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May 11, 2023 · The Jewish people were once known as Hebrews for their language, which flourished from roughly the 13th to second centuries B.C.—when the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament,...
- Allie Yang
Historical records testify to the existence of Hebrew from the 10th century BCE [8] to the late Second Temple period (lasting to 70 CE), after which the language developed into Mishnaic Hebrew. From about the 6th century BCE until the Middle Ages, many Jews spoke Aramaic, a related Semitic language.
Hebrew carried on and was kept alive not only in writing but also, as it seems, in day-to-day speech. As a result, the language thrived throughout the Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods, at least until the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, the Bar Kokhba Revolt, in 132–135 C.E.
By late antiquity (somewhere between the 2nd and 4th centuries CE), in the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple, Hebrew completely ceased to be a spoken language among Jews. However, it remained an important language of scripture, prayer and learning.
People often think of the Hebrew Bible as having been written in a single language called Biblical Hebrew and this language being the same from beginning to end. In fact, the Hebrew language went through three different phases during the Biblical period, and these three phases are reflected in different passages and books.
During the tenth century A.D. the Masoretes, Jewish scribes, not only faithfully passed down a standardized consonantal text of the Hebrew Bible, they also punctuated or vocalized the consonantal text with vowel markers and added accents and comments.
Oct 15, 2010 · OCTOBER 15, 2010 10:37. Ben Yehuda 311. (photo credit: Courtesy) The process of the Hebrew language revival began on October 13th 1881, as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his friends agreed to exclusively...
