On the ancient origin of Biblical Hebrew Section 1

So what is the history of Hebrew linguistics? Not a large amount is known about early Hebrew but it is a Northwest Semitic language from the larger Afroasiatic language family. Modern historians consider Hebrew a subdivision of Proto Canaanite languages. If we go by the Bible it indicates that Avraham (Abraham) came from the Sumerian city of Ur.

וַיָּ֣מָת הָרָ֔ן עַל־פְּנֵ֖י תֶּ֣רַח אָבִ֑יו בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מֽוֹלַדְתּ֖וֹ בְּא֥וּר כַּשְׂדִּֽים:

And Haran he died in the presence of Teirach his father in the land of his birth in Ur in Kashdim (Chaldea, modern sourthern Iraq or ancient Sumer also known as Kengir)

And Avram (later Avraham) and Nachor took for themselves wives and the name of Avram’s wife was Sarai and the name of Nachor’s wife was Milkah, the daughter of Haran and father of Milkah and father of Yiskah.

So Avraham was not a native of Canaan but of Sumer (southern Iraq) and the Sumerians spoke a language called Emegir, could Avraham originally spoke this language? However there is no evidence connecting Emegir with ancient Hebrew though. We know also from the Bible that Syriac Aramaic influenced ancient Hebrew because both Yitzchak and Yaakov (Isaac and Jacob) both married Arameans Rivkah (Rebecca) and Jacob married Rachel. It would be obvious that the language of the mothers influenced the children. So Hebrew would have been influenced by early Proto Aramaic and also Canaanite as well because Avraham left Sumer for Canaan and he would have picked some of that language also.

The closest known language to early Bible Hebrew like say 1000 bce is Ugaritic which was spoken in what is now modern Syria. We also know the time in Egypt made an impact and there is proof. For instance if you know the Shma prayer you see that the word used for Tefillin is totfot טֹֽטָפֹ֖ת and this is from Egyptian meaning the number 4 because of the fours corners of the head that the Tefillin covered. No one really knows exactly where Hebrew came from but if we are to believe the Bible which I do then a good portion of the Torah was written in the Sinai desert and not Canaan. So that means the obvious heavy impact Canaanite had on Hebrew came more from the time the Patriarch’s lived in Canaan and not post the Joshua conquest. Although post conquest Canaanite could have influenced the progression of the way the scribes copied the Torah. The scribes did update Torah grammar and linguistics because Moses era Hebrew would been super primitive. Which we know from the Mt Ebal curse tablets Dr. Scott Stripling recently discovered in december of 2019.

It sounds like Avraham spoke Emegir the language of Ur and he was influenced by Proto-Canaanite when he left Ur for Canaan in the Lek Leka section of Genesis when Avraham was commanded to leave Sumer for Canaan in the west. The next step was Proto Syriac Aramaic influence with the Patriarch’s marriages to Arameans (Syrians). Next is the Egyptian influence from the slavery centuries in Egypt. Here is a chart of Hebrew linguistic periods.

Pre Biblical Hebrew: Around the Patriach era to about 1100 bce with the Proto Sinaitic script being used for Moses/Joshua era Torah.

Early Biblical Hebrew: About 1000 bce to 600 bce this uses the Phoenician or Paleo Hebrew script.

Late Biblical Hebrew: Post Babylonian exile from about 530 bce to 200 bce and the introduction of the square Ktav Ashuri script .

Mishnaic Hebrew: The Hebrew of the Mishnah and Talmud (unknown when this really began maybe 150 bce and was used until about 500 ce.

Medieval Hebrew: 500 ce to the late 1800 (liturgical only).

Modern Hebrew: 1880 ce to present.

The script has been consistent from the inception of the Ktav Ashuri script after the return of the exiles. which were late Biblical Hebrew until now.

In ancient times it does not seem that the language of the Torah was a common colloquial language and it appears many subdialect’s existed outside of scribal Torah Hebrew. So what does the word Hebrew mean? It most likely comes from the Biblical character Eiver עבר (Eber in most English Bibles) the name means to cross, advance or pass. Eiver was a great grandson of Shem and ancestor of Avraham. So it is likely that Avraham was called a Hebrew because he was from the clan of Eiver or Eber. The Hebrew word for Hebrew as in a person as an adjective is Ivri עברי and as a language Ivrit עברית. So Avraham was an Ivri and spoke Ivrit.

Here are some known subdialects.

