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109-672: (Redirected from Bereishit ) [REDACTED] Look up bereshit in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Bereshit or Bereishith ( Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית ‎ Bərēʾšīṯ ) is the first word both of the Jewish Torah, and of the Christian New Testament of John, which alludes to the Torah. It is typically translated as "In beginning...", and may refer to: In

218-623: A stress accent system , and the monophthongization of several diphthongs: The Koine-period Greek in the table is taken from a reconstruction by Benjamin Kantor of New Testament Judeo-Palestinian Koine Greek. The realizations of most phonemes reflect general changes around the Greek-speaking world, including vowel isochrony and monophthongization, but certain sound values differ from other Koine varieties such as Attic, Egyptian and Anatolian. More general Koine phonological developments include

327-620: A Hebrew dialect, though it possessed distinctive Aramaic features. Although Ugaritic shows a large degree of affinity to Hebrew in poetic structure, vocabulary, and some grammar, it lacks some Canaanite features (like the Canaanite shift and the shift */ð/ > /z/ ), and its similarities are more likely a result of either contact or preserved archaism. Hebrew underwent the Canaanite shift, where Proto-Semitic /aː/ tended to shift to /oː/ , perhaps when stressed. Hebrew also shares with

436-482: A Northwest Semitic language, Hebrew shows the shift of initial */w/ to /j/ , a similar independent pronoun system to the other Northwest Semitic languages (with third person pronouns never containing /ʃ/ ), some archaic forms, such as /naħnu/ 'we', first person singular pronominal suffix -i or -ya, and /n/ commonly preceding pronominal suffixes. Case endings are found in Northwest Semitic languages in

545-469: A later stage of the language. These additions were added after 600 CE; Hebrew had already ceased being used as a spoken language around 200 CE. Biblical Hebrew as reflected in the consonantal text of the Bible and in extra-biblical inscriptions may be subdivided by era. The oldest form of Biblical Hebrew, Archaic Hebrew, is found in poetic sections of the Bible and inscriptions dating to around 1000 BCE,

654-450: A more open pronunciation than other Koine dialects, distinguished as open-mid /ɛ/ vs. close-mid /e/ , rather than as true-mid /e̞/ vs. close-mid /e̝/ as has been suggested for other varieties such as Egyptian. This is evidenced on the basis of Hebrew transcriptions of ε with pataḥ/qamets /a/ and not tsere/segol /e/ . Additionally, it is posited that α perhaps had a back vowel pronunciation as /ɑ/ , dragged backwards due to

763-562: A simplified form of Ionic . The view accepted by most scholars today was given by the Greek linguist Georgios Hatzidakis , who showed that despite the "composition of the Four", the "stable nucleus" of Koine Greek is Attic. In other words, Koine Greek can be regarded as Attic with the admixture of elements especially from Ionic, but also from other dialects. The degree of importance of the non-Attic linguistic elements on Koine can vary depending on

872-777: A superscript ס above the ש to indicate it took the value /s/ , while the Masoretes added the shin dot to distinguish between the two varieties of the letter. The original Hebrew alphabet consisted only of consonants , but the letters א , ה , ו , י , also were used to indicate vowels, known as matres lectionis when used in this function. It is thought that this was a product of phonetic development: for instance, *bayt ('house') shifted to בֵּית in construct state but retained its spelling. While no examples of early Hebrew orthography have been found, older Phoenician and Moabite texts show how First Temple period Hebrew would have been written. Phoenician inscriptions from

981-460: A very important source of information on the ancient Koine is the modern Greek language with all its dialects and its own Koine form, which have preserved some of the ancient language's oral linguistic details which the written tradition has lost. For example, Pontic and Cappadocian Greek preserved the ancient pronunciation of η as ε ( νύφε, συνέλικος, τίμεσον, πεγάδι for standard Modern Greek νύφη, συνήλικος, τίμησον, πηγάδι etc.), while

1090-484: A vowel in sandhi, as well as Rabbi Saadia Gaon 's attestation to the use of this alternation in Tiberian Aramaic at the beginning of the 10th century CE. The Dead Sea scrolls show evidence of confusion of the phonemes /ħ ʕ h ʔ/ , e.g. חמר ħmr for Masoretic אָמַר /ʔɔˈmar/ 'he said'. However the testimony of Jerome indicates that this was a regionalism and not universal. Confusion of gutturals

