In the Beginning

A Short History of the Hebrew Language

Joel Hoffman

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780814737064
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

Hebrew as a language is just over 3,000 years old, and the story of its alphabet is unique among the languages of the world. Hebrew set the stage for almost every modern alphabet, and was arguably the first written language simple enough for everyone, not just scribes, to learn, making it possible to make a written record available to the masses for the first time.

Written language has existed for so many years—since around 3500 BCE—that most of us take it for granted. But as Hoffman reveals in this entertaining and informative work, even the idea that speech can be divided into units called “words” and that these words can be represented with marks on a page, had to be discovered. As Hoffman points out, almost every modern system of writing descends from Hebrew; by studying the history of this language, we can learn a good deal about how we express ourselves today.

Hoffman follows and decodes the adventure that is the history of Hebrew, illuminating how the written record has survived, the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient translations, and attempts to determine how the language actually sounded. He places these developments into a historical context, and shows their continuing impact on the modern world.

This sweeping history traces Hebrew's development as one of the first languages to make use of vowels. Hoffman also covers the dramatic story of the rebirth of Hebrew as a modern, spoken language.

Packed with lively information about language and linguistics and history, In the Beginning is essential reading for both newcomers and scholars interested in learning more about Hebrew and languages in general.

Part I
Getting Started

Chapter 1
Introduction

Roughly 3,000 years ago, in and around the area we now call Israel, a group of people who may have called themselves iυri, and whom we call variously “Hebrews,” “Israelites,” or more colloquially but less accurately “Jews,” began an experiment in writing that would change the world.

The Hebrews inherited a writing system from the Phoenicians — another group of people living in the same region — who in turn were the recipients of older systems of writing, some of which had hundreds or thousands of symbols. Rather than using these older systems, the Phoenicians developed a more compact set of two dozen or so symbols, with each symbol roughly representing one consonantal sound. But while their consonant-based system offered a vast improvement in simplicity over earlier ones, the Phoenician approach was not widely learned and used by the masses: reading and writing remained primarily the domain of expert scribes, as it had been been since the inception of writing.

The Hebrews took the Phoenician consonantal system and doubled up three of the letters (h, w, and y) for use as vowels, so that, for example, the Hebrew letter h represented not only the consonant h but also the vowel a, thereby making it possible to record some vowel sounds alongside the consonantal sounds. This seemingly minor addition (which followed a long string of innovations) completed the process that had begun thousands of years earlier, making it possible for the first time for non-experts to write. Suddenly, with the Hebrew alphabet, anyone who cared to could record thoughts for posterity.

The Hebrew alphabet proved wildly successful. Perhaps through Aramaic — a language similar to Hebrew, written with the same letters, and spoken in antiquity by the Aramaeans — Hebrew was used as the basis for the Greek and Latin alphabets, which, in turn, along with Hebrew itself, were destined to form the basis for almost all of the world’s alphabets.

For example, the “Roman” alphabet that forms the English part of this book is almost identical to the Latin alphabet used by the Romans, as are the alphabets used for most of Western Europe’s other languages. To the east, Russian and similar languages are written in an alphabet called Cyrillic, dating from over 1,000 years ago; it is based on Greek, in turn based on Hebrew. The cursive alphabet in which Arabic is usually written comes from Hebrew via the Aramaeans. Most of the languages used on the Indian subcontinent are written in scripts derived from Brahmi, which probably also developed out of Hebrew some 2,500 years ago. And, of course, the Hebrew used in modern Israel is written in an alphabet directly descended from the Hebrew of 3,000 years ago. In this sense, most of the reading and writing that goes on in the world today can be traced back to the Hebrews’ experiment with vowels (though Chinese and some other languages are still written in non-alphabetic systems).

In addition to their system of writing, the ancient Hebrews left their actual writings, later to become part of the Bible, the all-time most popular collection of anything ever written. The debate about divine authorship of the Bible is ongoing, and certainly not to be decided here. (For the purposes of this book we will ignore any role God may have had, as discussed on pages 8 and 218.) But even disregarding potential involvement on the part of God, any observer must acknowledge the almost unbelievably wide impact Scripture has made, particularly in light of how little impact was made by other documents from the same and even later time periods. For example, the Ten Commandments are widely known throughout Western civilization (though different groups differ in their enumeration of them), while similar ancient codes are mostly known only to scholars.

