A Review of the book IN THE BEGINNING-A History of the Hebrew Language by Joel M. Hoffman, PhD

I bought this book about the History of the Hebrew Language because I saw that the author was giving a talk about his book in Westchester. Since I couldn’t get to the lecture, I wanted to see what Hoffman had to say. Hoffman, a lecturer on ancient Hebrew at The Hebrew Union College in New York City, is also a philologist, a lover of words.

Although there probably are hundreds of books about this subject, the only remotely similar book I had read previously is one written in 1960, by Edward Horowitz called How the Hebrew Language Grew. I enjoy reading through this older book which discusses Hebrew words grouped about their roots or shorashim. Recently, after starting to write this talk, I also acquired a marvelous book about the history of Hebrew writing by Raphael Posner and Israel Ta-Shema. Although this book is about Hebrew, it does not stress the changes of Hebrew pronunciation over the many years of its spoken and written history, which is Hoffman’s subject. It is out of print.

One of the first things I have to point out is that I cannot elaborate on all the points the author mentioned because this book contains so many ideas that if I go into many of them, my time will run out. Suffice it to say that if anyone enjoys the Hebrew language he will find this book wonderful.

“In the Beginning “, the title of the book, refers, of course, to the first word in the Hebrew Bible, (Bereishit) but this is not where this story begins. It begins in the Middle East in Uruk, over 5,000 years ago, when people began to write on clay tablets showing icons or logographs, that is, symbols of things such as animals, plants, etc., telling a story. Obviously, if someone from someplace else received such a tablet, he would be unable to read its message unless he had learned the code from the originator. Since there were thousands of such symbols it was not easy to learn and probably only members of Scribal families, working for Kings learned and knew them.

Two thousand years later, that is, some three thousand years ago, an unknown scribe decided that there was an easier way. He divided all of his language’s spoken words into syllables and, having analyzed the syllables, he figured that he could use a relatively small number of letters to spell them. He found that he could do this with only 22 letters. The first recorded instance of syllabic writing took place in what we call Sumer or in the Bible, Shinar. Sumerian writing was done with a stylus on soft clay, making triangular letters. This type of writing was called Cuneiform. In an area north of Sumer, the Akkadians, a neighboring people, adapted the original Sumerian cuneiform into their own similar letter shapes. Some scholars believe that the Egyptians may have developed their hieroglyphics from this Sumerian language although this is not a certainty.

Mr. Hoffman mentions many places and times and does not always keep these in chronological order. In order to keep them straight, I have made up a separate time line chart that covers these times, places and activities. My chart shows the items mentioned . I will go into more detail about the most important of these. Please look at the Time Line Chart attached.

After Sumer, evidence exists of three separate, purely syllabic languages from early recorded periods. These are called Linear A, from about 1800 BCE; Linear B from about 1450 and the Cypriot Syllabary, from the middle of the eleventh century (about 1150). These appear to be wholly syllabic as opposed to Sumerian and Akkadian, which consisted of a combination of logographs and some syllables. None of these was used widely in the Middle East.

By 1000 BCE , there is evidence of Phoenician writing, using 22 letters written using a consonantal script. That is, all of the letters represented consonants. There were no vowels. The Phoenicians, living in what is now Lebanon, north of current Beirut along the Mediterranean, left many scraps of writing mostly near the city of Byblos, north of Tyre. It is possible that the Phoenician letters were used to portray a language very similar to Hebrew . Since it is far easier to teach 22 letters than to teach thousands of symbols, many more people were now able to learn to read.

Several similar languages grouped together in this area known as the Canaanite Language Group, came into being at this time. Canaan was an area encompassing today’s Israel, Lebanon and Syria and parts of Jordan.

In the early 10th Century BCE at Tel Gezer in Northern Israel, a piece of limestone was found that had Hebrew like letters consisted of a series of statements starting with the letters Y R W H followed by words representing harvest, sowing, pasture, cutting flax, reaping crops, etc. Linguists think that “ yrhw” means “his season for” doing the agricultural activities that followed. YRH means “ season” and linguists believe the suffix, the final “w”, signifies “my.”

Sometime along about 900 BCE, a group of Hebrew scribes made a major innovation. They gave a double use for three of their regular consonantal letters, YUD, HEH, and VOV. Depending on their location in the words, they became vowels. Since we are talking about events of almost three thousand years ago we are not certain of the actual vocal equivalents of the sounds as compared to today’s vowels. However, language specialists figure that the Yud was the equivalent of either the Y in happy or the Y in day. We believe that Heh was equivalent to A, as in Ahh, and the Vov equivalent to U and/or possibly O. Very quickly, this usage became the standard Hebrew writing.

