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Hebrew is a Semitic language. The word Semitic comes from the name Shem, named in Genesis as the son of Noah, whose descendants now live in the Middle East. Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic are examples of Semitic languages, which have several characteristics, such as a consonantal system with three-letter word roots to connote meaning.
The Aramaic and Hebrew alphabets, as Greek, were derived from the Phoenician alphabet. Phoenicia (now Lebanon) was a peaceful sea-faring nation expert in navigation and trade that developed their alphabet around 1400 BC in an effort to communicate with their diverse trading partners that encircled the Mediterranean Sea. The Phoenician alphabet was widely received, as it was only 22 letters based on sound, as opposed to the myriad of symbols in cuneiform and hieroglyphics prevalent at the time.
The Hebrew language adopted the Imperial Aramaic alphabet.
As the Aramaic alphabet became the Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew papyri and parchments of the second and first centuries BC were written in the Aramaic alphabet. The original Hebrew alphabet persisted solely with the Samaritans. The Biblical Hebrew text available to us today is thus written in the Hebrew language with the adopted Aramaic alphabet.
While the Hebrew language is thriving today, the Aramaic language was replaced by Arabic with the rise of Islam, and has nearly disappeared. Aramaic is present today only among the Assyrians in Syria, the Chaldees in northern Iraq, and as part of the Mass of the Eastern Catholic Maronite Church of Lebanon.
The oldest surviving translation of Hebrew Scripture is the Greek Septuagint, which was undertaken in Alexandria in the third century before Christ (BC). Jesus and his Apostles read from the Greek Septuagint in their discourses on Scripture. It was not until nearly 100 AD in Jamnia that a final authoritative form of the written consonantal text was achieved in Hebrew.
Hebrew is written from right to left. There are no capital letters in Hebrew. Letters stand alone in printing or writing. The first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet also signify numbers one through ten, as the Ten Commandments given to Moses on two tablets of stone.
Beginning in the pre-Exilic period, from the ninth to the sixth centuries BC, the following three consonants,
ה heh, ן vav ,י yod
were used at the end of a word to indicate final vowels. Beginning in the post-Exilic period, vav and yod were also used as vowel indicators within a word.
The recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls were written purely in consonants.
During the ninth and tenth centuries AD, the Masoretes, Jewish scholars in Tiberias, Galilee, perfected a system of points or nikkud for vowel notation and added it to the received consonantal text. The vowel points were added to ensure proper interpretation and reading of Hebrew Scripture, and are known as the Masoretic or Tiberian vowel points. This point system was added without altering the spacing of the text. It is the Masoretic Hebrew text that is available to us today.
All of these considerations help biblical scholars to date a particular Hebrew text. For instance, the presence of "pointed text" allows biblical scholars to date manuscripts to at least the second millennium AD.
What follows is the Biblical Hebrew alphabet. Note that five letters, Kaf, Mem, Nun, Peh, and Tsade, have a final form when the letter occurs at the end of a word. For example, Peh at the beginning or middle of the word has the form of פ, but at the end of a word appears as ף.
Notice in the following chart that the majority of vowel points appear under the letter, except for long o when it occurs over and to the left of the letter. When the vowel points are combined with the matres lectiones, they occur underneath the prior letter with Heh and Yod. The Shewa sign may be vocal or silent; with the guttural letters aleph א, heh ה, het ח, and ayin ע, vocal shewa is combined with three vowel signs to produce three hurried vowels known as the hatep vowels.
Metheg is a symbol written as a short perpendicular stroke placed under the consonant and to the left of the vowel sign (if any). An example of its use is the addition of Metheg to Qames, which renders that vowel point as long a rather than short o.
The following chart summarizes the Masoretic vowel points.
is incorporated for the second spelling.
2 Ross A. Introducing Biblical Hebrew, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2001.
3 Mansoor M. Biblical Hebrew - Step by Step. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1980.
4 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1999.
5 Kohlenberger JR. NIV Interlinear Hebrew-English Old Testament. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1987.
6 Pentateuch. Navarre Revised Standard Version. Four Courts Press, Dublin, Ireland, 1999.
7 Rendsburg GA. A New Look at Pentateuchal HW'. Biblica 63:351-369, 1982.
8 Brown F. Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, March 2000.