LANGUAGE.) It is also noteworthy that the punctuation often exhibits a later i or e where the Septuagint preserves an a which comparative philology proves to be original. Yet caution is neces sary; for the alphabet into which a word is being transcribed may not possess any means of representing the necessary sound; for example, the Assyrian transcription Ausi' and Usi' for "Hoshea" (Hebr. Fleshed') does not imply any different pronunciation,' since Assyrian had no signs for h, o and e; the Greek Oo-ne, as far as it can, here confirms tradition. In fact, although the Masor etic vocalization might sometimes be wrong, internal reasons as well as the analogy of the cognate languages testify to the general faithfulness of the tradition. At the same recension, or soon afterwards, other signs, such as a complicated system of accents, different in the prose-works and the poetical books were added. There are now two pronunciations of Hebrew current, viz., the Polish and German, which partly resembles that of Syriac, and the Spanish and Portuguese, which approaches that of Arabic ; Christians, after Reuchlin, generally prefer the latter to the former.
In development Hebrew was later in many respects even than classical Arabic, which hardly began till several centuries after Hebrew had ceased to be spoken. Classical Arabic, like early Babylonian, had case-endings (sing. nom. -u, acc. -a, gen. -i). Of these there are traces of a nom. -u (or -o), found only with a following genitive case, in the Calendar found at Gezer in which yarhu stands besides yerah, "month," and sporadically in the Old Testament in names like "Methushael" (Hebr. Methusha'el, cf. Bab. mutu she ili, "man of God") and in certain phrases like hayetho (for hayyath) 'eres, "beasts of the earth." The acc. -ah survived as an adverbial ending, chiefly denoting place and time; otherwise it had no force, as in laylah (for layil) , "night" (cf.
vbKTa for , vv in Romaic) . No genitive ending is found in Hebrew; for the termination -i, sometimes attached to nouns governing the genitive case, was probably a binding vowel, like the -i of early Babylonian. The plur. -Im and du. -aim were properly acc. endings, as Babylonian (plur., nom. -u and acc.-gen. -i; du. nom. -an and acc.-gen. -en) and Arabic (plur., nom. -iota and acc.-gen. -Ina; du. nom. -ana and acc.-gen. -aina) show. The Canaanite glosses sliamuma and shamema (cf. Hebr. shgmaim) , "heaven," show two plural cases ; of these the alternative forms of the name "Penuel" (Hebr. Penu'el) and "Peniel" (Hebr. Penf'el), "face of God," of which the plur. panim (cf. Bab. Ass. panu), "face," is an element, were the sole surviving trace in Hebrew. The earliest Hebrew, then, was on a level with modern Arabic or Greek; for the accusative had become the only case.
Classical Hebrew construction was almost exclusively paratac tic, subordinate conjunctions being extremely rare. In pre-exilic writings many verses and even whole chapters can be found, exhibiting no conjunction other than u- or we-, "and." Yet there is no monotony ; for extraordinary skill is displayed in varying the tenses and the order of the words, often with good effect ; e.g., Hebrew says graphically "this do and live" for the ordinary English "if you do this, you will live." Further relief was pro vided by "waw-consecutive," a construction almost confined to biblical Hebrew ; elsewhere it is found only in one Moabite and one Aramaic inscription, and died out before Mishnaic Hebrew arose. This construction was the normal method of connecting each fresh verb in the narration of a series of events with the preceding clause. Hebrew tenses involved no relations to actions as past or future but only as complete or incomplete : by it, therefore, in past time only the first verb stood in the perfect and the narration was continued in the imperfect ; in present or future time, the first verb stood in the imperfect and the subsequent verbs in the perfect. This progress in the sequence of time was indicated by a variety of the ordinary conjunction we- or is "and," which either had a heavier vocalization or altered the accent of the verb ; for example, hala'khta wat-tiqtol meant "thou hast gone and killed"; similarly, telekh we-qataltd meant "thou wilt go and kill." In the first the imperfect represented the action as emergent ; accordingly, when