Biblical Terms for the Language of the Land of Judah

Hebrew as a term for the language of the land of Judah first turns up in the Greek prologue of Ben Sira composed at the beginning of the first cent. bce. Given that the Tanakh is written in it, it became known in Jewish tradition as לשון הקדש the holy tongue. Hebrew (עברית Ivrit) would seem to be a term designed to recall עבר Eber (Gen 11:14), the remote ancestor of the tribes of Israel united, at least eventually, by a national language, literature, and script to which the term Ivrit is applicable.

Within the Tanakh, the language is referred to as יהודית Judahite in contradistinction toארמית  Aramaic (a lingua franca) and אשדודית Ashdodite (a local dialect, like Judahite). See 2 Kgs 18:26, 28 // Isa 36:11, 13; Neh 13:24; cf. 2 Chr 32:18; Dan 2:4.

In another instance, the language of the land of Judah is referred to as (a species of)שפת כנען  the lip of Canaan (Isa 19:18) in contradistinction to the native tongue of the Egyptians. Linguistic analysis in fact demonstrates that the language of the land of Judah known from the Bible, inscriptions, and texts outside of the Tanakh such as Ben Sira and non-biblical compositions among the Dead Sea scrolls, is part of the Canaanite group of languages. Besides Judahite, Israelite (attested in the Samaria ostraca and at Kuntillet ‛Ajrud), Phoenician (also attested at Ekron in Philistia), Moabite, Ammonite, and Edomite belong to this group. Though it is somewhat of a geographic outlier, and is attested in the Late Bronze Age rather than in the Iron Age, Ugaritic belongs in this family, as does Late Bronze Age Canaanite insofar as it is recoverable from the El-Amarna letters and scattered inscriptions in cuneiform alphabetic script found in Canaan proper (at Sarepta, Kamed el-Lōz, Naḥal Tabor, Taanach, and Beth Shemesh).  

Abecedaries, monumental texts, funerary inscriptions, epistolary texts, economic texts, and graffiti in Judahite have been discovered in various locations, mostly from the 8^th-6^th cent. bce, for example, Jerusalem, Lachish, Makkedah (Khirbet el-Qom), Arad, Wadi Murabba‛at, Gibeon, Tell Qasile, and Meṣad Ḥashavyahu (Yavneh-Yam). The find sites lie within the borders of ancient Judah and Benjamin and the part of the coastal plain assigned to the tribe of Dan in Josh 19:40-48 and controlled by King Uzziah/ Azariah of Judah in the mid-8^th cent. bce according to 2 Chr 26:10. A source of data of the same language, already noted: Judahite place names and personal names attested in neo-Assyrian, neo-Babylonian, and late Babylonian documents of the same time frame. On the basis of that data, Iron Age Egyptian evidence of Judahite place names, and LXX transcriptions of onomastica, a reconstruction of the phonology of First Temple Judahite, in partial autonomy from data of the language’s secondary period of attestation, is not impossible. 

Canaanite along with Aramaic make up the Northwest branch and, together with Arabic, the Central branch of the widely dispersed Semitic family of languages. In turn, the Semitic phylum is one component of the family of languages known as Afro-Asiatic (AA). Archaic and middle-stage AA languages are distinguished from non-AA languages by the widespread use of internal inflection (ablaut) of roots of three (sometimes two or four) consonants in order to create entire classes of verbal and nominal morphology. AA languages dominate contemporary SW Asia, N and NE Africa, and also occur in W Africa. The chief branches of AA are Egyptian (now extinct; later called Coptic, which only survives as a liturgical language), Berber in N Africa (the most archaic example of which is Tuareg), Chadic in sub-Saharan Africa (the best known example of which is Hausa); the Cushitic (Somali) and Omotic families in the Horn of Africa, and the better-known Semitic family, most of whose members retain the archaic features noted above and share a core vocabulary.

Modern dialects of Arabic, Ethiopic, South Arabian, Hebrew, and Aramaic are the best-known examples of living Semitic languages. Native speakers thereof number 500 million in aggregate. Alongside these vernaculars coexist languages of learned tradition: the classical Arabic of the Quran and the greater Muslim tradition; the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic of the Tanakh, the middle Hebrew and Aramaic of Talmud Torah, Jewish worship, and poetry and exegesis; the ancient Coptic, Ge’ez (a dialect of Ethiopic), and Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic) of discrete Christian traditions.

