Thoughts.com Blogs - What language was the Old Testament written in?

View Blog

What language was the Old Testament written in?

Most traditionalists will say Hebrew but that answer must be further examined and explained. The English language (as an example) in the last 500 years alone has gone through considerable changes. Friends of mine tell me they read the 1611 King James Bible, and I have to explain to them that they actually really don’t. The English language both in its literary and spoken forms has changed much in the last five centuries. The written language of the 1611 version does not even look like the modern English language. The King James version (also called the Authorized version) has had 17 editions, including revisions as of 2006. Modern Hebrew is also very different that what was used in the original autograph of the Old Testament (Tenach), especially when we refer to the Pentateuch (Torah). Abraham left Haran at God's command, at approximately 1921 BC. (That date is also debated). Abraham was contemporary with Hammurabi. He left a country whose literary language was Babylonian cuneiform, written on clay tablets. He probably had his religious books, which he took with him. He may have had in his retinue a man who could write and who kept records of his master's dealings with his neighbors. The difference between written literary language and spoken dialects has to be considered. Coming from Haran, Abraham spoke a Semitic dialect which differed but little from the dialect or dialects of Palestine. Cuneiform writing emerged in the Sumerian civilization in the 3400 BCE. The development of cuneiform writing was an evolution of a much earlier Mesopotamian accounting system. It would continue to undergo changes over a period spanning 3 millennia. Much of what we know is from the tablets of Tel el Amarna and from the discoveries at Boghazkeui. The Ugarit Cuneiform alphabet which was developed around 1500 BCE wrote both from right to left and was based on advanced features of previously known hieroglyphic and cuneiform systems. This developed into a more syllabic and less logographic writing system into an abjad. An alphabet is classified as abjad as it records only consonant sounds, except for “Mater Lectonis”, which refers to the use of consonants to indicate vowels. Both of these developments would be seen in the Hebrew language. According to many contemporary scholars, the original Hebrew script (Old Hebrew) developed alongside others in the region during the course of the late second and first millennia BCE; it is closely related to the Phoenician script, which itself probably gave rise to the use of alphabetic writing in Greece (Greek). The Phoenician alphabet (1050 BCE) was a continuation from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. It is sometimes claimed that a distinct Hebrew variant, the original "Old Hebrew", emerged around the 10th century BCE, and was widely used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah until they fell in the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, respectively. Some scholars though, believe that that prior to their return from Babylonian exile in 538 B.C.E.; Israelites did not have any means of written communication distinctly their own since pre-exilic Jewish script was Canaanite. That theory has been widely disputed.

In July of 2008 on a hilltop south of Jerusalem a teenager found a 3,000 year old pottery shard which has inscriptions in “Old Hebrew” which Israeli Archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel (leading archaeologist of the excavations at Hirbet Qeiyafa). The relic is strong evidence that the ancient Israelites were literate and could chronicle events centuries before the Old Testament is supposedly first placed in written form. The Israelites were not the only ones using the proto-Canaanite characters, and other scholars suggest it is difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to conclude the text is Hebrew. However, Garfinkel based his identification on a three-letter verb from the inscription meaning "to do," a word he said existed only in Hebrew. "That leads us to believe that this is Hebrew, and that this is the oldest Hebrew inscription that has been found," he said.

Also on November 8th, 2005, The New York Times reported on a fascinating archeological discovery made in Tel Zayit, southwest of Jerusalem: a stone dated to the 10th century BCE inscribed with an abecedary (the letters of the alphabet written in their traditional order). According to Ron E. Tappy of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, who directed the dig, this is the earliest known rendering of the Hebrew alphabet, distinct from Phoenician predecessors. Tappy's interpretations of this artifact and others from the excavation project fit into his controversial theory about the Israelite kingdom of the era, which he argues was a sophisticated political entity with extensive literacy. His arguments are apparently predicated on the Biblical history of David and Solomon. Tappy reported on his findings in Philadelphia at the meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Society of Biblical Literature.

So, if Abram left Haran using the literary language of Cuneiform writing and then his descendents stayed in Canaan for 215 years before famine would drive them down into Egypt, not only can you assume that they now began to use the written Proto-Canaanite and then Phoenician script …but also that during that time their written language had begun to evolve into a dialect we now know as “Old Hebrew” (a Paleo-Hebrew script). As the nation stayed in Egypt for another 400 years, their language continued to change as they also attempted to keep their identity as the descendents of Abraham. That is a lot of time for language to change and develop. This is much as the Jewish people did during the Diaspora in Europe, as they kept their unique identity and culture as well as developed languages that were also unique, such as Yiddish. There is no evidence that these people of Abraham used Egyptian hieroglyphics but it must be assumed that they were familiar with them. Hieratic is a cursive form that is as old as hieroglyphics but did not gain popularity until the Greek-Roman period. This cursive type of writing may also have affected the evolution of Old Hebrew. Papyrus and linen were now used as the medium for writing which would have been brought with them during the Exodus from Egypt. Moses therefore most likely wrote the Torah, which was placed in the Ark in the Old Hebrew. Subsequent copies and later Hebrew/Jewish writings of the Tenach were also in Hebrew but were reflective of the constant evolving of the language, as it was influenced buy both Assyrian script and finally Perso-Arabic script types.

This Perso-Arabic script type is known variously by scholars as the square script, and block script. This is the better-known of two script standards used to write the Hebrew language — the other being the Samaritan script. It consists of 22 letters, and in mildly adapted forms, is also used for writing several languages of the Jewish Diaspora, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as other Jewish languages. The Samaritans, who now number less than one thousand people, have continued to use the Old Hebrew alphabet until today.

Posted by journeyman on 2009-09-19 02:59:32 | Rating: