Hebrew
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 May 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0084
- LAST REVIEWED: 18 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 May 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199840731-0084
Introduction
Hebrew belongs to the family of Semitic languages, which is part of the larger family of Afroasiatic languages. It spans more than three millennia, paralleling the history of the Jewish people—first in the Land of Israel, then in the Diaspora, and again in the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. It is customary to divide the language into the following four historical periods: Biblical Hebrew, Rabbinic Hebrew (also known as Mishnaic Hebrew), Medieval Hebrew, and Modern Hebrew (alternatively referred to as Contemporary Hebrew, Israeli Hebrew, or even simply Israeli). Two further divisions should also be noted: Hebrew of the Second Temple period, and oral traditions of Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew in its narrow sense (c. 1000–530 BCE) is attested mainly in the pre-exilic books of the Hebrew Bible. Hebrew in the Second Temple period (530 BCE–70 CE) is a transient stage between Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew; the post-exilic books of the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls are its main corpora. Rabbinic Hebrew (70–c. 500 CE) is further divided, according to whether it was still spoken or not, into Tannaitic Hebrew or Rabbinic Hebrew I (70–c. 200 CE), which is the language of the Mishna, and Amoraic Hebrew or Rabbinic Hebrew II (c. 200–500 CE), which is the language of the Hebrew part of the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. Medieval Hebrew (c. 500–c. 1850) includes various works of poetry and prose produced in major Jewish communities. Oral traditions of Hebrew refer to recitations of the Hebrew Bible and the Mishna in traditional Jewish communities after Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew ceased to be spoken; these traditions are still preserved among certain circles. Modern Hebrew in its narrow sense (c. 1850 to the present) is a planned and unplanned amalgam of the earlier phases of Hebrew (as well as Jewish Aramaic), with a heavy grammatical and lexical influence from Yiddish, Russian, etc. It now fulfills all the social functions of a modern society, both in speech and in writing as well as online. It is also an important lingua franca of Hebrew linguistics (and many other areas of Jewish studies). In each of these divisions of Hebrew, as well as in the first group of sections (dealing with the language in general), selected important works in the following areas are mentioned, where relevant: encyclopedia, introductory works, dictionaries, bibliographies, journals, collected works, history, writing system, language “revival,” grammar in general, (articulatory) phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, (meta-)lexicography, onomastics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and the spoken language.
Encyclopedia Reference, General Hebrew
Khan 2013 is an important milestone in the history of Hebrew linguistics, covering major historical periods of the Hebrew language and areas and subareas of Hebrew linguistics.
Khan, Geoffrey, ed. Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics. 4 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2013.
NNNAn impressive collection of over 850 entries by about 400 researchers, covering such diverse thematic categories as periods of Hebrew, areas and subareas of Hebrew linguistics, foreign influence on Hebrew, loanwords in Hebrew, Hebrew loanwords in other languages, traditions of Hebrew in Jewish communities, and the Hebrew component in Jewish languages; there is also an online version, with access available through purchase or by subscription.
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Article
- Abraham Isaac Kook
- Aggadah
- Agudat Yisrael
- Ahad Ha' am
- American Hebrew Literature
- American Jewish Artists
- American Jewish Literature
- American Jewish Sociology
- Ancient Anti-Semitism
- An-sky (Shloyme Zanvil Rapoport)
- Anthropology of the Jews
- Anti-Semitism, Modern
- Apocalypticism and Messianism
- Aramaic
- Archaeology, Second Temple
- Archaeology: The Rabbinic Period
- Art, Synagogue
- Austria, The Holocaust In
- Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867-1918
- Biblical Archaeology
- Biblical Literature
- Bratslav/Breslev Hasidism
- Buber, Martin
- Buczacz
- Bukharan Jews
- Canada
- Central Asia, Jews in
- Chagall, Marc
- China
- Classical Islam, Jews Under
- Cohen, Hermann
- Culture, Israeli
- David Ben-Gurion
- David Bergelson
- Dead Sea Scrolls
- Death, Burial, and the Afterlife
- Debbie Friedman
- Demography
- Deuteronomy
- Dietary Laws
- Dubnov, Simon
- Dutch Republic: 17th-18th Centuries
- Early Modern Period, Christian Yiddishism in the
- Eastern European Haskalah
- Emancipation
- England
- Environment, Judaism and the
- Eruv
- Ethics, Jewish
- Ethiopian Jews
- Feminism
- Film
- Folklore
- Folktales, Jewish
- Food
- Forverts/Forward
- Frank, Jacob
- Gender and Modern Jewish Thought
- Germany, Early Modern
- Ghettos in the Holocaust
- Goldman, Emma
- Golem
- Graetz, Heinrich
- Hasidism
- Hasidism, Lubavitch
- Haskalah
- Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) Literature
- Hebrew
- Hebrew Bible, Blood in the
- Hebrew Bible, Memory and History in the
- Hebrew Literature and Music
- Hebrew Literature Outside of Israel Since 1948
- History, Early Modern Jewish
- History of the Holocaust
- Holocaust in France, The
- Holocaust in Germany, The
- Holocaust in Poland, The
- Holocaust in the Netherlands, The
- Holocaust in the Soviet Union, The
- (Holocaust) Memorial Books
- Holocaust Museums and Memorials
- Holocaust, Philosophical and Theological Responses to the
- Holocaust Survivors, Children of
- Humor, Jewish
- Ibn Ezra, Abraham
- Indian Jews
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Israel Ba'al Shem Tov
- Israel, Religion and State in
- Israeli Economy
- Israeli Film
- Israeli Literature
- Israel's Society
- Italian Jewish Literature (Ninth to Nineteenth Century)
- Jewish American Women Writers in the 18th and 19th Centuri...
