Languages of the Bible
Originally God communicated his revelation in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Thus, biblical texts can be
found in all three of these languages, as well as translated into other
languages, such as Copitc, Latin, Syriac, and etc.
Semitic Languages
Hebrew and Aramaic are Semitic languages, named after the descendants of Shem (Gen 10). Other Semitic languages include Phoenician, Assyrian, Arabic, Akkadian, Ethiopic, Sumerian (fig. 6), Ugaritic, Moabite, and Babylonian. All of these languages are read from right to left except Akkadian and Ethiopic, which were the first languages to indicate vowels. There is a common cultural life because of the common language. Sumerian, Greek and English are Indo-European languages and not Semitic.
Egyptian hieroglyphics
Egyptian Hieroglyphics is a script consisting of about 700 stylized pictures or signs, mostly word-signs and syllabic signs. Many scholars believe the first alphabet was created to record West Semitic—a language group that includes Hebrew, Phoenician and Ugaritic, among others—about the middle of the second millennium B.C. In this system, fewer than 30 characters are used to record speech, with each character representing a consonant. Appropriate vowels must be supplied by the reader. By 1400 B.C., the inhabitants of Ugarit, in modern Syria, were recording their own West Semitic language with about 27 wedge-shaped cuneiform signs.[A]
Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet developed from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which was created sometime between the 18th and 17th Centuries BC. The earliest known inscriptions in Phoenician come from Byblos and date back to the 1000 BC.
Notable Features - The Phoenician alphabet consists of 22 letters, many of which have a number of different forms, and does not indicate vowel sounds. The names of the letters are the same as those used in Hebrew.
Cuneiform Script
One might wonder why sometimes the spelling of the names in the ancient texts differs from the way they are spelled in the Bible. The main reason is that the ancient languages were more spoken than written. People spelled words the way they sounded, and because of different accents similar words with the same meaning were often spelled a bit differently. There was no standardization of spelling, much like it is today with British and American words (colour and colour). Thus, sometimes it is difficult to know if the person or place names in the tablets are the same as in the Bible. One good example is found in the Ebla tablets and the possible mention of Sodom.
History of Hebrew
The majority of the OT was written in Hebrew with small portions written in Aramaic (Gen 31:47b; Jer 10:11b; Ezra 4–7; Dan 2–7; See Aramaic). One of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions yet discovered is by Yosef Garfinkel, the Israeli director of the Khirbet Qeiyafa excavation (2007). It dates to around 1,000–975 BC (see Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon).[1]
For Jews, Hebrew was “the language of sanctity, the holy tongue” (m. Sotah 7:2). This fact helps to explain the reason for the care exercised by the scribes to ensure the precision of the Hebrew text down through the generations.
Writing was well-established in Palestine while Israel was ruling there, evident from the many inscriptions that have been discovered from that period (see Paleo-Hebrew inscriptions below).[2] Diringer indicated that the Bible has “as many as 429 references to writing or written documents.”[3] An early criticism of the Bible was that it could not have been written as early as it stated because writing was not used until much later. However, according to Diringer in 1934 there were “about 300 Early Hebrew inscriptions, ostraca, seals [ca. 150+], jar-handle-stamps [ca. 600+], weights [ca. 100+], and so on.”[4] Today there are hundreds more.
