Hebrew grammar

“ As far as study is concerned, the reading of Hebrew at least is pretty regularly learned. On the other hand, with the mastery of the Hebrew language very seldom is any progress made. Grammar is not treated in the school at all, but has to be learnt ex usu, by translation of the Holy Scriptures, very much as the ordinary man learns imperfectly the grammar of his mother-tongue by social intercourse. Moreover there is no dictionary of the Hebrew language. The children therefore begin at once with the explanation of the Bible. ”

“ Language of the Talmud:
The Mishna is written in Hebrew, and so too are some of the older quotations in the Gemara. Many Greek words are adopted, of which Sanhedrin is one; some Latin words too. But the bulk of both Gemaras is written in a dialect of Aramaic—we might say Jüdisch-Aramaic just as we speak of Jüdisch-Deutsch to-day.
A knowledge of grammar was brought to Persia (Babylonia) from Greece, which resulted in the important service of introducing vowel points and accents. This tended to simplify the study of Hebrew Scriptures and made the text more certain. ”

“ Tzaddi, or Tsadhe, Tee-zee, (i. e. tz, or ts,) a hunter's pole; (Hebrew characters) (Transliteration from Hebrew:qof) Koph, Kue, or Kay, an ape; (Hebrew characters) (Transliteration from Hebrew:resh) Resch, or Resh, Ar, a head; (Hebrew characters) (Transliteration from Hebrew:shin) Schin, or Sin, Ess-aitch, or Ess, a tooth; (Hebrew characters) (Transliteration from Hebrew:tav) Tau, or Thau, Tee, or Tee-aitch, a cross, or mark.
These English names of the Hebrew letters are written with much less uniformity than those of the Greek, because there has been more dispute respecting their powers. ”

“ What prevented, however, for a long time the progress of the science of language was the idea that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that, therefore, all languages must be derived from Hebrew. ”

“ In dead languages the difficulty is greater; but the certainty that ultimately results, is not less practically in respect of the bulk of the language, on account of the number of coincidences. But much remains undone yet, particularly in respect of the Hebrew language. Logic, natural and civil history, philosophical and religious knowledge, may all, in their several ways, contribute to fix the true sense of words. ”

“ That we have no greater change of words to answer so many of the Hebrew tongue, it is of the riches of that tongue, and the poverty of our mother language, which hath but two words, image and idol, and both of them borrowed of the Latin and Greek: as for other words equivalent, we know not any, and we are loth to make any new words of that signification, except the multitude of Hebrew words of the same sense coming together do sometimes perhaps seem to require it. ”

“ Thirty years later, in his Commentary on the Old Testament, he pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. He says: "Mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the Hebrew.... The proper names and other significations given in the Scripture seem incontestable evidence that the Hebrew language was the original language of the earth,—the language in which God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of his will to Moses and the prophets." ”

“ Infinite labor, years of toilsome study, almost endless efforts of perverted ingenuity were given to the mistaken effort to establish this point, which was regarded by these in-the-dark-working linguists as one, almost if not quite, of religious importance. Now we know that the Hebrew language is totally, radically different from all the Indo-European languages; that they have no kinship whatever, and are as unlike as if they were spoken on two separate planets by creatures of different species. ”

“ There is reason, however, it should be remarked, to suspect that the Hebrew as we have it does not in all points truly represent the language of the earliest period of Hebrew history, that it has both partaken of the modernization of the popular tongue, and suffered some distortion in the hands of the grammarians from whom we receive it. ”

“ The writings of the Old Testament are the only books remaining in the Hebrew language. There are no Hebrew books to throw light on dark passages, or to settle the meaning of doubtful words and phrases. ”

“ Every student of the Hebrew language is aware that we have in the conjugation of our verbs a mode known as the intensive voice, which, by means of an almost imperceptible modification of vowel-points, intensifies the meaning of the primitive root. A similar significance seems to attach to the Jews themselves in connection with the people among whom they dwell. They are the intensive form of any nationality whose language and customs they adopt. ”

“ HEBREW LITERATURE. Properly speaking, “Hebrew Literature” denotes all works written in the Hebrew language. In catalogues and bibliographies, however, the expression is now generally used, conveniently if incorrectly, as synonymous with Jewish literature, including all works written by Jews in Hebrew characters, whether the language be Aramaic, Arabic or even some vernacular not related to Hebrew. ”

“ The late linguistic character of Hebrew, the extent, that is, to which it has been influenced by phonetic decay as compared with its sister tongues, is an incontrovertible proof of the backward literary condition of its speakers. But even literature and cultivation are unable to preserve a language altogether from decay and change. The pronunciation of the educated slowly changes; words become clipped and shortened in spite of their spelling, and notwithstanding printers and schoolmasters the spelling in the end has to follow the pronunciation. ”

“ Any student seriously bent on the science of language should learn at least enough Hebrew to spell out a few chapters of Genesis, for all the other languages commonly taught in England being of the Aryan family, this will serve to bring his mind out of that groove, by familiarizing him with speech of a different material. A very moderate number of roots, mostly of three consonants, by altering their internal vowels and changing their affixes, are made to form the greater part of the language so regularly that Hebrew dictionaries are arranged throughout by the roots. ”

“ The bare possibility of the existence of a modern literature in Hebrew seemed so strange, so improbable, that the best-informed circles refused to entertain the notion seriously—perhaps not without some semblance of a reason for their incredulity. ”

“ The supposition that the rhapsodists employed a judicious selection of idioms, and made a mosaic out of distinct dialects, has long ago been abandoned as impossible and absurd.
The process of eliminating superfluities is found in every language. Redundancy seems to have been necessary to an early stage of thought, for we find it not only in words but in expressions. The whole of Hebrew poetry depends on a repetition and enforcement of the same fundamental thought, so as to gain emphasis and variety. ”