• Judahite Hebrew (Southern Dialect): Spoken in the Kingdom of Judah, centered around Jerusalem, which was King David’s capital. This is the dialect that became the basis for much of the later standard Biblical Hebrew text.
• Israelian Hebrew (Northern Dialect): An umbrella term for dialects spoken in the northern tribes/Kingdom of Israel, with distinctive words, grammatical forms, and pronunciations. Examples of local varieties likely included Ephraimite, Galilean and Gileadite.

There are clear scribal changes for instance in the book of Samuel because David is spelled as דוד but in Chronicles it is spelled like דויד ( I assume the same pronunciation) it clearly uses the chirik malei nikud as opposed the the standard chirik in Samuel. It is unclear how these dialects actually sounded and we view them through modern eyes. When did Ghayin become Ayin and go from a gentle gh to a almost silent glottal stop. So the origins of Ayin were well known enough that English Bibles write Amorah as Gommorah but the Hebrew text is clear as Amorah עֲמֹרָ֖ה. It would point to post Babylonian exile and Persian influence because Ayin was a silent letter in Old Persian. Just like English uses the Arabic when referencing the Gaza strip in the news but in Israel it is pronounced Azah not Gaza (the Arabic is really Ghaza).

Some disagree on ayin being a gh in ancient times and say the opposite and that ayin/ghayin became a dual sounding letter only post Babylonian exile. So there are varying theories on very ancient Hebrew pronunciation. Let me be clear that information put forth in this book are a good theory, yes ! I am not saying by any means are proven fact. Many scholars contend the “begadkefat” letters were post Babylonian exile where others strongly state they existed from ancient times going back to King David or earlier.

Some disagree on ayin being a gh in ancient times and say the opposite and that ayin/ghayin became a dual sounding letter only post Babylonian exile. So there are varying theories on very ancient Hebrew pronunciation. Let me be clear that information put forth in this book are a good theory, yes ! I am not saying by any means are proven fact. Many scholars contend the “begadkefat” letters were post Babylonian exile where others strongly state they existed from ancient times going back to King David or earlier.

Some might suggest that the letter shin did not function as it does like now as a sh like ship but was in ancient times a regular S . Other scholars also suggest that the letters sin and the letters samekh although pronounced the same today as “S” as in sister but in ancient may have have had a nuanced difference. Names like Sarah and Israel use the letter shin in its “sin” form and these are Pre-biblical era names. However Seth an even earlier Biblical character is pronounced Sheit bringing this theory into question and that Pre Biblical Hebrew did not have the “sh” sound. It is possible that different dialects pronounced shin/sin differently based on Biblical evidence.

Here in Judges 12:6

And they said to him, “Say now ‘Shibboleth,’ ” and he said “Sibboleth,” and he was not prepared to pronounce it properly, and they grabbed him and slaughtered him at the fords of the Jordan; and there fell at that time of Ephraim, forty-two thousand.

The words in question שִׁבֹּ֜לֶת in the Gileadite pronunciation and Shibolet and Sibolet סִבֹּ֗לֶת is what the  Ephraimite said. However you notice the the difference is not in shin vs sin but shin vs samekh so this is not hugely helpful in a shin/sin perspective.

Here is a chart on my thoughts on the influence on Hebrew.

Avraham is from the city of Ur which speaks Emegir and this makes some sense in that the Hebrew word for city is Ir and Ur means city, so a similarity already. Also in ancient Sumer in the Emegir language the word tel meant mound or hill and tel means hill or mound in Hebrew too, below is a Hebrew dictionary. The city Tel Aviv means Spring Hill.

תֵּל (archeology) barrow, man-made hill covering the remains of an ancient settlement ; mound, knoll, down ; (colloquial) heap, pile.

Next Avraham is commanded to go out to Canaan and here the Proto Canaanite language brings influence.

The Patriarch’s both Isaac (Yitzchak) and Yaakov/Jacob marry Syrian women so Proto Aramaic bring influence.

Next comes the Egyptian influence from the post Joseph years and Hebrew does have Egyptian loan words like Anokhi אנכי meaning I from the Egyptian Ankh meaning “life” or the word totfot from the Shma prayer is Egyptian for 4.

Then post Canaan conquest is more Canaanite influence.