Paleo-Hebrew
Also known as Old Hebrew or Archaic Biblical Hebrew (tenth to sixth cent. BC), Paleo-Hebrew is descended from the Canaanite (Phoenician) alphabet.[5] Diringer explains that: “We may assume that about 1000 BC, after the united kingdom had been established and its centralised administation organised by King David with a staff of secretaries (see, for instance, 2 Sam 8:17 and 20:25), the Early Hebrew alphabet had begun its autonomous development.”[6]
By the fifth cent. it was no longer used by the Jews, who had adopted the Aramaic alphabet for their system of writing. However, a small group of modern Samaritans still use a derivative of the old Paleo-Hebrew script known as the Samaritan alphabet. Some examples of this early Hebrew script can be found in the Siloam Tunnel Inscription[7] (1880, lapidary style ca. 700 BC; fig. 132), the Gezer Calendar[8] (1908; fig. 82), the Lachish Letters or ostraca[9] (1935–1938, cursive style sixth cent. BC; fig. 137), Lachish Step inscription (1938), Tel Dan stele[10] (1993–94; fig. 90), and Tel Zayit Abecedary (2006). It is also unlikely that reading and writing were only confined to the professional scribe, as Albright states:
Since the forms of the letters are very simple, the 22 letter alphabet could be learned in a day or two by a bright student and in a week or two by the dullest; hence it could spread with great rapidity. I do not doubt for a moment that there were many urchins . . . who could read and write as early as the time of the Judges, although I do not believe that the script was used for formal literature until later.[11]
Footnotes
[A] Hershal Shanks. Archaeology Odyssey 01:01 2004. Biblical Archaeology Society
[1] Gershon Galil, “The Hebrew Inscription from Khirbet Qeiyafa/Neta’im: Script, Language, Literature and History,” UF 41 (2009): 193–242; S. H. William, “The Qeiyafa Ostracon,” UF 41 (2009): 601–10; Haggai Misgav, Yosef Garfinkel, and Saar Ganor, “The Ostracon,” in Khirbet Qeiyafa: Excavation Report 2007-2008, ed. Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, Israel: Israel Exploration Society, 2010), 143–60; Hershel Shanks, “Prize Find: Oldest Hebrew Inscription Discovered in Israelite Fort on Philistine Border,” BAR 36, no. 2 (April 2010): 51–55; Christopher A. Rollston, “The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon: Methodological Musings and Caveats,” Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University 38, no. 1 (2011): 67–82; Aaron Demsky, “An Iron Age IIA Alphabetic Writing Exercise from Khirbet Qeiyafa,” IEJ 62, no. 2 (2012): 186–99; Israel Finkelstein and Alexander Fantalkin, “Khirbet Qeiyafa: An Unsensational Archaeological and Historical Interpretation,” Tel Aviv 39 (2012): 38–63.
[2] Alan R. Millard, “An Assessment of the Evidence for Writing in Ancient Israel,” in Biblical Archaeology Today, Proceedings of the International Congress on Biblical Archaeology, Jerusalem, ed. Avraham Biran (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1985), 98.
[3] David Diringer, “The Biblical Scripts,” in CHB, 1:13.
[4] Diringer, “The Biblical Scripts,” in CHB, 1:13; Le Iscrizioni Antico-Ebraiche Palestinesi (Florence, Italy: Le Monnier, 1934).
[5] Edward Yechezkel Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1982), 1; Angel Sáenz-Badillos, A History of the Hebrew Language, trans. John Elwolde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–45; Benjamin Sass, The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium: West Semitic Alphabet CA 1150-850 BCE, Tel Aviv Occasional Publications 4 (Tel-Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, 2009).
[6] Diringer, “The Biblical Scripts,” in CHB, 1:13; Alan R. Millard, “The Practice of Writing in Ancient Israel,” BA 35, no. 4 (1972): 98–111.
[7] “The Siloam Inscription,” trans. W. F. Albright (ANET, 321); C. Schick, “Phoenician Inscription in the Pool of Siloam,” PEQ 12, no. 4 (1880): 238–39; Robert B. Coote, “Siloam Inscription,” in ABD, 6:23–24; Mitchell J. Dahood, “Siloam Inscription,” in NCE, 13:120; R. I. Altman, “Some Notes on Inscriptional Genres and the Siloam Tunnel Inscription,” Antiquo Oriente 5 (2007): 35–88.
[8] “The Gezer Calendar,” trans. W. F. Albright (ANET, 320); Daniel Sivan, “The Gezer Calendar and Northwest Semitic Linguistics,” IEJ 48, no. 1–2 (1998): 101–105; William F. Albright, “The Gezer Calendar,” OR 92 (1943): 16–26.
[9] André LeMaire, Inscriptions Hébraïques. I. Les Ostraca., vol. 1, Littératures Anciennes Du Proche-Orient 9 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1977); Anson F. Rainey, “Watching for the Signal Fires of Lachish,” PEQ 119 (1987): 149–51.
[10] Rainey, “The ‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” 47; André LeMaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20, no. 3 (1994): 30–37; Alan R. Millard, “The Tell Dan Stele,” trans. Miriam Lichtheim (COS 2:161–62); Lester L. Grabbe, Ahab Agonistes: The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty (New York: Continuum International, 2007), 333.
[11] William F. Albright and Benno Landsberger, “Scribal Concepts of Education,” in City Invincible: A Symposium on Urbanization and Cultural Development in the Ancient Near East. Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, December 4-7, 1958, ed. Carl H. Kraeling and Robert M. Adams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 123.
Modified August 20, 2023. Copyright ©
2023 Electronic Christian Media
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