1199-588: A word with less or more matres lectionis, respectively. The Hebrew Bible was presumably originally written in a more defective orthography than found in any of the texts known today. Of the extant textual witnesses of the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretic text is generally the most conservative in its use of matres lectionis, with the Samaritan Pentateuch and its forebearers being more full and

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1308-544: A work that is now known as Meditations . Koine Greek continues to be used as the liturgical language of services in the Greek Orthodox Church and in some Greek Catholic churches . The English-language name Koine is derived from the Koine Greek term ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος ( hē koinḕ diálektos ), meaning "the common dialect". The Greek word κοινή ( koinḗ ) itself means "common". The word

1417-520: Is a term used for present tense verbs that are used in some narrative sections of the New Testament to describe events that are in the past with respect to the speaker. This is seen more in works attributed to Mark and John than Luke . It is used 151 times in the Gospel of Mark in passages where a reader might expect a past tense verb. Scholars have presented various explanations for this; in

1526-537: Is also evident in the later-developed Tiberian vocalization system. Qumran Hebrew, attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls from ca. 200 BCE to 70 CE, is a continuation of Late Biblical Hebrew. Qumran Hebrew may be considered an intermediate stage between Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew, though Qumran Hebrew shows its own idiosyncratic dialectal features. Dialect variation in Biblical Hebrew

1635-552: Is also not directly indicated by Hebrew orthography but is clearly attested by later developments: It is written with ⟨ ש ⟩ (also used for /ʃ/ ) but later merged with /s/ (normally indicated with ⟨ ס ⟩ ). As a result, three etymologically distinct phonemes can be distinguished through a combination of spelling and pronunciation: /s/ written ⟨ ס ⟩ , /ʃ/ written ⟨ ש ⟩ , and /ś/ (pronounced /ɬ/ but written ⟨ ש ⟩ ). The specific pronunciation of /ś/ as [ɬ]

1744-660: Is also the language of the Septuagint (the 3rd century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible ), the Christian New Testament , and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers . In this context, Koine Greek is also known as "Biblical", "New Testament", "ecclesiastical", or "patristic" Greek. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his private thoughts in Koine Greek in

1853-590: Is attested to by the well-known shibboleth incident of Judges 12:6, where Jephthah 's forces from Gilead caught Ephraimites trying to cross the Jordan River by making them say שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת š ibboleṯ ('ear of corn') The Ephraimites' identity was given away by their pronunciation: סִבֹּ֤לֶת s ibboleṯ . The apparent conclusion is that the Ephraimite dialect had /s/ for standard /ʃ/ . As an alternative explanation, it has been suggested that

1962-578: Is based on comparative evidence ( /ɬ/ is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and still attested in Modern South Arabian languages as well as early borrowings (e.g. balsam < Greek balsamon < Hebrew baśam ). /ɬ/ began merging with /s/ in Late Biblical Hebrew, as indicated by interchange of orthographic ⟨ ש ⟩ and ⟨ ס ⟩ , possibly under the influence of Aramaic, and this became

2071-415: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Biblical Hebrew language Biblical Hebrew ( Hebrew : עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית ‎ , romanized :  ʿiḇrîṯ miqrāʾîṯ ( Ivrit Miqra'it ) or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא ‎ , ləšôn ham-miqrāʾ ( Leshon ha-Miqra ) ), also called Classical Hebrew , is an archaic form of

2180-425: Is disputed, likely ejective or pharyngealized . Earlier Biblical Hebrew possessed three consonants not distinguished in writing and later merged with other consonants. The stop consonants developed fricative allophones under the influence of Aramaic , and these sounds eventually became marginally phonemic . The pharyngeal and glottal consonants underwent weakening in some regional dialects, as reflected in

2289-481: Is more consistent in using the definite article ה- , the accusative marker את , distinguishing between simple and waw-consecutive verb forms, and in using particles like אשר and כי rather than asyndeton . Biblical Hebrew from after the Babylonian exile in 587 BCE is known as 'Late Biblical Hebrew'. Late Biblical Hebrew shows Aramaic influence in phonology, morphology, and lexicon, and this trend

