3. THE HEBREW LANGUAGE. Origin and Name.— Hebrew is the language of the ancient Hebrew nation. It is a Semitic lan guage, that is to say, one of the great group of languages spoken in antiquity and to a great ex tent in modern times also, in southwestern Asia and contiguous regions by the nations de scended, according to the account given in Gen. x, 21-31, from Shem, the son of Noah.* The Semitic tongues are divided into four great divisions or branches, the South Semitic or Arabic, the Middle Semitic or Canaanitic, the North Semitic or Aramaic and the East Sem itic or Assyrio-Babylonian. The Hebrew be longs to the second or Canaanitic branch and has, as its sister dialects, the Canaanitic tongues, the Phoenician of the coast cities and the Punic of Carthage and its colonies. The name He brew language does not appear to have been its original designation. In Isaiah xix, 18, it is called "the language of Canaan* and in 2 Kings xviii, 28, Isaiah xxxvi, 11, 13, Neh. xiii, 24, it is called *Judean° or "Jewish.* In the Tal mud it is called "the language of the sanctuary* (Sank. 21 b. et-alia). By modern writers it is called "the language of Eber* or °Hebrew.* # Old Testament Hebrew.— With the excep tion of parts of Daniel, Ezra and one verse in Jeremiah, Chap. x, vii, the entire Old Testament is written in Hebrew. Considering the long pe riod of time over which the composition of the Biblical books extends one would naturally ex pect great variations in their linguistic and !grammatical forms. As a matter of fact there is a most surprising uniformity and homogene ity. The Hebrew of the earliest is practically identical with that of the latest books. The probable reason of this is that in the Biblical writings we have the literary idiom, which is fixed, as distinguished from the spoken lan :siage, which undoubtedly varied greatly in dif ferent times and regions. The fact that the Biblical books were revered as sacred also un doubtedly contributed to this uniformity of dic tion. However, a progressive variation, due to historic influences, is clearly discernible also in the Biblical Hebrew. The language tends con stantly to become Ararnaized. The earlier writ ings are purest in their language, the later writings contain many Aramaic nouns, verbs and terms of expression. Such books as Ec
clesiastes and the Song of Songs are closely approximate in their language to the Mish nah Hebrew. Job shows a strong Arabic influence.
Other Sources of Hebrew.— Outside of the Bible the ancient Hebrew is only preserved in some few inscriptions. These are chiefly the celebrated Mesa stone, an inscription found in 1880 near the Pool of Siloam at Jerusalem and the coins of the Maccabean princes and of the revolts against Vespasian and Hadrian.
Grammatical Structure.— The Hebrew, in its grammatical structure, exhibits in general the characteristics of the Semitic family of lan guages, which differs greatly from the Indo Germanic, its most prominent neighbor. Its most striking characteristic is its root-system. All the parts of speech are derived from roots or word-stems which are almost invariably tri literal. Modifications, such as conjugation in verbs and declension in nouns, are indicated generally by internal or vowel changes. The verb has but two tenses, the uses of which vary in accordance with peculiar rules. The noun has only two genders, masculine and feminine, and no direct method of indicating case rela tions for which purpose pronominal prefixes are usually employed. Possessive pronouns and pronominal objects of the verbs are indi cated by suffixes. Compound nouns are almost unknown, except in proper nouns. The syntax is extremely simple and direct co-ordination of clauses, without periodic construction, is the rule. These facts would seem to indicate pov erty and lack of development in Hebraic ex pression. But it rather indicates directness of grasp of ideas which are presented with the pic turesque clearness of word-photography, rather than in'the vagueness of involved relationships. This is strikingly exemplified by the Vav con versive or consecutive, as it is termed by mod ern grammarians. This peculiar usage of the conjunction, unknown in the other Semitic tongues, enables the Hebrew to pictur, the se quence of events, past or future, with a clear ness and directness of connection impossible in other languages. Another example of the real istic directness of Hebrew speech is the fact that in it the so-called ratio obliqua or indirect discourse is unknown. All quotations are made in the very words of the speaker.