OI Ancient Languages Workshop | Session 4: Biblical Hebrew

In our fourth ancient languages seminar, Joey Cross, PhD student, discusses Biblical Hebrew.
**This is an at home seminar, please excuse the audio and video quality.
Each Sunday in May, we offer free, at-home seminars examining aspects of the ancient languages studied at the OI. If you miss the video when it goes live, you can always watch at your leisure. Next week, Susanne Paulus, associate professor of Assyriology, joins us for a live Zoom session. Click here to register for this live session:
www.eventbrite.com/e/sunday-l...
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2020, Oriental Institute
music: bensound.com

[@bethhanan]

The Lachish letters are from the time Lachish was conquered by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 588/6 BCE, not by the Assyrians in 701 BCE.

[@garethnboyd]

This is a great series from OI!

[@ISAC_UChicago]

Thanks! Glad you are enjoying it.

[@63spaghetti63]

How very interesting! Thank you.

[@nhabib114]

I haven't words to thank OI enough for the rich playlist. I am a beginning student of the Ancient Near East.

[@SandalwoodBros]

This is a great overview, but a couple items may have been worded a bit better: Later stages of Hebrew are not more "evolved" than Biblical Hebrew (languages change but "evolution" gives the wrong impression), Biblical Hebrew is most certainly a "natural language" (it's just not the native language of a speech community anymore), and from the perspective of historical linguistics, we are not "reconstructing" biblical Hebrew (it is attested in many extant texts). I would also argue that a Modern Hebrew speaker would be able to make good headway with a Biblical text (although there would likely be some misunderstanding of tense/aspect, etc). Compared to say an English speaker trying to read an Old English text, this is rather remarkable. Finally I assume the speaker means the earliest surviving full copies from the middle ages are from around 1000 CE, not 1000 BCE? Anyway, thank you for the great lecture.

[@stanlibuda96]

Great lecture, great series! Thanks a lot from Germany

[@allangardiner2515]

Thank you for the excellent presentation.

[@idanzamir7540]

Very interesting, thank you!

[@seamusoluasigh9296]

Thank you, very informative.

[@simplearchaeology1242]

Great discussion! Very interesting!

[@ISAC_UChicago]

If you are interested in joining Joey Cross's class, please visit this link to register: oi.uchicago.edu/events/event.html?guid=CAL-ff808081-7264d55b-0172-66c05db9-00003511eventscalendar%40uchicago.edu&calPath=%2Fpublic%2Fcals%2FMainCal

[@KongKing1996]

Hello there, great video!, I am no expert in languages but I live in israel so my native language is hebrew, you said that biblical hebrew is a different language from modern hebrew, and that it's very different and not really understandable for a modern hebrew speaker.. well it is quite a different language in the way of the grammar but I can understand like 95 precedent of the text most of the time and in worst cases 85 precent of the text... So it's not that different.. the average hebrew speaking person can read the Bible and understand it I think..

[@willman1711]

Thank you for this overview. I was wondering if you could cite some examples of "archaic" Hebrew found in the biblical text?

[@benavraham4397]

Archaic Hebrew in the Bible? The Hebrew of the Bible is a single standardized literary language, and the vernacular is unknown.

[@yotzap]

The Song of Deborah (Judges) is considered to be one of the most ancient pieces of literature in the bible

[@gda295]

thnx

[@vecvan]

23:29 "And then, Graffiti. Like, there is always graffiti as long as there is writing." Oomph!

[@moodist1er]

@29 if you're saying the population was literate, why isn't there more archeological evidence of their writing?

[@asamanthinketh5944]

Because they didn't wrote on clay tablets

[@travelchannel304]

Whoa!

[@alexduke5402]

How did I get subscribed to this channel?!?

[@user-is6xm8pz8l]

I am a native Hebrew speaker, and even as a child I could read the Bible and understand it (almost completely). Not like ancient and modern persian for example, which aren't intelligible at all (I know modern persian from university).

[@okboomer6201]

Oi! Oi! Oi!

[@vecvan]

1: Biblical Hebrew is the source of all later Hebrew languages. 2: Hebrew is a perfectly natural language like any other Me: Most natural languages are not based on a literary standard and do show dialectal variation at all stages of the development - a criticism sometimes leveled at Proto-Indo-European reconstruction. 3: 2:42 immediately admits that "Biblical is our term and it dominates the study of ancient hebrew to such an extend unlike any other language".

[@travelchannel304]

Berber is a tribe isnt it ? Ethiopians .?

[@ISAC_UChicago]

Berber is a language spoken by groups of people primarily located in northern Africa.

[@travelchannel304]

@@ISAC_UChicago thats where! Ive had friend speak on that.ok.

[@moodist1er]

What evidence is there of any of this outside the Bible, before Rome conquered Palestine?

[@moodist1er]

Not counting the desputed religious archeological translation of the merneptah stele?

[@asamanthinketh5944]

@@moodist1er it's not contested it's now the majority view only minimalist challenge that... We have Assyrian accounts as well And moabite stele

[@paulsmith5035]

The Tel Dan Stele is one from the list provided at the website below. Also a documentary that may answer many questions one may have. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artifacts_in_biblical_archaeology kzbin.info/www/bejne/pJrGeWN5pq6imtk

[@francescampell2640]

There are several incorrect statements in this. Somewhat irritating, given the usual high quality of these videos.

[@philo3936]

Arabic is older than Hebrew linguistically speaking

[@suelingsusu1339]

There is no such thing as Hebrew alphabet... the block letters are Aramaic... the older script is Phoenician ....

[@benavraham4397]

The Jerusalem Talmud in Megilla says that Hebrew is a language without a script, and Assyrian Script is a script without a language. Because Aramaic and Hebrew can be written with either script.

[@suelingsusu1339]

@@benavraham4397 ... Hebrew was a dialect of the Canaanite language and thus as a dialect of the language of the Canaanites it had a script called the Phoenician abjad... the only reason the Bible is written in the Aramaic Abjad is because by the time they wrote it they have already forgotten how to speak it or write it and it was used only as a liturgical language much like Latin is used now in the Vatican.

[@manowar2816]

My opinion is Aramaic coming from Iraq origin my opinion

[@benavraham4397]

Don't you think that the original language of Iraq was Akkadian, and Aramaic began in Syria?

[@davidbarber3821]

So wht about the claim of "paleo-hebrew"? Which I am not a fan of that term