combined with a conjunction con necting the event introduced by it with a point already reached by the narrative, it represented it as the development of the part which preceded it ; thus, wat-tiqtol meant "and thou wentest on to kill," while we-tiqtol is simply "and thou wilt kill." In the second the perfect we-qatalta' meant "so thou hast killed," the possible occurrence of the event being confined to a particular area previously implied or defined, whereas the simple perfect we-qata'ltd would mean unconditionally "and thou hast killed." The various uses of this construction afford a relief to the monot ony of a long string of clauses co-ordinated rather than subordi nated to one another. But this idiom began, under Aramaic influ ence after the exile, to die out, and the simpler constructions, like lidlakhta we-qata'lta, "thou hast gone and killed," and telekh we tiqtol, "thou shalt go and kill," become a mark of later Hebrew. The participle also in all periods was freely used to eke out the inadequacy of these two tenses. Another device was the "circum stantial clause," whereby a clause introduced by "and" served as a secondary predicate; e.g., the Hebrew said "he found him (and) he ploughing" instead of "he found him ploughing," using the participle and not a finite verb in a parallel, in place of a sub ordinate, clause.
The material for forming a judgment on Hebrew is itself scanty and inadequate. Even so, the smallness of the vocabulary and the paucity of adverbs, adjectives and abstract nouns are noticeable. The first difficulty was obviated by prepositional phrases, auxiliary verbs and similar devices, the second by ap position or a descriptive genitive case. The lack of abstract nouns, which only became frequent after the exile, was circum vented by the feminine singular or plural adjective; thus ratan (fem. sing.) stands for "wickedness" and qashoth (fem. plur.) , "harsh things," for "harshness." Another feature was the expres sion of the abstract under a concrete form ; thus kabliedh, "was heavy," meant also "was honourable," and from it both kabhedh, "liver" (as the "heavy" organ), and kdbhodh, "abundance" and "honour," were both derived. It is, on the contrary, a sign of lateness when an abstract noun like modha`, "acquaintance," designated a concrete person.
Hebrew was less suited for the definite expression of studied thought and the treatment of abstract subjects than for poetry. There was a great lack of particles to express the more subtle connection of ideas; there were few words or inflexions to indicate slight modifications of meaning, although possibly Hebrew, like other Semitic languages, formerly distinguished verbal moods in a way now obscured by the Masoretes. The use of the tenses was largely determined, especially in poetry, by the imagination, which regarded things unaccomplished as accomplished, the past as present and the future as fulfilled. It must, however, be remembered that living Hebrew never had to express abstract ideas; Ecclesiastes, which alone grappled with an abstract subject in plain prose, was composed when Hebrew was already dying out.
In prose, especially of the pre-exilic period, considerable dif ferences of form and style can be detected, due partly to the time and place of composition, partly to the individuality and talent of the authors. Through them especially the various docu ments woven into the text can be disentangled. Yet the structure and, except in isolated cases, the vocabulary and phraseology, were much the same. The post-exilic literature shows a con stantly closer approximation of the language to the cognate Western Aramaic idiom. The process was very gradual; for literary Hebrew was still understood, if not spoken, by the people at least in the znd century B.C. ; and its extensive use in popular religious literature, partly preserved in the liturgy and elsewhere, proves that it was not entirely forgotten even in the 3rd century A.D. The poetical language employed peculiar words and meanings, forms especially of prepositions and pronominal suffixes, inflexions and constructions ; but these distinctions were not so marked as in Greek. Many of them, being found in ordinary use in the cog nate languages, notably in Aramaic, were often probably archa isms from the common Semitic vocabulary, surviving in Hebrew only in