Thus the ancient Hebrews left the world not only a popular system of writing, reflected in most of today’s alphabets, but an immensely popular set of writings written in their alphabet.

However, owing partly to their religious significance, partly to their antiquity, and ironically partly to their popularity, reliable information about ancient Hebrew writings and about the ancient Hebrew in which they were first written is often difficult to come by. For example, many people who are familiar with Scripture do not know that the oldest extant copy of the Hebrew Bible is but 1,000 — not 3,000! — years old, dating only roughly to the period of the Crusades. The currently popular pronunciations of Hebrew, whether those of modern Israeli spoken Hebrew or of Jewish liturgical Hebrew, reflect even more recent innovations, and probably differ significantly from the Hebrew of 1,000 years ago, let alone the Hebrew of antiquity.

This surprising paucity of direct information presents a challenge to those who would investigate the story of Hebrew. Fortunately, in place of direct evidence we have a wide variety of indirect evidence, including ancient Hebrew inscriptions, some only partially deciphered, dating back perhaps 3,200 years; ancient Hebrew graffiti from roughly 2,800 years ago; at least two sets of translations or transliterations of Hebrew into ancient Greek, one from 2,300 years ago and the other from at least 1,800 years ago; Hebrew writings from roughly 2,000 years ago, found only in the 20th century in caves near Jerusalem; and various Hebrew and Arabic documents from 1,000 years ago.

In addition to the light they shed on ancient Hebrew, these various clues, particularly the Hebrew ones, contribute to a fascinating story of their own, ending with Hebrew’s rebirth as a spoken language of daily life after a hiatus of almost two millennia.

So the Hebrews’ experiment set the stage for almost every modern alphabet, and made it possible, for the first time, to make a written record available to the masses. Their written record, the Jewish Bible, has remained an integral part of an expanding number of societies almost since the time it was first penned, and their language, Hebrew, has flourished through changes they could not have imagined.

The pages that follow take the reader on a journey through history that reveals the story of that experiment in writing and what has happened in the trimillennial aftermath.

Chapter 2
Rules of the Game

[We must play the game.]

— Plato, c. 375 B.C.E.

We have a few preliminary matters to attend to before embarking on our journey through history and becoming acquainted with the first stages of Hebrew.

There are at least three ways one might look at history, and at least two ways one might look at language. Because we are concerned here in no small part with looking at the history of a language, we will do well to sort out these matters, along with some matters of notation. But we are anxious to start our actual investigation of Hebrew, so we’ll take only a brief look at some of the relevant issues here, with more complete discussions appearing in Appendix A.

Three Theories of the World

There are, in principle, at least three ways one might try to understand the world. We can call these:

1. The Dumb-Luck Theory;

2. The God Theory; and

3. The Science Theory.

Our choice of theories will have important consequences for how we interpret data about the past, so it is important to understand the three before we get started.

The Dumb-Luck Theory explains everything as being coincidence. With this approach, the world is basically orderless, and any order that may seem to present itself is the result of coincidence. For example, if you shuffle a deck of regular playing cards for a while and it turns out that after being shuffled the cards are arranged from ace to king in order of suit, the Dumb-Luck Theory explains that every so often, by pure dumb luck, that particular order will present itself, and no further explanation is necessary. Similarly, the sun may or may not rise tomorrow, but if it does, it is just happenstance. The fact that the sun rose this morning is also happenstance.

By contrast, the God Theory explains everything as being determined by God. If you shuffle a deck of playing cards and the cards nonetheless end up in order, the God Theory explains that this is God’s will. The sun will rise tomorrow because God makes the sun rise; or, if the sun does not rise, it is because God does not want it to rise. The sun rose this morning because God made it.

Finally, the Science Theory claims that there is an underlying order to the universe that we humans can understand. If you shuffle a deck of playing cards and they end up arranged by suit in ascending order, there must be some ordering force at work. (For example, maybe you cheated.) Likewise, we fully expect the sun to rise, and we believe we know why. We also know why the sun rose this morning.

Many accounts of Hebrew and antiquity suffer from a confusion among these three theories, so we will be very clear that, for the purposes of this book, we are adopting the Science Theory and ignoring the Dumb-Luck Theory and the God Theory. More details about the three theories, and the ramifications of our decision, appear in Appendix A.

Two Theories of Language

In large part, this book is about language. Accordingly, just as we chose the Science Theory over two others, we must decide what view of language we will adopt. Having already chosen to pursue the Science Theory in this book, we will, naturally, choose a scientific theory of language.

