Editing Hebrew language (section)

===Displacement by Aramaic===
{{See also|Aramaic language}}
[[File:Rashiscript.PNG|thumb|[[Rashi script]]]]
[[File:Шабатна кибритна кутија - Shabbat matchbox holder.jpg|thumb|A silver matchbox holder with inscription in Hebrew]]

In the early 6th century BCE, the [[Neo-Babylonian Empire]] conquered the ancient [[Kingdom of Judah]], destroying much of [[Jerusalem]] and exiling its population far to the east in [[Babylon]]. During the [[Babylonian captivity]], many [[Israelites]] learned Aramaic, the closely related Semitic language of their captors. Thus, for a significant period, the [[Jewish]] elite became influenced by Aramaic.<ref>Nicholas Ostler, ''Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World'', Harper Perennial, London, New York, Toronto, Sydney 2006 p80</ref>

After [[Cyrus the Great]] conquered Babylon, he allowed the Jewish people to return from captivity.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2019-05-06|title=Cyrus the Great: History's most merciful conqueror?|url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/people/reference/cyrus-the-great/|access-date=2020-09-07|website=Culture|language=en|archive-date=8 September 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200908063251/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/people/reference/cyrus-the-great/|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |author=Andrew Silow-Carroll |title=Who is King Cyrus, and why did Netanyahu compare him to Trump? |url=https://www.timesofisrael.com/who-is-king-cyrus-and-why-is-netanyahu-comparing-him-to-trump/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200907190744/https://www.timesofisrael.com/who-is-king-cyrus-and-why-is-netanyahu-comparing-him-to-trump/ |archive-date=7 September 2020 |access-date=2020-09-07 |website=The Times of Israel |language=en-US}}</ref> In time, a local version of Aramaic came to be spoken in Israel alongside Hebrew. By the beginning of the [[Common Era]], Aramaic was the primary colloquial language of [[Samaria]]n, [[Babylonia]]n and [[Galilee]]an Jews, and western and intellectual Jews spoke [[Greek language|Greek]],{{Citation needed|date=July 2011}} but a form of so-called [[Rabbinic Hebrew]] continued to be used as a vernacular in Judea until it was displaced by Aramaic, probably in the 3rd century CE. Certain [[Sadducees|Sadducee]], [[Pharisees|Pharisee]], [[Scribe#Judaism|Scribe]], Hermit, Zealot and Priest classes maintained an insistence on Hebrew, and all Jews maintained their identity with Hebrew songs and simple quotations from Hebrew texts.<ref name=ASB170/><ref name=Spolsky99>{{cite book |last1= Spolsky |first1= Bernard |last2= Shohamy |first2= Elana |title= The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology and Practice |page= 9 |publisher= Multilingual Matters Ltd. |series= Bilingual Education and Bilingualism |volume= 17 |year= 1999 |isbn= 978-1-85359-451-9 |access-date= }}</ref><ref name=Fernandez/>

While there is no doubt that at a certain point, Hebrew was displaced as the everyday spoken language of most Jews, and that its chief successor in the Middle East was the closely related Aramaic language, then [[Greek language|Greek]],<ref name=Spolsky99/>{{refn|name="Sáenz-BadillosRH"|group="note"}} scholarly opinions on the exact dating of that shift have changed very much.<ref name=OxfordDictionaryChristianChurch>"Hebrew" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church'', edit. F.L. Cross, first edition (Oxford, 1958), 3rd edition (Oxford 1997). ''The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church'' which once said, in 1958 in its first edition, that Hebrew "ceased to be a spoken language around the fourth century BCE", now says, in its 1997 (third) edition, that Hebrew "continued to be used as a spoken and written language in the New Testament period".</ref> In the first half of the 20th century, most scholars followed [[Abraham Geiger]] and [[Gustaf Dalman]] in thinking that Aramaic became a spoken language in the land of Israel as early as the beginning of Israel's [[History of Palestine#Hellenistic period|Hellenistic period]] in the 4th century BCE, and that as a corollary Hebrew ceased to function as a spoken language around the same time. [[Moshe Zvi Segal]], [[Joseph Klausner]] and Ben Yehuda are notable exceptions to this view. During the latter half of the 20th century, accumulating archaeological evidence and especially linguistic analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls has disproven that view. The Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered in 1946–1948 near [[Qumran]] revealed ancient Jewish texts overwhelmingly in Hebrew, not Aramaic.