poetry; for example, the late and poetical kethem, "gold," has now been found in Canaanite. In other cases, possibly, Hebrew poets deliberately embellished their language with Aramaisms; for there is evidence that Aramaic was known to educated He brews in the latter part of the 8th century B.C. Apart from Arama isms, there was a definite poetical vocabulary ; for example, 'oraji for derekh, "way." There was, particularly, a tendency to sub stitute adjectives for nouns; for example, lebhanali, "the white one," for yareah, "moon." The article and 'eth, the sign of the ac cusative, were frequently omitted ; the relative particle was freely dropped ; the shortened imperfect was more widely employed ; the governing power of prepositions was extended ; the greater scope allowed to the imagination in the use of the tenses frequently obscures the sequence of events to a Western reader ; and a force ful brevity of expression was affected. Poetry was accentual and was distinguished from prose by rhythm and parallelism. The poetical instinct was seemingly satisfied by lines of approximately the same length, combined normally into groups of two, three or four lines and constituting verses which marked more distinct pauses in the thought than the separate lines. The line normally consisted of seven or eight syllables, but there was apparently no rule on the subject; when it was longer than seven or eight syllables, a caesura commonly divided it into halves, each of so many beats. The fundamental form of the verse was the two lined couplet, of which the second either repeated or re-enforced or completed the thought of the first. These couplets exempli fied the main principle of Hebrew poetry, the parallelism of two roughly equal clauses, of which the second answered or completed the first. This might be synonymous, in which the second re peated the thought of the first line ; antithetic, in which the thought of the one was contrasted with that of the other line ; constructive, in which the second supplemented the thought of the first line; or climactic, in which the second line took up words from and completed the first line, which was incomplete. The poets sometimes grouped their verses into stanzas, marking the close by a refrain; but the number of verses in a stanza was never, according to the Masoretic text, more than approximately uniform in any poem. The qinah, "elegiac rhythm," in which the line consisted of two members, the first containing one beat more than the second, exhibited the clearest scheme. Rhyme was as accidental as in classical Greek or Latin poetry; but both rhyme and quantitative metre were introduced, after the Arabic model, by mediaeval poets, who combined them with the vocabulary and idiom, as far as possible, of the earlier language.
At first foreign words were rare. There are occasional Egyptian words like 'ahu (Eg. 'hw), "reeds," and qesetli (Eg. gsty), "ink horn," and Assyrian words like se'on (Ass. shenu), "boot," learnt probably from invading soldiers. The Babylonian puru, "lot," was introduced in the plural purirn, "lots," to designate a post exilic feast. Persian words also, like dath (Pers. data), "law," came in. But late Aramaic, as closely resembling Hebrew, exerted, especially after the exile, an ever-increasing influence. Aramaic words and forms appeared : the Hebr. -ah began to be displaced by the Aram. -d in feminine nouns, and the Hebr. dabhar to yield to the Aram. milletha' in the rieoraized form millah, "word," which even has two plur. forms (Hebr. millim and Aram. millin) in the same book. Hebrew words were sometimes Aramaized in form, as when the Hebr. nasar became natar like the Aram. netar, "kept," or in meaning, as when the Hebr. ta`ain, "taste," came to mean "decree" like the Aram. teem (cf. Ass. !emu), "command." Abstract nouns in -uth, like malkhuth, "kingdom," became common and are even formed from infinitives, like hashmatiith, "proclaim ing," on the Aramaic model. The pronominal suffixes were weak ened, so that such an Aramaism as karmi shelli, "my vineyard which is to me," tended to oust the simple Hebrew karmi, "my vineyard." The classical 'asher, "who, which," lingered chiefly in combinations based on the old literary language, while the dia lectical she- on the analogy of the Aramaic de- displaced it in those derived from the popular Aramaic.