In Moab, a country north of Israel, a country that the Bible advises was an constant enemy of Israel, a stone was found with writing on it telling a story in letters similar to Hebrew, reading: “I am Mesha, ….the king of Moab, …. and I defeated the Israelites, etc. …” On this stone, the four letter name of God, YHVH, is used. This letter combination, YHVH, is a creation only of the Hebrews. We will talk more about this later, but because of this use, it was obvious that the Moabites were familiar with Hebrew as written in Canaan by the Israelites.

When it was found, there was such a huge amount of interest in this stone that the Arab who had it did not understand its true value but thought it was very lucky and so he put it in a fire and then poured cold water on it causing to break up into hundreds of pieces which he was going to sell for good luck. It was only because someone had thought to make a pressing of the stone that we are able to reproduce its complete message.

Linguists believe that vowels were developed when it became necessary for common people to read and write. When a prayer from your God commands that you (speaking to the people)” must write these words on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (the Ahavtah) you had better be able to read and write the words.

At about this same time, in Greece they also developed an alphabet based on modified Hebrew letters but they were wise enough to create separate vowel letters. Using shapes similar to the Greek, the Romans developed their own alphabet also using separate vowels letters.

I mentioned before that the Jews introduced Yud, Heh, and Vov as vowels. Once they had these wonderful letters they also used them to make older words into new and better ones. One of these cases is the changing of the names of our Patriarch and Matriarch, originally Avram and Sarai into Abraham, with an H and Sara with a H at the end of her name. The addition of this letter H apparently made them into Hebrews. A similar instance occurred with the word for God. Originally, we used, as our name for our God, the singular El and the plural Elim. These same words were used in many other Semitic languages. At the same time. when He became our God, we added our magical Heh to the name and the word changed from Elim into Elohim. When we say the Shema, maybe we are saying The Eternal, our God, His name although plural, is one.

Hoffman believes that the consonants chosen to be vowels. Yud, Heh, and Vov, were believed to be magical, so that when they wanted to create a magical and special name for God, they chose these same letters, Yud Heh Vov Heh. (The Tetragrammaton) Note that the extra special letter Heh is used twice. (including the one on the end of the word)

On one of our trips to Israel, I bought a chart of the various Semitic Languages from the Israel Museum. You will note from this chart that the older forms of Hebrew have a different appearance from the modern ones. These older forms were those about which I spoke about in the Phoenician era. The modern Hebrew letters are called square script. The older original Hebrew script style continued in used until about 400/500 B C E. In some of the Dead Sea Scrolls the older letters were used for the form Y H V H, even though all the rest of the text used the square script, showing the special importance of this name by the writers. Elohim, apparently not so important a name for God, as is Y H V H, was written in the square script.

In about 800, several family groups decided that even with the above three vowel letters, Hebrew was still too hard to read, especially for non-Hebrews readers. One of these families, as a group called Masoretes, the Ben Ashers from Tiberias developed a group of 15 diacritical marks to be added to Hebrew letters that would give very specific vowel sounds, immeasurably improving the ability of the common people to read. These are basically the same marks and the same sounds as the diacritical marks in use in today’s Hebrew. We have to remember that since this activity took place almost 3,000 years ago, we can’t be certain of the pronunciation of the vowels at that time. If you are not already able to read these vowels , I would like to suggest enrolment in the next Basic Hebrew class you see.

Other than the marks indicating vowel sounds, there were two additional marks used. In Hebrew, there are six letters that are pronounced differently depending on the inclusion or exclusion of a dot within them called a dagesh. These six letters, Bet, Gimmel, Dalet, -Kaf, Fey and Taf are called the Beged Kefet letters. Although the Masorete placement of the dagesh was originally different than current use, we’ll discuss current usage because it is more useful. With the dagesh (dot) these six letters have a hard pronunciation and without them the pronunciation is soft. For example, with the dot, the Bet is pronounced as a Bet and without it is pronounced as a Vet. In current usage, the Gimmel and Taf only have the hard sound.

Another important non-vowel mark was the Sheva: two vertical dots used under each of several letters. At times, the inclusion of the Sheva calls for its letter to be doubled. The dagesh is sometimes also used for letter doubling. These important features are especially useful when Hebrew is to be translated into other languages. Books have been written about the Masoretes and how they changed spoken Hebrew. Not only were their marks used for vowel soundings but also for accents and for the melodies or trope used when the Torah text was recited or sung. Other groups living in Babylonia and other parts of Palestine had competitive systems. Each competitive group actually rewrote the Bible (roughly 500,000 words) by hand, using their own system. Ben Asher’s group was the winner of the competition and basically we use their system today.