The Qumran scrolls indicate that Hebrew texts were readily understandable to the average Jew, and that the language had evolved since Biblical times as spoken languages do.{{refn|Fernández & Elwolde: "It is generally believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically the Copper Scroll and also the Bar Kokhba letters, have furnished clear evidence of the popular character of MH [Mishnaic Hebrew]."<ref>''An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew'' (Fernández & Elwolde 1999, p.2)</ref>|group="note"}} Recent scholarship recognizes that reports of Jews speaking in Aramaic indicate a multilingual society, not necessarily the primary language spoken. Alongside Aramaic, Hebrew co-existed within Israel as a spoken language.<ref name=Judaism460>The Cambridge History of Judaism: The late Roman-Rabbinic period. 2006. P.460</ref><!--the quote refers to the last sentence--> Most scholars now date the demise of Hebrew as a spoken language to the end of the [[Judea (Roman province)|Roman period]], or about 200 CE.<ref>Borrás, Judit Targarona and Ángel Sáenz-Badillos (1999). Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. P.3</ref> It continued on as a literary language down through the [[History of Palestine#Byzantine period|Byzantine period]] from the 4th century CE.

The exact roles of Aramaic and Hebrew remain hotly debated. A trilingual scenario has been proposed for the land of Israel. Hebrew functioned as the local [[mother tongue]] with powerful ties to Israel's history, origins and golden age and as the language of Israel's religion; Aramaic functioned as the international language with the rest of the Middle East; and eventually Greek functioned as another international language with the eastern areas of the Roman Empire.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}}<!--Refers to the entire "role distribution" indicated above.--> [[William Schniedewind]] argues that after waning in the Persian period, the religious importance of Hebrew grew in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and cites epigraphical evidence that Hebrew survived as a vernacular language – though both its grammar and its writing system had been substantially influenced by Aramaic.<ref name=Schniedewind>{{cite conference |author= Schniedewind, William M. |author-link= William Schniedewind |title= Aramaic, the Death of Written Hebrew, and Language Shift in the Persian Period |editor= Seth L. Sanders |conference= Margins of Writing, Origins of Cultures |publisher= University of Chicago |year= 2006 |pages= 137–147 |isbn= 978-1-885923-39-4 |conference-url= https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/publications/ois/ois-2-margins-writing-origins-cultures |url= https://www.academia.edu/download/8369723/ois2.pdf#page=149 }}{{dead link|date=July 2022|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> According to another summary, Greek was the language of government, Hebrew the language of prayer, study and religious texts, and Aramaic was the language of legal contracts and trade.<ref name=spolsky85/> There was also a geographic pattern: according to [[Bernard Spolsky]], by the beginning of the Common Era, "[[Judeo-Aramaic]] was mainly used in Galilee in the north, Greek was concentrated in the former colonies and around governmental centers, and Hebrew monolingualism continued mainly in the southern villages of Judea."<ref name=Spolsky99/> In other words, "in terms of dialect geography, at the time of the [[tannaim]] Palestine could be divided into the Aramaic-speaking regions of Galilee and Samaria and a smaller area, Judaea, in which [[Mishnaic Hebrew|Rabbinic Hebrew]] was used among the descendants of returning exiles."<ref name=ASB170/><ref name=Fernandez>Fernandez, Miguel Perez (1997). ''An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew''. BRILL.</ref> In addition, it has been surmised that [[Koine Greek]] was the primary vehicle of communication in coastal cities and among the upper class of [[Jerusalem]], while Aramaic was prevalent in the lower class of Jerusalem, but not in the surrounding countryside.<ref name=spolsky85>Spolsky, B. (1985). "Jewish Multilingualism in the First century: An Essay in Historical Sociolinguistics", Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), ''Readings in The Sociology of Jewish Languages'', Leiden: E. J. Brill, pp. 35–50. Also adopted by Smelik, Willem F. 1996. The Targum of Judges. P.9</ref> After the suppression of the [[Bar Kokhba revolt]] in the 2nd century CE, Judaeans were forced to disperse. Many relocated to Galilee, so most remaining native speakers of Hebrew at that last stage would have been found in the north.<ref name=spolsky85b>Spolsky, B. (1985), p. 40. and ''passim''</ref>