This post-exilic Hebrew showed also great simplicity and uni formity of style, again largely due to Aramaic influence. For some centuries the Jews must have been bilingual, still understanding Hebrew but speaking Aramaic, the official language of the west ern provinces of the Persian empire; by the time of Christ, how ever, Aramaic versions of the Scriptures, called targumim, were becoming necessary. Meanwhile Hebrew, without dying out, be came gradually a leshon hakhamim, "language of scholars," as indeed it had begun to be in the later Scriptures. Roughly from Doc) B.c. to A.D. i oo little is known of it ; but after that was greatly developed in the Mishnah (c. A.D. 200). It was a living language, though mainly confined to the schools and clearly distinct from Biblical Hebrew. In the Scriptures the range of subjects was limited; in the Mishnah it was much extended. Mat ters of daily life were minutely discussed and words and phrases were adopted from the earlier and presumably popular speech; further, since the language was no longer in the samesense familiar, greater definiteness of expression was required in the written style.
The first alteration noticeable was the confusion of consonants, especially of the gutturals, which classical Hebrew had kept dis tinct. This change shows that the writers were accustomed to the daily use of Aramaic. Greek and Latin words, relating to the affairs of ordinary life, for whose writing the rules of classical orthography were violated, crept in. For example, biblical He brew almost universally required that initial w should become y, as in yeledli for the very rare waladh (cf. Arab. waladu), "boy"; but barbarisms like wethas (Gr. ebObs), "at once," and wilon (Lat. velum), "curtain," were admitted, and henceforward the objection to forms like wa'ad (B. Hebr. mo`ed), "meeting," was less strongly felt.
Biblical Hebrew, having lost the case-endings, used 'eth to mark the definite accusative case ; but Mishnaic Hebrew employed 'eth not only to introduce the direct object, but also to serve alone as a definite article or, with a pronominal suffix, as a pro noun meaning "that" or "the same." Fresh pronouns, too, were coined by combining those already existing into compound forms or by adopting or adapting many from Aramaic. New adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions, especially subordinating conjunc tions, were freely invented or imported from Aramaic.
The vocabulary was greatly enriched. Many biblical words remained, although some nouns changed their meaning; thus B. Hebr. golem, "embryo," became the M. Hebr. golem, "lump," "mass." New nouns were coined from biblical roots; so beside the B. Hebr. /zemedh, "desire," there arose the M. Hebr. himmfidh, "desire," from hamadh, "desired." Especially noticeable are the numerous quadriliteral and quinqueliteral formations, which were rare in biblical Hebrew. Lastly, good Hebrew words appear which, though unknown in the Scriptures, must have belonged to the old spoken language. Beside the numerous Greek and Latin words, a few Persian (or Arabic) words crept in. These generally retained their original appearance, while one Greek word passed over in the genitive case (M. Hebr. 'andri'antos = Gr. av5peavros, from avtpcas, "statue") ; only rarely were they furnished with He brew terminations. The inflection of nouns remained unchanged; but many masculine nouns acquired feminine endings, and the Aramaic masculine plural ending -in was much commoner than the Hebrew -im, although the Hebrew feminine ending -oth was regularly retained. Finally, the "construct state," whereby a noun governing a genitive case undergoes phonetic modification, survived sporadically; but a periphrasis with shel ("which is to"), "of," the preposition le-, "to," or the Aram. de-, "of," tended to displace it. This relative particle she-, which be longed to dialect in biblical Hebrew, completely ousted the classi cal 'dsher, "who," "which," from Mishnaic Hebrew.
The supply of verbs also was much enlarged. Foreign verbs, be ing ill suited to the Hebrew conjugations, were rarely adopted, but a few were formed from nouns; e.g., saphagh, "absorbed," from sephcgh (Gr. oiroyryos), "sponge." The imperatives kiri (written =Gr. Xaipe) "hail!" and wiwi (written '1'1 =Lat. vine), "live," are exceptions. But Aramaic verbs, which closely re sembled Hebrew verbs, were readily assimilated, while some classi cal verbs received new meanings; e.g., zakhah, "was innocent," acquired the sense of "succeeded." Others, used originally in the simple theme, afterwards affected a derived theme. Many roots known only from derived nouns or quite unknown in biblical He brew, became general. Additional verbs were coined from deriva tive nouns; e.g., taram, "exacted the heave-offering" (B. Hebr. terumah) and mishken, "took a pledge" (M. Hebr. mishkon), "pledge." Quadriliteral and quinqueliteral verbs, rare in biblical Hebrew, became common. The conjugations remained substan tially unchanged ; but the third person feminine singular took -eth (-atli) in place of -ah in the reflexive theme. Certain weak verbs also deviated slightly from the classical norm.