Of the languages of learned tradition in this series, ancient Hebrew is the most venerable. Preserved in an unbroken tradition of transmission for over two millennia, Hebrew holds a privileged place in the imagination of Jews and Christians. Sometimes thought to be the language of both Eden and Heaven, one thing is clear: it is the primary language of the shared Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. As such, it is deemed to hold within it pure instruction and fateful promise.

Ancient Hebrew as transmitted by later tradition echoes without cease in the language of assembly, prayer, and study of observant Jews. As is only proper, that language and literature is taught in universities and seminaries throughout the world, wherever the traditions of Judaism and Christianity are thought to be irreplaceable elements of a common heritage. It should not be forgotten, nor does it require defense, that the language and literature in question has a highly traditioned quality, which can but need not be an obstacle to historical inquiry.

But, at least within a university context, it is important that ancient Hebrew as transmitted by tradition of the 9^th – 12^th cent. ce and ancient Hebrew insofar as we would reconstruct it, based on all the available evidence, in the 10^th, 6^th, and 3^rd cent. bce, be rigorously distinguished and not conflated.

Bibliography

Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin, “Hebrew Language,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible 2 (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007) 768-778 

Comments

[Barnea Levi Selavan]

This should be updated with the Elah Fortress-Khirbet Qeiyafa results; which carbon-14 dating places at approximately 3000 years ago. Dr. Hagai Misgav says it should be called Canaanite rather than proto-Canaanite writing because the forms stay for hundreds of years, not change into something else. Prof Aharon Demsky says in general the smatterings of writings we found show the system is extant before and widely held.

The project website is www.elahfortress.com and Prof Garfinkels' Qeiyafa website is also updated. Presentations were just given at ASOR and SBL, and 4 opinions of readings were given at HU_IAA conference; journal published.

Also Tel Zayit and Gat inscriptions.

[JohnFH]

Thank you, Barnea, for the comment. I think the Qeiyafa inscription is of fundamental, game-changing importance. I blogged about it most recently here:

http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2009/10/misgav-maeir-yardeni-ahituv-and-schniedewind-on-the-qeiyafa-inscription.html

[Simon Holloway]

I don't know if I can say "don't quote me on this" when I'm commenting publicly under my name, but wasn't the Rabbinic term simply לשון קודש? That is, noun + adjective, rather than two nouns in construct?

[JohnFH]

Hi Simon,

BTW, I'm sorry we didn't have more time to chat at the SBL-New Orleans. I have this recurrent dream about how to have fun with Hebrew, a parlour game as it were, a contest to see who knows more Tanakh by heart, and perfectly. I'm thinking you might do well with that.

Nope, it's לשון הקודש, abbreviated often enough as לה״ק. Vocalized as leshon ha-qodesh, not lashon ha-qodesh, since semikut is involved. I point that out because I often hear lashon ha-qodesh. But if it were a construction of the type כנסת הגדולה, one would have expected הקדושה. Of course, there is also the expression בית כנסת הגדול, but you see the difference.

At least, that's how I remember it.

[Hebrew Scholar]

Do you see "Ancient Hebrew", "Classical Hebrew" and "Biblical Hebrew" as being identical terms for the same thing? The reason for asking is that "Classical Aramaic" can cover several stages of Aramaic, depending on which author is discussing it. "Biblical Hebrew" seems a more specific term, because it is clear where the language is taken from.

[JohnFH]

"Biblical Hebrew" is a term that has a clear though heterogeneous referent. It refers to the language of the texts of Hebrew Bible as (mis-) understood and preserved in astounding detail by a particular stream of Jewish tradition, standard Tiberian.

"Classical Hebrew" is a term I avoid. It is used in the most various of ways. "Ancient Hebrew" as I define it refers to the language of the entire corpus of extant texts in Hebrew up to but not including the Hebrew of the Mishnah and Gemara. For example, epigraphic Hebrew is a subcorpus of ancient Hebrew; so is the Hebrew of Ben Sira - preserved in pristine fashion in the Masada scroll. So is the Hebrew of the Bible, which nonetheless has come down to us in a form that preserves developments that are not part and parcel of ancient Hebrew in the strict sense.