Aramaic does not like the gutturals letters and the Babylonian captivity changed some of these pronunciations. Pre Babylonian exile the name Y’hoshua (Joshua) would likely have been pronounced Y’hoshugha יהושע and Gideon pronounced Gidghon גדעון. This theory on those pronunciations assumes that ayin was a gh in ancient times but other scholars disagree and say ghayin was only post Babylonian exile. So under the first theory After the captivity the Ayin became silent and became a mild glottal stop at best. This is also where Hebrew transitioned from the Phoenician script to the square Aramaic style which is also called Ktav Ashuri means Assyrian script .This would be why the Samaritan Torah kept the Phoenician script not being in Babylon. It is not clear why the Assyrian script was chosen after the Babylonian captivity because it differs from the Babylonian or Chaldean Imperial Aramaic script.

The Book of Jubilees states that Arpakhshad also sometimes spelled Arphaxad invented writing. This likely would have been Cuneiform script which was used to write Emegir the language of Sumer and later Akkadian and Ugaritic. So it is obvious that Emegir influenced Hebrew but Hebrew was never written with Cuneiform but because of the Egyptian captivity Hebrew was first written in Proto-Sinaitic which was a phonetic script based of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Then in the Davidic era Hebrew adopted the Phoenician script until Ktav Ashuri was adopted in the 6th century bce. The K’naanites or Canaanites used a writing system also very similar to Proto Sinaitic which makes sense being that in the Bible Canaan was a relative of Mitzrayim the founder of Egypt. So the ancient world had two writing systems, the first was Cuneiform used for all Iraqi languages like Kengir or Akkadian. The western part of the Levant used Alp-bet style Egyptian hieroglyphs type scripts like Proto-Canaanite and Proto Sinaitic and these two scripts would inspire the Phoenician script that changed the world forever once the ancient Greeks adopted it.

Then once the Assyrian empire adopted Aramaic as its language after its conquest of the Syrians then pictographic languages died out and everyone spoke a phonetic language. Although Emegir the language of Sumer held on for magical rites in pagan cultures in Iraq until the 2nd century bce. Aramaic in varying forms took over the Middle East as the main language except for Israel which hung on to Hebrew until the exile. There are close to or about 16 subdialects of Aramaic recognized to this day. Arabic now the Lingua Franca of the Middle East and north Africa came out of Nabataean Aramaic which is from the western branch of Syriac Aramaic, even though today it is classified in the central branch of Semitic languages. This is different from the eastern branch of Aramaic that Assyrian and Imperial Babylonian Aramaic came out of. So I would have to say that Hebrew evolved from the Proto-Semitic language of Arpakhshad in the descendants of Abraham.

So why is Hebrew considered an Canaanite language when Canaan was a descendant of Ham or Cham? Here in Isaiah 19:18 it says something interesting:

בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֡וּא יִֽהְיוּ֩ חָמֵ֨שׁ עָרִ֜ים בְּאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֗יִם מְדַבְּרוֹת֙ שְׂפַ֣ת כְּנַ֔עַן וְנִשְׁבָּע֖וֹת לַֽיהֹוָ֣ה צְבָא֑וֹת עִ֣יר הַהֶ֔רֶס יֵֽאָמֵ֖ר לְאֶחָֽת:

On that day there shall be five cities in the land of Egypt speaking the language of Canaan and swearing to the Lord of Hosts, one of which will be called “the city of Heres.

So is the Bible conceding that Hebrew is a Canaanite language? I do not question that likely the Jews adopted the Proto-Canaanite script and that the Canaanite language influenced the Hebrew both before and after the conquest of Canaan because Abraham himself left Ur in the land of Kengir/Sumer for Canaan/K’naan/K’naghan. The fact that Moabite is so similar to ancient Hebrew and Lot was the Father of all Moabites as Moav was the incestuous son born to Lot’s daughter after the destruction of S’dom and Amorah. So this Hebrew/Moabite connection makes it clear that Hebrew pre-existed the conquest of Canaan. So what do secular historians say?

“Early Evidence: The earliest known evidence of Hebrew includes early Israelite pottery inscriptions, such as the 12th-century BCE Izbet Sarta<</ ostracon, which contains a proto-Canaanite script”

This only proves that Israel was using the Proto-Canaanite script but does not prove it used the Canaanite language. English uses the Latin script but is English the same as Latin? Also it is very likely that although K’naan or K’naghan was a Chamitic person in the Bible, his descendants intermingled and were absorbed into Phoenician and Syrian and Proto-Arabic tribes living in the ancient Levant.

I will close then in saying that as the evidence stands that Abraham left Ur in Kengir/Sumer and his languages was impacted by every influence that the Hebrew people would encounter until the Israel was established in the late 1390’s bce.