“ But in the third book he feels obliged to declare, in the face of the contrary dogma held, as he says, by "not a few most eminent men piously solicitous for the authority of the sacred text" that the Hebrew punctuation was, after all, not of divine inspiration, but a late invention of the rabbis.
France, also, was held to all appearance in complete subjection to the orthodox idea up to the end of the century. In 1697 appeared at Paris perhaps the most learned of all the books written to prove Hebrew the original tongue and source of all others. ”

“ The only book in the Old Testament which attempts to grapple with an abstract subject in plain prose—namely, Ecclesiastes—dates from a time when Hebrew was dying out or was already dead. That the gifted author does not always succeed in giving clear expression to his ideas is partly due to the fact that the language had never been employed for any scientific purposes whatsoever. With regard to grammatical forms, Hebrew has lost much that is still preserved in Arabic; but the greater richness of Arabic is in part the result of later development. ”

“ Now, every educated Jew knows more or less Hebrew, and, although he is able to read and write only the modern square Hebrew character, it is so easy to transpose one alphabet into another that the mere language would afford no security. Therefore, I expect that, when the experts translate this document, the translation or transliteration will be a mere farrago of unintelligible nonsense. ”

“ A language is not living when it is merely ecclesiastical. No one calls Sanskrit a living language because some Indian sects still pray in Sanskrit. But when Jewish poets took to using Hebrew again—if, indeed, they ever ceased to use it—as the language of daily life, as the medium for expressing their human emotions, then one can see that the sacred tongue was on the way to becoming once more what it is to-day in many parts of Palestine—the living tongue of men. ”

“ Ancient Hebrew is remarkable for its agglutination. “Like a child,” says Herder, “it seeks to say all at once.” It uses one word where we require five or six. But as we approach the period of the captivity we find a propensity to replace grammatical mechanisms by periphrasis, a propensity still more marked in modern or Rabbinical Hebrew. The later dialects—Chaldean, Samaritan, Syriac—are longer, clearer, more analytic. These, in their turn, are absorbed into Arabic, which pushes still farther the analysis of grammatical relations. ”

“ The true scriptures, according to the Jewish canon (Yad. iii. 5; Toseph. Yad. ii. 3) , were those which defiled the hands of such as touched them. But other scholars, such as Zahn, Schürer, Porter, state that the secret books with which we have been dealing formed a class by themselves and were called “Genuizim” (גנוזים) , and that this name and idea passed from Judaism over into the Greek, and that ἀπόκρυφα βιβλία is a translation of ספרים גנוזים. But the Hebrew verb does not mean “to bide” but “to store away,” and is only used of things in themselves precious. ”

“ They are scattered throughout Europe, especially in Russia, yet preserve their own individuality to a marked degree. Linguistically, the nearest relatives of the ancient Hebrew are the Syriac, Assyrian, and Arabic languages. While the Hebrew is not so nearly a dead language as the related Syrian, Aramaic, or the ancient Assyrian, its use in most Jewish communities is confined mainly to religious exercises. The Jews have adopted the languages of the peoples with whom they have long been associated. ”

“ An extraordinary number of the verbs which describe a loud expression of joyousness (to shout, bellow, laugh &c.) , originally denoted to shine, dazzle, be visible, and the like; affording another confirmation of Geiger’s thesis, that language owes its origin more to optic than to acoustic impressions (see supra p. 40) . I give a series of linguistic facts as examples to prove this assertion. The Hebrew ṣâhal signifies both ‘to shine bright’ and ‘to cry aloud,’ and its phonetic connexion with ṣâhar, zâhar &c., proves the priority of the optical meaning. ”

“ At first, and indeed down to the middle of the 17th century, Jewish traditions and methods in the study of Hebrew dominated Christian scholars; but in the 17th and 18th centuries the study of other Semitic languages opened up that comparative linguistic study which was systematized and brought nearer to perfection in the 19th century (which also witnessed the opening up of the new study of Assyrian) by scholars such as Gesenius, Ewald, Olshausen, Renan, Nöldeke, Stade and Driver. This has done much to render possible a more critical interpretation of the Old Testament. ”

“ This latter passage is important, not only as showing the difference of the two languages, but also as showing the existence of two scripts, one called Hebrew (עברית‎) , the other Ashuri (אשורית‎) which is variously rendered "upright," "sacred," or "Assyrian." The old alphabet and the Aramaic language were profane: the Hebrew and the new alphabet, which came with Ezra from Babylon, were sacred. ”

“ Indeed, the Hebrew poets soar far above all others in that energy of feeling, impetuous and irresistible, which penetrates, warms, and moves the very soul. They reveal their anxieties as well as their hopes; they paint with truth and love the actual condition of the human race, with its sorrows and consolations, its hopes and fears, its love and hate. They select their images from the habitual ideas of the people, and personify inanimate objects—the mountains tremble and exult, deep cries unto deep. Another characteristic of Hebrew poetry is the strong feeling of nationality it expresses. ”

“ It is not difficult to imagine how in such a length of time the true pronunciation may have been lost or certainly modified in some cases; for though the Hebrew words were there on the paper, written in consonants of the old form, the pronunciation of the vowels must have been doubtful if resting on tradition alone, since the Hebrew had already ceased to be a living language for many centuries. ”

“ The appendices in 22:17-24:34 contain many repetitions of proverbs found in the larger collection. The prevalence of intemperance, the existence of a merchant class, and the allusions to exiled Jews (e.g., 24:11) point rather clearly to the dissolute Greek period as the age when these small collections were made. The word meaning "transcribe," that is found in the superscription to the second large collection (25-29) , is peculiar to the late Hebrew, and implies that this superscription, like those of the Psalms, was added by a late Jewish scribe. ”