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2398-505: Is observed by noting the preservation of the double phonemes of each letter in one Sephardic reading tradition, and by noting that these phonemes are distinguished consistently in the Septuagint of the Pentateuch (e.g. Isaac יצחק Yīṣ ḥ āq = Ἰσαάκ versus Rachel רחל Rā ḫ ēl = Ῥαχήλ ), but this becomes more sporadic in later books and is generally absent in translations of Ezra and Nehemiah . The phoneme /ɬ/ ,

2507-581: Is often mentioned as Common Attic . The first scholars who studied Koine, both in Alexandrian and Early Modern times, were classicists whose prototype had been the literary Attic Greek of the Classical period and frowned upon any other variety of Ancient Greek . Koine Greek was therefore considered a decayed form of Greek which was not worthy of attention. The reconsideration on the historical and linguistic importance of Koine Greek began only in

2616-567: Is often written as ־יא in analogy to words like היא , הביא , e.g. כיא , sometimes מיא . ⟨ ה ⟩ is found finally in forms like חוטה (Tiberian חוטא ), קורה (Tiberian קורא ) while ⟨ א ⟩ may be used for an a-quality vowel in final position (e.g. עליהא ) and in medial position (e.g. יאתום ). Pre-Samaritan and Samaritan texts show full spellings in many categories (e.g. כוחי vs. Masoretic כחי in Genesis 49:3) but only rarely show full spelling of

2725-648: Is pronounced / k ɔɪ ˈ n eɪ / , / ˈ k ɔɪ n eɪ / , or / k iː ˈ n iː / in US English and / ˈ k ɔɪ n iː / in UK English. The pronunciation of the word koine itself gradually changed from [koinéː] (close to the Classical Attic pronunciation [koi̯.nɛ̌ː] ) to [cyˈni] (close to the Modern Greek [ciˈni] ). In Modern Greek,

2834-782: Is sometimes used for the Greek written by the Greek Church Fathers , the Early Christian theologians in late antiquity. Christian writers in the earliest time tended to use a simple register of Koiné, relatively close to the spoken language of their time, following the model of the Bible. After the 4th century, when Christianity became the state church of the Roman Empire , more learned registers of Koiné also came to be used. Koine period Greek differs from Classical Greek in many ways: grammar , word formation , vocabulary and phonology (sound system). During

2943-480: Is the Hebrew Bible. Epigraphic materials from the area of Israelite territory are written in a form of Hebrew called Inscriptional Hebrew, although this is meagerly attested. According to Waltke & O'Connor, Inscriptional Hebrew "is not strikingly different from the Hebrew preserved in the Masoretic text." The damp climate of Israel caused the rapid deterioration of papyrus and parchment documents, in contrast to

3052-507: Is viewed as a Central Semitic innovation. Some argue that /s, z, sˤ/ were affricated ( /ts, dz, tsˤ/ ), but Egyptian starts using s in place of earlier ṯ to represent Canaanite s around 1000 BC. It is likely that Canaanite was already dialectally split by that time, and the northern Early Phoenician dialect that the Greeks were in contact with could have preserved the affricate pronunciation until c.  800 BC at least, unlike

3161-666: The Aramaic script , a separate descendant of the Phoenician script, became widespread throughout the region, gradually displacing Paleo-Hebrew. The oldest documents that have been found in the Aramaic Script are fragments of the scrolls of Exodus, Samuel, and Jeremiah found among the Dead Sea scrolls, dating from the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE. It seems that the earlier biblical books were originally written in

3270-681: The Hasmonean dynasty . Later, the Romans ended their independence, making Herod the Great their governor. A revolt against the Romans led to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the second Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–135 led to a purge and expulsion of the Jewish population of Judea, the establishment of a new province of Syria Palaestina , and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as

3379-796: The Hebrew language , a language in the Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel , roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea . The term ʿiḇrîṯ "Hebrew" was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible , which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן ‎ śəp̄aṯ kənaʿan "language of Canaan" or יְהוּדִית ‎ Yəhûḏîṯ , " Judean ", but it

