but their 

 works contained no philosophical views of the language, since they 

 implicitly followed the decisions of the Maeorites. The Grammar of 

 Schultens, which appeared in 1 731, and which may still be consulted 

 with great advantage by Hebrew scholars, contained a much clearer 

 development of the principles of the language than the Buxtorfs had 

 given. His knowledge of Arabic enabled him to compare the forms of 

 that language with the Hebrew, and thus to draw the attention of 

 scholars to the important fact, that the study of the cognate languages 

 is necessary to obtain an accurate knowledge of Hebrew. But the 

 publications of Gesenius and Ewald, in the present century, have done 

 more to facilitate the acquisition of the language than the works of all 

 preceding writers. 



It appears probable that the language of a country, which was divided 

 both physically and politically into several parts, must have contained 

 various dialects ; but this cannot easily be proved, since almost all the 

 Hebrew writers belonged to the kingdom of Judah. The language of 

 Galilee and the northern parts of Palestine appears at all times to have 

 inclined to the Aramaean ; in the time of Christ, the Gahlscan dialect 

 differed from the language spoken in Judaea. (Matt. xxvi. 73.) lu 

 the book of Judges (xii. 6), the pronunciation of the Ephraimites ia 

 distinguished ; and many critics think that they can discover traces of 

 the northern dialect in the song of Deborah. (Judges, v.) 



Few literary subjects have occasioned greater discussion than the 

 letters, vowels, points, and accents of the Hebrew language. But with 

 regard to the letters it appears probable, that the present square 

 characters in which Hebrew is written were not employed previous to 

 the Babylonish captivity, but that the Phoenician letters were used, 

 which are stiU preserved with a slight alteration in the Samaritan 

 alphabet. According to the Jewish tradition, the present square 

 characters, which belong to the East Aramx-au language, were first 

 introduced by Ezra when he revised the canon of Scripture ; but they 

 could not have been universally adopted till a later period, since the 

 Samaritan Pentateuch, which was not introduced into Samaria till 

 after the Babylonish captivity, was written in the ancient character, 

 and the corns of the Asmonaeans in the 2nd century before Christ also 

 employ the same character. It is difficult to say when the change was 

 introduced. It has been conjectured that the square characters were 

 in use in the time of Christ, from his referring to the letter i/od as the 

 smallest letter in the alphabet ; a fact which is true of the present 

 Hebrew alphabet, but would not apply to the ancient Hebrew or 

 Phoenician alphabet. 



It is a characteristic of the Hebrew language, according to the 

 system of most modern Hebrew grammars, that the alphabet consists 

 only of consonants, and that the vowels are expressed by means of 

 small points placed above and below the letters. The antiquity of 

 these points has occasioned great controversy among the learned. 

 Some have maintained that the points are as ancient as the letters, and 

 that both the points and letters were taught Moses by God himself ; 

 others, that the points were first introduced by Ezra when he tran- 

 scribed the Scriptures in the present square characters ; others, that 

 the Hebrews had originally three vowel points, a, i, and o, answering 

 to the three letters K \ 37, and that the present aystein of punctuation 

 was not introduced till the time of the Masoritea ; but it is now 

 generally considered by eminent Hebrew scholars, Gesemus,*Winer, 

 Ewald, 5tc., that the whole system of punctuation was first introduced 

 by the Masorites, of whom some account haa been given above, perhaps 

 as early as the 6th or 7th century, and certainly not later than the 

 10th or llth. It appears certain from many circumstancea that the 

 Hebrew letters were originally written without point*. They are not 

 found in ancient Jewish coins and inscriptions ; they are not once 

 mentioned or alluded to in the Talmud ; they appear to have been 

 unknown to Origen and Jerome ; the ancient versions, such as the 

 Chaldee paraphrases of Jonathan and Onkelos, and the Greek trans- 

 lations of Aquila, Symmachua, Theodotion, and the Septuagint, must 

 have been made from Hebrew manuscripts without points, since they 

 frequently give a different interpretation to the words from that which 



