(5.) The Written Hebrew. — About the time when the language underwent this internal change, it was also changed externally. That we have not the original Hebrew characters in MS. and printed texts of the Bi- ble is evident from a tradition we have in the Talmud that " at first the law was given to Israel in the Hebrew ■writing and the hoh' tongue, and again it was given to them in the days of Ezra in the Assyrian writing and the Syrian tongue. They chose for the Israelites the Assyrian writing and the holy tongue, and left to the Idiotce (i. e. the Samaritans) the Hebrew writing and the Syrian tongue. . . . And although the law was not given by Ezra's hand, yet the writing and language were called the Assyrian" {Sanhedr. xxi, 2 ; xxii, 1).* This Assyrian writing (^1!lt"X SriS) is also called "square writing" (23"i73 SriS ), "correct writing" (njsri riSTS), and by the Samaritans " Ezra's writ- ing" (N"i]f3J SriS). We must suppose that the square character, which came into use after the exile, only gradually thrust the elder character aside; for in the Maccabajan coinage the ancient Hebrew character was used, and while we may trace back the origni of the new characters nearly to the times of Ezra, certain it is that at a later time it was perfected in its present form, and long before the time of the Talmud, since there we find directions given concerning the writing of the alphabet, of which we will speak farther on.
(G.) Tradition, Period of the Hebrew [Ainguage. — It is chiefly among the Jews of Palestine that we are to seek the preservation of the knowledge of the Hebrew language. Though the Hebrew ceased to be even a written language, yet for practical ends in the usages of worship the study of the old Hebrew documents be- came for them an indispensable duty, for which the af- finity of the language they used must have offered them peculiar facilities. Hence, as early as the book of Si- rach (Ecclesiasticus), which was probably written be- tween B.C. 290 and 280, mention is made of the study of Scripture as the chief and fairest occupation of the ypffi- fiartl'Q, the Seavotta^ai iv vo/((,t» vipiaTov, and cTO(p(av iravTixiv ap\aitjjv iK^r]Ti)<Tti, Kcti ti' Trpo(pi}Ttiatg daxo- Xr]^i)<TtTai (xxxix, 1 sq.). The more erudite study of Hebrew Scripture was prosecuted in Palestine and Bab- ylonia from the days of Ezra, not only b)' individual
* Jerome, in Prol. Gal. : "C'ertum est, Esdram . . . alias literas repeiis-^e, qnibus nunc ntimur, cum ad illiid nsque tempus iidem Samaritanonim et Hebrieoium characferes fueriut." See also Origen, in Ezra ix, 4 ; Psa. ii (iii, 539).
scribes, but also in formal schools and academies, the ^■■^7'?r? "^^2. als" "(JS^I "^PS- antl riZ-'t'', which were established there before the time of Christ. The chief seat of these at first was principally at Jerusalem, then after the destruction of this city by the Romans it was transferred to Jamnia or Jabneh, under Jochanan ben-Zachai (q. v.), till under Gamaliel III ben-Jehudah I (A.D. 193-220) Tiberias became the seat of learning. Among the teachers of Tiberias, rabbi Jehudah the Holy, or hak-Kodesh (q. v.), the compiler of the Mish- na. obtained a remarkable reputation in the latter half of the 2d century. After his death, the seat of this scriptural erudition was once more transplanted to Bab- ylonia, where, with reference to this, the schools at cer- tain cities on the Euphrates — -Sora, Pumbaditha, and Nahardea — attained pre-eminently to high esteem. Still, along with these, the Palestinian schools subsisted uninterruptedly, especially the school at Tiberias, and to the labors of these schools are due in part the Tar- gums, but principally the Talmud and the Masorah,
The activity of these schools took different shapes at different periods, and into four of these periods it may be divided ■ 1. The period of the more ancient Sophei-im (scribes, D'^'lEID D'^JITTXT), from the close of the can- on to the ruin of the Jewish commonwealth. They settled fixedly the external and internal form of the sacred text (X"ipT3), the correct writing and reading, the arrangement of the books and their sections, the numbering of the verses, words, and letters, etc. 2. The period of the Talmudists, from the 2d to the 6th century of the Christian tera. 3. The period of the Maso- rites, from the 6th to the 9th century. 4. The period of the Grammarians and Expositors, from the 9th to the 16th century. Following the example of the Arabians, they endeavored to lay a scientific foundation for He- brew philology and for understanding the text of the Bible, by means of various labors in grammar and lex- icography, including the comparison of the Aramaic and Arabic dialects.
For the history of the philological study of the He- brew language, the reader is referred to the art. He- brew Language in this Cyclopfedia, where he ■will also find more details.
V. Relation of the Shemitic Languages to the Indo- European Languages. — One of the most vexed ques- tions of comparative pliilology is that of the relation of the Shemitic family to that of the Indo-European. As early as the year 1778 Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, in his Grammar of the Bengal Language, said, "I have been astonished to find the similitude of Sanscrit words with those of Arabic [= the Shemitic], and these not in technical and metaphorical terms, which the mutua- tion of refined arts and improved manners might have occasionally introduced, but in the main groundwork of language, in monosyllables, in the names of numbers, and the application of such things as would be first discriminated on the immediate dawn of civilization." When the Sanscrit became better known in Europe, scholars like Adelung, Klaproth, Bopp, etc., in their studies on comparative philology, undertook to trace out the affinity between these two families. Unten- able as were their theories, j-et they paved the way. With greater precaution Gesenius entered upon the arena of comparative philology. Being persua(ied that the Hebrew has no relation with the Indo-European languages, the main object of his comparisons was to find out analogies, while in such words as appeared to him to have some similarity with the oldest original languages of Eastern Asia, as i'SlT, sei-eti, Sanscrit, sapta ; "Ij-'S, a youth, Sanscrit, nar, etc., he either per- ceived marks of early borrowings or a play of accident. Ftlrst, however, went a step further, and espoused the unhappy idea of a Sanscrito-Shemitic stem, which di- vides itself into the Sanscrit, Medo-Persian, Shemitic, Grtieco-Latin, Germanic, and Slavic families. But the