Many scholars have pointed out that Hebrew continued to be used alongside Aramaic during Second Temple times, not only for religious purposes but also for nationalistic reasons, especially during revolts such as the [[Maccabean Revolt]] (167–160 BCE) and the emergence of the [[Hasmonean kingdom]], the [[Great Jewish Revolt]] (66–73 CE), and the [[Bar Kokhba revolt]] (132–135 CE).<ref name=":02">{{Citation |title=Constructing Jewish Nationalism: The Hebrew Language |date=2006 |work=Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism |pages=50–51, 61 |editor-last=Goodblatt |editor-first=David |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/elements-of-ancient-jewish-nationalism/constructing-jewish-nationalism-the-hebrew-language/99AF61E0AE06DD38702A610D002393EB |access-date=2024-10-08 |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/cbo9780511499067.004 |isbn=978-0-521-86202-8|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The nationalist significance of Hebrew manifested in various ways throughout this period. Michael Owen Wise notes that "Beginning with the time of the Hasmonean revolt [...] Hebrew came to the fore in an expression akin to modern nationalism. A form of classical Hebrew was now a more significant written language than Aramaic within Judaea."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wise |first=Michael Owen |title=Thunder in Gemini and Other Essays on the History, Language and Literature of Second Temple Palestine |publisher=Sheffield Academic Press |year=1994 |location=Sheffield, UK |pages=117 |chapter=Accidents and Accidence: A Scribal View of Linguistic Dating of the Aramaic Scrolls from Qumran}}</ref> This nationalist aspect was further emphasized during periods of conflict, as Hannah Cotton observing in her analysis of legal documents during the Jewish revolts against Rome that "Hebrew became the symbol of Jewish nationalism, of the independent Jewish State."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cotton |first=Hannah M. |date=1999 |title=The Languages of the Legal and Administrative Documents from the Judaean Desert |journal=ZPE |volume=125 |pages=225}}</ref> The nationalist use of Hebrew is evidenced in several historical documents and artefacts, including the composition of 1 Maccabees in archaizing Hebrew, [[Hasmonean coinage]] under [[John Hyrcanus]] (134-104 BCE), and coins from both the Great Revolt and Bar Kokhba Revolt featuring exclusively Hebrew and Palaeo-Hebrew script inscriptions.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Schwartz |first=Seth |date=1995 |title=Language, Power and Identity in Ancient Palestine |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/651047 |journal=Past & Present |issue=148 |pages=3–4, 26–27, 44 |doi=10.1093/past/148.1.3 |jstor=651047 |issn=0031-2746|url-access=subscription }}</ref> This deliberate use of Hebrew and Paleo-Hebrew script in official contexts, despite limited literacy, served as a symbol of Jewish nationalism and political independence.<ref name=":1" />

The Christian [[New Testament]] contains some Semitic place names and quotes.<ref>Huehnergard, John and [[Jo Ann Hackett]]. The Hebrew and Aramaic languages. In The Biblical World (2002), Volume 2 (John Barton, ed.). P.19</ref> The language of such Semitic glosses (and in general the language spoken by Jews in scenes from the New Testament) is often referred to as "Hebrew" in the text,<ref>E.g. Acts 21:40; 22:2; 26:14: ''têi hebraḯdi dialéktôi'', lit. 'in the Hebrew dialect/language'</ref> although this term is often re-interpreted as referring to Aramaic instead{{refn|The Cambridge History of Judaism: "Thus in certain sources Aramaic words are termed 'Hebrew,' ... For example: η επιλεγομενη εβραιστι βηθεσδα 'which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda' (John 5.2). This is not a Hebrew name but rather an Aramaic one: בית חסדא, 'the house of Hisda'."<ref name=Judaism460/>|group="note"}}{{refn|Fitzmyer, Joseph A.: "The adverb {{lang|grc|Ἑβραϊστί}} (and its related expressions) seems to mean 'in Hebrew', and it has often been argued that it means this and nothing more. As is well known, it is used at times with words and expressions that are clearly Aramaic. Thus in John 19:13, {{lang|grc|Ἑβραιστὶ δὲ Γαββαθᾶ}} is given as an explanation of the Lithostrotos, and {{lang|grc|Γαββαθᾶ}} is a Grecized form of the Aramaic word gabbětā, 'raised place.'"<ref>Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 1979. A Wandering Armenian: Collected Aramaic Essays. P.43</ref>|group="note"}} and is rendered accordingly in recent translations.<ref>Geoffrey W. Bromley (ed.) ''The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia'', W.B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan 1979, 4 vols. vol.1 sub.'Aramaic' p.233: 'in the Aramaic vernacular of Palestine'</ref> Nonetheless, these glosses can be interpreted as Hebrew as well.<ref>Randall Buth and Chad Pierce "EBRAISTI in Ancient Texts, Does ἑβραιστί ever Mean 'Aramaic'?" in Buth and Notley eds., Language Environment of First Century Judaea, Brill, 2014:66–109. p. 109 "no, Ἑβραιστί does not ever appear to mean Aramaic in attested texts during the Second Temple and Graeco-Roman periods."; p. 107 "John did not mention what either βεθεσδα or γαββαθα meant. They may both have been loanwords from Greek and Latin respectively." p103 "βεθεσδα ... (בית-אסטא(ן ... house of portico ... 3Q15 אסטאן הדרומית southern portico," and Latin gabata (p. 106) "means platter, dish... perhaps a mosaic design in the pavement ... " The Latin loanword is attested as "bowl" in later [[Christian Palestinian Aramaic]] and גבתא is (p106) "unattested in other Aramaic dialects" [contra the allegations of many].</ref>