HEBREW LANGUAGE (he'bru lan'gwAj).
The Hebrew language is that which was the notional idiom of those descendants of Eber which received the distinctive name of the People of Israel, and, as such, was that in which all the books of the Old Tcstament (with the exception of the few Chaldee pas:r.ages occurring in those after the Babylonian captivity) were originally composed.
(1) Semitic. It belongs to the Semitic, or, as it is more appropriately called, the Syro-Arabian family of languages ; and it occupies a central point amidst a:I the branches of this family, as well-with reference to the geographical position of che country in which it prevailed, as with refer ence to the degree of development to which it at tained.
(2) Jewish. If we except the terms `lip or language of Canaan,' in Is. xix :18, the only name by which the Hebrew language is mentioned in the Old Testament is ' Jewish yeh-hoo-deeth' used adverbially, Judaic, in Jewish (2 Kings xviii:26, 28; Is. xxxvi:11, 13).
In a strict sense, however, 'Jewish' denotes thc idiom of the kingdom of Judah, which became the predominant one after the deportation of the ten tribes. It is in the Greek writings of the later Jews that 'Hebrew' is first applied to the language, as in the i-Oparcrri, in the Hebrew language, of the prologue to Ecelesiasticus, and in the 7XcBccra reZIP 'El3palcuP, language of the Hebrews, of Josephus.
The best evidences which we possess as to the form of the Hebrew language, prior to its first historical period, tend to show that Abraham, on his entrance into Canaan, found the language then prevailing among almost all the different tribes inhabiting that country to be at least dialectically in affinity with his own. This is gathered from the following facts : that nearly all the names of places and persons relating to those tribes admit of Hebrew etymologies ; that, amidst all the accounts of the intercourse of the Hebrews with the nations of Canaan; we find no hint of a diversity of idiom; and that even the comparatively recent remains of the Phccnician and Punic languages bear a manifest affinity to the Hebrew.
(3) History Preceding the Exile. The his tory of the Hebrew language, as far as we can trace its course by the changes in the diction of the documents in which it is preserved, may be here conveniently divided into that of the period preceding, and that of the period succeed ing, the Exile If it be a matter of surprisc that the thousand years which intervened between Moses and the Captivity should not have produced sufficient change in the language to warrant its history during that time being distributed into subordinate divisions, the following considerations may excuse this arrangement. It is one of the sig
nal characteristics of the Hebrew language, as seen in all the books prior to the Exile, that not withstanding the existence of some isolated, but important, archaisms, such as in the form of the pronoun, etc. (the best collection of which may be seen in Havernick, Einleit., p. 183, sq.), it pre serves an unparalleled general uniformity of structure. The extent to which this uniformity prevails may be estimated, either by the fact that it has furnished many modern scholars, who rea son from the analogies discovered in the changes in other languages in a given period, with an ar gument to show that the Pentateuch could not have been written at so remote a date as is gener ally believed (Gesenius, Geseh. der Hebr. Sprache, sec. 8) ; or, by the conclusion, a fortiori, which Havernick, whose express object it is to vindicate its received antiquity, candidly concedes that 'the books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah are the earliest in which the language differs sensibly from that in the historical portions of the Pentateuch' (Einicit. p. 18o).
In the canonical books belonging to the first period, the Hebrew language appears in a state of mature development. Although it still preserves the charms of freshness and simplicity, yet it has attained great regularity of formation, and such a precision of syntactical arrangement as ensures both energy and distinctness.
(4) Second Period. The Babylonian captiv ity assigned as the commencement of that cline and corruption which mark the second pe riod in the history of the Hebrew language; but the Assyrian deportation of the ten tribes, in the year B. C. 720, was probably the first means of bringing the Aramaic idiom into injurious prox imity to it. The Exile, however. forms the epoch at which the language shows evident signs of that encroachment of the Aramaic on its integrity, which afterwards ended in its complete extinc tion. The diction of the different books of this period discovers various grades of this Aramaic influence ; and in some cases approaches so nearly to the type of the first period, that it has been ascribed to mere imitation.