Two very old Masoretic documents exist today. The first of these is the Leningrad Codex. This is the oldest surviving, complete copy of the Hebrew Bible and it resides in the Russian National Library in Leningrad, today’s St. Petersburg. It dates from about 1509 C.E. Another very old (1524 C E) document, considered by some authorities to be more accurate than the Leningrad Codex, is the Venice Edition. Hoffman mentions several other old Bibles, each of which has its adherents. Interestingly, there are variations in the order and texts of the books in some of these old editions.

Hoffman opines that even though Masoretic Hebrew is now accepted as the official way we should pronounce the language today, there are no real clues as to how Biblical Hebrew was really pronounced. We have no vocal records of people speaking the dialect of three thousand years ago. There were people actually speaking Biblical Hebrew up until about 200 CE. After that, no speakers used it as a vernacular language for 1,700 years.

A good way for us to begin to understand how this language might have actually been spoken is to compare it to other languages that have been continuously spoken, if they exist. One such language is Greek. Fortunately for us, we do have an early translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. In about the year 247 B C E, the story goes that Ptolemy Philadelphus put 72 bilingual Hebrew and Greek speaking scholars together on the island of Pharos for 72 days assigning them to translate the Bible and in this time each separately made a complete translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Each scholar worked separately and it is said that at the end, the work of each one was exactly like that of the others. This work is commonly called the Septuagint, Greek for seventy. This is frequently referred to as LXX, Roman Numerals for 70.

Theoretically, the names of people and places would sound the same in both languages. Looking at them, we can make a comparison with the Greek and the Masoretic versions of the names and places to see how the Masoretes did. As examples, Hoffman uses the names Adam and Eve. In Hebrew, Adam is spelled Alef, Dalet and Mem. ; Adam. The Alef is not used in Greek., probably because it was then an almost silent sound but Adam is still transliterated as Alpha, Delta and Mu, Adam. Eve in Hebrew is Chava. There is no Chet (the first letter in Chava) in Greek so they omitted this first letter and came up with Eva. These are not the way the Masoretes pronounced them so we have a divergence. There are some words that are the same and many that are not. One interesting name is Rivka. The Greeks hardened the Vov, making it a “B” and doubled the Kaf making the name Rebekka. Probably the doubled K was because Rivka had a dagesh in the Kaf. Hoffman uses many other examples showing differences.

Hoffman cites other Greek works for comparison but an even more important and much more recent finding is the last example I am going to mention. It is the finding, translation and study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1947, an Arab goatherd, followed a missing goat into a cave in the hills of the Jordanian desert. He found the goat and also found three ancient pots with scrolls in them. Subsequent visits to the cave brought fourth four more potted scrolls. Many more scrolls made of leather, paper and copper were found in nearby caves. Political activity restricted the use of these scrolls for many years but eventually they have all been made available to scholars of all countries. Many of them are now housed at the Israel Museum in a special building called The Shrine of the Book. The building is shaped like the pots in which the scrolls were found. It is believed that the caves were inhabited by a sect of ascetic antiestablishmentarian Jews, who wrote some of these scrolls and collected others, over a 300 to 400 year period ranging from 300 BCE to 100 CE. They probably were the sect known as Essenes. Scholars recognized two of the scrolls to be the Book of Isaiah. This complete book, written possibly in 200 BCE is over 1,000 years older than the Leningrad Codex, which you will remember is a Masoretic text. (MT) Over the years many different scrolls were found . Finally, 50 years after the original finding, all scrolls are translated into English, published and available to the World’s scholars and the public.

The contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls is varied. Some of them include copies of the Psalms in the Biblical Book of Psalms. In the Book of Psalms, 150 Psalms were canonized and included in the Bible. In the Qumran scrolls there were many Psalms similar to those canonized but not included in the Bible. There were others that were books known about but whose actual content had never previously been seen. Because of their age, we have to agree that any Qumran writing is more authentic than texts discovered a thousand years later, even though canonized. In many cases, the DSS as the Dead Sea Scrolls are abbreviated, are textually different from the Canonized ones. The Hebrew in the DSS has a specific style called Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew and many of the words are spelled differently. In Biblical Hebrew, David is spelled Dalet Vov Dalet. We are not positive if the Vov here is a vowel, either a U or an O, say pronounced Dohd or Dewd, or as V using a Vee sound, as we say “David”. In the DSS, David is spelled Dalet, Vov, Yud, Dalet. Probably this fuller spelling did have the David pronunciation that we know. There are also some additional words in DSS that are not in the Canonized texts, phrases and fewer words in others. Whether our Bibles will ever be changed to reflect these differences, we will have to wait and see. (probably not )

Hoffman, continues his discussions into Talmudic Hebrew as well as the Hebrew spoken in Israel today. His comments are both general and detailed. I know that books about the Hebrew language are too esoteric to win Pulitzer prizes but I for one loved the book and recommend it completely to anyone who has any interest in our Hebrew Language.

Review by J Fibel, June 2005