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3488-540: The Masoretic Text (𝕸) was transmitted in manuscript form and underwent redaction in the Second Temple period, but its earliest portions (parts of Amos , Isaiah , Hosea and Micah ) can be dated to the late 8th to early 7th centuries BCE. Biblical Hebrew has several different writing systems . From around the 12th century BCE until the 6th century BCE, writers employed the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . This

3597-528: The Septuagint , the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible , and the Greek New Testament . The teaching of these texts was aimed at the most common people, and for that reason, they use the most popular language of the era. Other sources can be based on random findings such as inscriptions on vases written by popular painters, mistakes made by Atticists due to their imperfect knowledge of Attic Greek or even some surviving Greco-Latin glossaries of

3706-457: The Siloam inscription ), and generally also includes later vocalization traditions for the Hebrew Bible's consonantal text, most commonly the early medieval Tiberian vocalization. The archeological record for the prehistory of Biblical Hebrew is far more complete than the record of Biblical Hebrew itself. Early Northwest Semitic (ENWS) materials are attested from 2350 BCE to 1200 BCE,

3815-541: The Tsakonian language preserved the long α instead of η ( ἁμέρα, ἀστραπά, λίμνα, χοά etc.) and the other local characteristics of Doric Greek . Dialects from the southern part of the Greek-speaking regions ( Dodecanese , Cyprus , etc.), preserve the pronunciation of the double similar consonants ( ἄλ-λος, Ἑλ-λάδα, θάλασ-σα ), while others pronounce in many words υ as ου or preserve ancient double forms ( κρόμμυον – κρεμ-μυον, ράξ – ρώξ etc.). Linguistic phenomena like

3924-563: The fifth century . The language of the Hebrew Bible reflects various stages of the Hebrew language in its consonantal skeleton , as well as a vocalization system which was added in the Middle Ages by the Masoretes . There is also some evidence of regional dialectal variation, including differences between Biblical Hebrew as spoken in the northern Kingdom of Israel and in the southern Kingdom of Judah . The consonantal text called

4033-752: The 10th century BCE do not indicate matres lectiones in the middle or the end of a word, for example לפנ and ז for later לפני and זה , similarly to the Hebrew Gezer Calendar , which has for instance שערמ for שעורים and possibly ירח for ירחו . Matres lectionis were later added word-finally, for instance the Mesha inscription has בללה, בנתי for later בלילה, בניתי ; however at this stage they were not yet used word-medially, compare Siloam inscription זדה versus אש (for later איש ). The relative terms defective and full / plene are used to refer to alternative spellings of

4142-547: The 10th century BCE. The 15 cm x 16.5 cm (5.9 in x 6.5 in) trapezoid pottery sherd ( ostracon ) has five lines of text written in ink in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (the old form which predates both the Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets). The tablet is written from left to right, suggesting that Hebrew writing was still in the formative stage. The Israelite tribes who settled in

4251-537: The 12th century BCE, reflecting the language's twenty-two consonantal phonemes. The 22 letters of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet numbered less than the consonant phonemes of ancient Biblical Hebrew; in particular, the letters ⟨ ח, ע, ש ⟩ could each mark two different phonemes. After a sound shift the letters ח , ע could only mark one phoneme, but (except in Samaritan Hebrew) ש still marked two. The old Babylonian vocalization system wrote

4360-515: The 7th century BCE, and most likely occurred after the loss of Hebrew /χ, ʁ/ c. 200 BCE. It is known to have occurred in Hebrew by the 2nd century CE. After a certain point this alternation became contrastive in word-medial and final position (though bearing low functional load ), but in word-initial position they remained allophonic. This is evidenced both by the Tiberian vocalization's consistent use of word-initial spirants after

4469-602: The Canaanite languages the shifts */ð/ > /z/ , */θʼ/ and */ɬʼ/ > /sʼ/ , widespread reduction of diphthongs, and full assimilation of non-final /n/ to the following consonant if word final, i.e. בת /bat/ from *bant. There is also evidence of a rule of assimilation of /j/ to the following coronal consonant in pre-tonic position, shared by Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic. Typical Canaanite words in Hebrew include: גג "roof" שלחן "table" חלון "window" ישן "old (thing)" זקן "old (person)" and גרש "expel". Morphological Canaanite features in Hebrew include