- Jewish Bible Translations
- Jewish Culture, Children and Childhood in
- Jewish Diaspora
- Jewish Economic History
- Jewish Folklore, Chełm in
- Jewish Genetics
- Jewish Heritage and Cultural Revival in Poland
- Jewish Names
- Jewish Studies, Dance in
- Jewish Territorialism (in Relation to Jewish Studies)
- Jewish-Christian Polemics Until the 15th Century
- Jews and Animals
- Joseph Ber Soloveitchik
- Josephus, Flavius
- Kalonymus Kalman Shapira
- Karaism
- Khmelnytsky/Chmielnitzki
- Kibbutz, The
- Ladino
- Languages, Jewish
- Late Antique (Roman and Byzantine) History
- Latin American Jewish Studies Latin American Jewish Studie...
- Law, Biblical
- Law in the Rabbinic Period
- Life Cycle Rituals
- Literature Before 1800, Yiddish
- Literature, Hellenistic Jewish
- Literature, Holocaust
- Literature, Latin American Jewish
- Literature, Medieval
- Literature, Modern Hebrew
- Literature, Rabbinic
- Magic, Ancient Jewish
- Maimonides, Moses
- Maurice Schwartz
- Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought
- Medieval Anti-Judaism
- Medieval Islam, Jews under
- Meir, Golda
- Menachem Begin
- Mendelssohn, Moses
- Messianic Thought and Movements
- Middle Ages, the Hebrew Story in the
- Midrash
- Minority Literatures in Israel
- Minsk
- Modern Germany
- Modern Hebrew Poetry
- Modern Jewish History
- Modern Kabbalah
- Moses Maimonides: Mishneh Torah
- Music, East European Jewish Folk
- Music, Jews and
- Nathan Birnbaum
- Nazi Germany, Kristallnacht: The November Pogrom 1938 in
- Neo-Hasidism
- New Age Judaism
- New York City
- North Africa
- Orthodoxy
- Orthodoxy, Post-World War II
- Palestine/Israel, Yiddish in
- Palestinian Talmud/Yerushalmi
- Philo of Alexandria
- Piyyut
- Poetry in Spain, Hebrew
- Poland, 1800-1939
- Poland, Hasidism in
- Poland Until The Late 18th Century
- Politics and Political Leaders, Israeli
- Politics, Modern Jewish
- Prayer and Liturgy
- Purity and Impurity in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism
- Queer Jewish Texts in the Americas
- Rabbi Yeheil Michel Epstein and his Arukh Hashulchan
- Rabbinic Exegesis (Midrash) and Literary Theory
- Race and American Judaism
- Rashi's Commentary on the Bible
- Reform Judaism
- Revelation
- Ritual Objects and Folk Art
- Rosenzweig, Franz
- Russia
- Russian Jewish Culture
- Sabbath
- Sabbatianism
- Sacrifice in the Bible
- Safed
- Sarah Schenirer and Bais Yaakov
- Scholem, Gershom
- Second Temple Period, The
- Sephardi Jews
- Sexuality and the Body
- Shlomo Carlebach
- Shmuel Yosef Agnon
- Shulhan Arukh and Sixteenth Century Jewish Law, The
- Sociology, European Jewish
- South African Jewry
- Soviet Union, Jews in the
- Space in Modern Hebrew Literature
- Spinoza, Baruch
- Sutzkever, Abraham
- Talmud and Philosophy
- Talmud, Narrative in the
- The Druze Community in Israel
- The Early Modern Yiddish Bible, 1534–1686
- The General Jewish Workers’ Bund
- The Modern Jewish Bible, Facets of
- Theater, Israeli
- Theme, Exodus as a
- Tractate Avodah Zarah (in the Talmud)
- Translation
- Translation in Hebrew Literature, Traditions of
- United States
- Vienna
- Vilna
- Warsaw
- Weinreich, Max
- Wissenschaft des Judentums
- Women and Gender Relations
- World War II Literature, Jewish American
- Yankev Glatshteyn/Jacob Glatstein
- Yemen, The Jews of
- Yiddish
- Yiddish Avant-garde Theater
- Yiddish Linguistics
- Yiddish Literature since 1800
- Yiddish Theater
- Zamenhof
- Ze’ev Jabotinsky
- Zionism from Its Inception to 1948