The themes underwent some slight changes. Canaanite had marked the active and passive voices by modifying the vowel (cf. laqalzu, "they took," but laqihu, "they were taken") and biblical Hebrew sporadically preserved this difference between transitive and intransitive verbs (cf. between zakhar, "remem bered," and sliaklien, "dwelt"). Of an internally formed passive the only certain survival is the participle; e.g., zakhur, "remem bered." Other traces are probably concealed under certain forms which the Masoretes obscured. In its place, biblical Hebrew used the passives of the derived themes. These (according to the paradigm of pa`al, "did") were the reflexive niph`al, the intensive and causative pi`el, the causative hipleil and the reflexive hithpa`el. The niph`al easily acquired a passive force ; the pu`al, less often the hoph`al (the passives of the pal and hiph`il respectively), were often also so used. But in later Hebrew the nipli`al and even more the hop/ea/ tended, owing to ambiguity in their meanings, to become less frequent, whereas the liithpa`el became extremely common, both with a reflexive and less often with a passive force. Simultaneously a new form, the nithpa`el, of which biblical He brew offers but three examples, became extremely common with a purely passive sense. Of the active themes the pi`el served ex tensively in forming new verbs from nouns and replacing the simple theme customary with many classical verbs and the hipheil somewhat extended its usage. An Aramaic causative theme, formed by prefixing sha- or sa-, instead of hi-, was not un known.
The old tense-system was inadequate, and the loss of "wdw consecutive" made it even more inadequate. The perfect ex pressed only completed action in past time ; and more than the old imperfect was required for incomplete action in the past, pres ent and future. Various periphrases were therefore devised. Past incomplete action was denoted by the verb hayah, "was," with the participle; e.g., hayah 'Omer, "he was saying," was distinguished from 'amar, "he said," while the imperfect yomer was left with a jussive force, meaning "he should say." The present participle alone connoted present time; but a pronominal subject, being no longer implicit or explicit in inflection, had to be expressed; e.g., 'ani 'Omer or 'timer 'dni, "I say." This gave rise to a completely new Aramaizing tense, formed by combining the participle with the following pronouns; for example, 'omerani, "I say." The fu ture was expressed by the adjective `athidh, "ready," or the noun soph, "end," with a pronominal suffix referring to the subject, followed by the infinitive introduced by le-, "to"; e.g., 'ani `athidh lomar, "I am ready to say," or sophi lomar, "my end (is) to say," viz., "I will say" ; or by le- and the infinitive alone, as sometimes in biblical Hebrew, denoting rather what ought than what will happen; e.g.,'ani lomar, "I am to say." To express obligation, for which biblical Hebrew had no regular phrases, Mishnaic Hebrew used the adjective sdrikh, "needed," with the infinitive; e.g., 'ani sarikh lomar, "I must say." Thus Hebrew, with its archaic stiffness, lost also the austere beauty and stately dignity of its prime. In exchange it acquired simplicity and flexibility and adapted itself better to the needs of every day, though the disappearance of much that is character istically Hebrew before the invasion of Aramaic cannot but be regretted. Hebrew still lives as the language of Jewish scholars, though coloured in varying degrees with the writer's own speech, whether Persian, Arabic, French, German or whatever it may be. The structure is Hebrew; the vocabulary is often very foreign. This must be increasingly so; for ancient Hebrew is ill adapted to modern needs. As mediaeval grammar and philosophy de manded Arabic terms, so modern science requires European terms, often borrowed through Arabic. (See YIDDISH.) (G. R. D.)