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4578-518: The Four). This view was supported in the early twentieth century by Paul Kretschmer in his book Die Entstehung der Koine (1901), while Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Antoine Meillet , based on the intense Ionic elements of the Koine – σσ instead of ττ and ρσ instead of ρρ ( θάλασσα – θάλαττα , 'sea'; ἀρσενικός – ἀρρενικός , 'potent, virile') – considered Koine to be

4687-789: The Greek alphabet transcription of the Hebrew biblical text contained in the Secunda (3rd century CE, likely a copy of a preexisting text from before 100 BCE ). In the 7th and 8th centuries CE various systems of vocalic notation were developed to indicate vowels in the biblical text. The most prominent, best preserved, and the only system still in use, is the Tiberian vocalization system, created by scholars known as Masoretes around 850 CE. There are also various extant manuscripts making use of less common vocalization systems ( Babylonian and Palestinian ), known as superlinear vocalizations because their vocalization marks are placed above

4796-733: The Israelites established a unified kingdom in Canaan at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, which later split into the kingdom of Israel in the north and the kingdom of Judah in the south after a disputed succession. In 722 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel and some members of the upper class escaped to Judah. In 586 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed Judah . The Judahite upper classes were exiled and Solomon's Temple

4905-843: The Near East, and a derivation from the root עבר ‎ "to pass", alluding to crossing over the Jordan River. Jews also began referring to Hebrew as לשון הקדש ‎ "the Holy Tongue" in Mishnaic Hebrew. The term Classical Hebrew may include all pre-medieval dialects of Hebrew, including Mishnaic Hebrew, or it may be limited to Hebrew contemporaneous with the Hebrew Bible. The term Biblical Hebrew refers to pre-Mishnaic dialects (sometimes excluding Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew). The term Biblical Hebrew may or may not include extra-biblical texts, such as inscriptions (e.g.

5014-496: The New Testament , W.F. Howard argues that the heavy use of the historical present in Herodotus and Thucydides , compared with the relatively infrequent usage by Polybius and Xenophon was evidence that heavy use of this verb tense is a feature of vernacular Koine, but other scholars have argued that the historical present can be a literary form to "denote semantic shifts to more prominent material." The term patristic Greek

5123-483: The Paleo-Hebrew script, while the later books were written directly in the later Assyrian script. Some Qumran texts written in the Assyrian script write the tetragrammaton and some other divine names in Paleo-Hebrew, and this practice is also found in several Jewish-Greek biblical translations. While spoken Hebrew continued to evolve into Mishnaic Hebrew , A number of regional "book-hand" styles were put into use for

5232-542: The Phoenician script were "a curving to the left of the downstrokes in the "long-legged" letter-signs... the consistent use of a Waw with a concave top, [and an] x-shaped Taw." The oldest inscriptions in Paleo-Hebrew script are dated to around the middle of the 9th century BCE, the most famous being the Mesha Stele in the Moabite language (which might be considered a dialect of Hebrew). The ancient Hebrew script

5341-557: The Proto-Semitic sibilant *s 1 , transcribed with šin and traditionally reconstructed as * /ʃ/ , had been originally * /s/ while another sibilant *s 3 , transcribed with sameḵ and traditionally reconstructed as /s/ , had been initially /ts/ ; later on, a push-type chain shift changed *s 3 /ts/ to /s/ and pushed s 1 /s/ to /ʃ/ in many dialects (e.g. Gileadite ) but not others (e.g. Ephraimite), where *s 1 and *s 3 merged into /s/ . Hebrew, as spoken in

5450-487: The Qumran tradition showing the most liberal use of vowel letters. The Masoretic text mostly uses vowel letters for long vowels, showing the tendency to mark all long vowels except for word-internal /aː/ . In the Qumran tradition, back vowels are usually represented by ⟨ ו ⟩ whether short or long. ⟨ י ⟩ is generally used for both long [iː] and [eː] ( אבילים , מית ), and final [iː]

5559-508: The Qumran type. Presumably, the vowels of Biblical Hebrew were not indicated in the original text, but various sources attest to them at various stages of development. Greek and Latin transcriptions of words from the biblical text provide early evidence of the nature of Biblical Hebrew vowels. In particular, there is evidence from the rendering of proper nouns in the Koine Greek Septuagint (3rd–2nd centuries BCE ) and