There are two common (and, often, competing) theories of language:

1. prescriptive linguistics

2. descriptive linguistics¹

Prescriptive linguistics is the approach to language that most people meet in high-school English class. It teaches that there is a right and wrong way to speak, and that most of us, left to our own devices, speak incorrectly, which is why we have to be taught to speak correctly. For example, most of us tend to end sentences with prepositions (“Who are you talking to?”). But we are taught that ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong. The preposition — as the name “pre-position” suggests — belongs before the word it modifies (“To whom are you talking?”).

The prescriptive system uses “rules” to describe what ought to be.

By contrast, descriptive linguistics assumes that there is a phenomenon of human language to be studied, and it is the scientist’s goal to study and describe that language. For example, the descriptive approach to English notes that the most natural place for a preposition in many sentences is the end, and then asks why. Most people are considerably less familiar with this approach.

The descriptive system uses “rules” to describe what is.

By comparison, consider two potential theories of how people dress. The first, parallel to the prescriptive theory of linguistics, is the sort of advice that Miss Manners gives: you can’t wear white after Labor Day, your belt and shoes have to be the same color, etc. This is a theory of how people ought to dress. Clearly, however, people do wear white after Labor Day, and people do wear shoes and belts of different colors. But this doesn’t mean that there are no patterns to be discerned in how people dress. For example, people do not tend to wear T-shirts over ski jackets. So a second approach to dress, parallel to the descriptive theory of linguistics and contrasting with the Miss Manners theory of dress, notes what is: people’s shoes are not always the same color as their belts, but when they wear a ski jacket and a T-shirt, the ski jacket goes on the outside.

In the end, the prescriptive approach to language, like the Miss Manners approach to dress, is a social policy, while the descriptive approach to language is a scientific theory.

We will adopt the scientific, descriptive approach to language. (We take a slightly more in-depth look at that approach in Appendix A. The “Further Reading” section lists some sources for even more information.) When we look at Hebrew as it developed over the past three millennia, we will study it as it was, not how it ought to have been or how we wish it were.

Loose Ends

Transliterations

Beyond the major decisions we have just made — namely, to see how far the Science Theory, including, in particular, modern descriptive linguistics, can take us — some details remain.

There is, obviously, a lot of Hebrew to follow. We will also see considerable Greek and even some Russian. Wherever possible, these foreign languages will be presented in at least two forms, with their original (foreign) letters appearing alongside English ones. But unlike many other scientific descriptions of language, we will not limit ourselves to one particular scheme for choosing the English that will represent the foreign words.

Regarding the Hebrew examples, we will try to use whatever English letters best give a sense of why the example is relevant. Sometimes the English will mimic the letters that comprise the example and sometimes the sounds. (Even though this latter approach is technically called a “transcription,” we will refer to it using the more common word “transliteration.”) Because of this utilitarian approach, the same letters are often transliterated differently, with notes about the details of the transliteration scheme helping the reader who is unfamiliar with the Hebrew alphabet.

The details of the Greek and Russian examples are less important for our purposes but follow the same principles. We will not limit ourselves to just one scheme but, rather, will use whatever seems most convenient for each example. And once again, the original Greek or Russian will be printed right next to the transliterations for those who care to read them.

Other Matters of Notation

We will spend significant time sorting through an amazing three thousand plus years of history. While Western Society has agreed on a single numbering system to represent those years, three conventions regarding that system have become prevalent, according to which this book was published in “2004 C.E.,” “A.D. 2004,” (sometimes “2004 A.D.”) or “+2004.” The year 3,000 years earlier is denoted by one of “997 B.C.E.,” “997 B.C.,” or “–996.” Without prejudice, we have chosen the first scheme here. (Sadly, the year 2,004 years before the year 2004 C.E. is not the year 0 C.E. or the year 0 B.C.E., that year having been most inconveniently omitted in the official numbering system. For this reason the negative numbers do not match up exactly with the “B.C.E.” numbers that we have chosen to use.)

From time to time we will want to distinguish between a letter and the sound it makes, or, more generally, between spelling and pronunciation. To do this, we will put sounds between slashes. We might thus write that “the letter c makes two sounds in English: /k/ and /s/,” or tha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Getting Started
• Part II Antiquity
• Part III Moving On
• Part IV Now
• Part V Appendices
• Footnote
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author