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5668-501: The Roman period, e.g.: Καλήμερον, ἦλθες; Bono die, venisti? Good day, you came? Ἐὰν θέλεις, ἐλθὲ μεθ' ἡμῶν. Si vis, veni mecum . If you want, come with us. Ποῦ; Ubi? Where? Πρὸς φίλον ἡμέτερον Λύκιον. Ad amicum nostrum Lucium. To our friend Lucius. Τί γὰρ ἔχει; Quid enim habet? Indeed, what does he have? What is it with him? Ἀρρωστεῖ. Aegrotat. He's sick. Finally,

5777-486: The Samaritan tradition, with vowels absent in some traditions color-coded. The following sections present the vowel changes that Biblical Hebrew underwent, in approximate chronological order. Proto-Semitic is the ancestral language of all the Semitic languages , and in traditional reconstructions possessed 29 consonants; 6 monophthong vowels, consisting of three qualities and two lengths, */a aː i iː u uː/ , in which

5886-538: The Tiberian system; for instance, the Sephardic tradition's distinction between qamatz gadol and qatan is likely pre-Tiberian. However, the only orthographic system used to mark vowels is the Tiberian vocalization. The phonology as reconstructed for Biblical Hebrew is as follows: The phonetic nature of some Biblical Hebrew consonants is disputed. The so-called "emphatics" were likely pharyngealized , but possibly velarized. The pharyngealization of emphatic consonants

5995-556: The Tiberian tradition /ħ ʕ h ʔ r/ cannot be geminate; historically first /r ʔ/ degeminated, followed by /ʕ/ , /h/ , and finally /ħ/ , as evidenced by changes in the quality of the preceding vowel. The vowel system of Hebrew has changed considerably over time. The following vowels are those reconstructed for the earliest stage of Hebrew, those attested by the Secunda, those of the various vocalization traditions ( Tiberian and varieties of Babylonian and Palestinian ), and those of

6104-560: The above imply that those characteristics survived within Koine, which in turn had countless variations in the Greek-speaking world. Biblical Koine refers to the varieties of Koine Greek used in Bible translations into Greek and related texts. Its main sources are: There has been some debate to what degree Biblical Greek represents the mainstream of contemporary spoken Koine and to what extent it contains specifically Semitic substratum features. These could have been induced either through

6213-486: The beginning (phrase) Book of Genesis Bereshit (parashah) , the first weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading Beresheet and Beresheet 2 , both lunar landers by SpaceIL "Bereishit", a song by Blue Fringe "Berashith", a 1902 essay by Aleister Crowley See also [ edit ] Bereshit Rabbah , the midrash about the Book of Genesis Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah ,

6322-647: The common language in the north, in Galilee and Samaria . Hebrew remained in use in Judah, but the returning exiles brought back Aramaic influence, and Aramaic was used for communicating with other ethnic groups during the Persian period. Alexander the Great conquered the province in 332 BCE, beginning the period of Hellenistic (Greek) domination. During the Hellenistic period , Judea became independent under

6431-414: The creation and evolution of Koine Greek throughout the entire Hellenistic and Roman eras of history until the start of the Middle Ages. The linguistic roots of the Common Greek dialect had been unclear since ancient times. During the Hellenistic period , most scholars thought of Koine as the result of the mixture of the four main Ancient Greek dialects, " ἡ ἐκ τῶν τεττάρων συνεστῶσα " (the composition of

6540-403: The dry environment of Egypt, and the survival of the Hebrew Bible may be attributed to scribal determination in preserving the text through copying. No manuscript of the Hebrew Bible dates to before 400 BCE, although two silver rolls (the Ketef Hinnom scrolls ) from the seventh or sixth century BCE show a version of the Priestly Blessing . Vowel and cantillation marks were added to

6649-619: The early Monarchic Period . This stage is also known as Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew, and is the oldest stratum of Biblical Hebrew. The oldest known artifacts of Archaic Biblical Hebrew are various sections of the Tanakh , including the Song of Moses ( Exodus 15) and the Song of Deborah ( Judges 5). Biblical poetry uses a number of distinct lexical items, for example חזה for prose ראה 'see', כביר for גדול 'great'. Some have cognates in other Northwest Semitic languages, for example פעל 'do' and חָרוּץ 'gold' which are common in Canaanite and Ugaritic. Grammatical differences include

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6758-469: The early 19th century, where renowned scholars conducted a series of studies on the evolution of Koine throughout the entire Hellenistic period and Roman Empire . The sources used on the studies of Koine have been numerous and of unequal reliability. The most significant ones are the inscriptions of the post-Classical periods and the papyri , for being two kinds of texts which have authentic content and can be studied directly. Other significant sources are

6867-420: The early 20th century some scholars argued that the use of the historical present tense in Mark was due to the influence of Aramaic , but this theory fell out of favor in the 1960s. Another group of scholars believed the historical present tense was used to heighten the dramatic effect, and this interpretation was favored in the New American Bible translation. In Volume II of the 1929 edition of A Grammar of

6976-472: The effect of the law of attenuation whereby /a/ in closed unstressed syllables became /i/ . All of these systems together are used to reconstruct the original vocalization of Biblical Hebrew. At an early stage, in documents written in the paleo-Hebrew script, words were divided by short vertical lines and later by dots, as reflected by the Mesha Stone, the Siloam inscription, the Ophel inscription, and paleo-Hebrew script documents from Qumran. Word division

7085-473: The end of the Bronze Age . The Northwest Semitic languages, including Hebrew, differentiated noticeably during the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), although in its earliest stages Biblical Hebrew was not highly differentiated from Ugaritic and the Canaanite of the Amarna letters . Hebrew developed during the latter half of the second millennium BCE between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea , an area known as Canaan . The Deuteronomic history says

7194-545: The esoteric doctrine of the universe or parts of it Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Bereshit . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bereshit&oldid=1254231917 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Articles containing Biblical Hebrew-language text Short description

7303-412: The first millennium BCE ( יין = /ˈjajin/ ). The word play in Amos 8 :1–2 כְּלוּב קַ֫יִץ... בָּא הַקֵּץ may reflect this: given that Amos was addressing the population of the Northern Kingdom, the vocalization *קֵיץ would be more forceful. Other possible Northern features include use of שֶ- 'who, that', forms like דֵעָה 'to know' rather than דַעַת and infinitives of certain verbs of

7412-567: The form עֲשוֹ 'to do' rather than עֲשוֹת . The Samaria ostraca also show שת for standard שנה 'year', as in Aramaic. The guttural phonemes /ħ ʕ h ʔ/ merged over time in some dialects. This was found in Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew, but Jerome (d. 420) attested to the existence of contemporaneous Hebrew speakers who still distinguished pharyngeals. Samaritan Hebrew also shows a general attrition of these phonemes, though /ʕ ħ/ are occasionally preserved as [ʕ] . The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, found at Khirbet Qeiyafa , dates to

7521-404: The initial stage in the fortition of the second element in the αυ/ευ diphthongs) and the loss of vowel-timing distinctions are carried through. On the other hand, Kantor argues for certain vowel qualities differing from the rest of the Koine in the Judean dialect. Although it is impossible to know the exact realizations of vowels, it is tentatively argued that the mid-vowels ε / αι and η had

7630-433: The land of Israel used a late form of the Proto-Sinaitic Alphabet (known as Proto-Canaanite when found in Israel) around the 12th century BCE, which developed into Early Phoenician and Early Paleo-Hebrew as found in the Gezer calendar ( c.  10th century BCE ). This script developed into the Paleo-Hebrew script in the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet's main differences from

7739-405: The language יהודית ‎ "Judaean, Judahite" In the Hellenistic period , Greek writings use the names Hebraios , Hebraïsti and in Mishnaic Hebrew we find עברית ‎ 'Hebrew' and לשון עברית ‎ "Hebrew language". The origin of this term is obscure; suggested origins include the biblical Eber , the ethnonyms ʿApiru , Ḫabiru, and Ḫapiru found in sources from Egypt and

7848-529: The language is referred to as Ελληνιστική Κοινή , "Hellenistic Koiné", in the sense of "Hellenistic supraregional language "). Ancient scholars used the term koine in several different senses. Scholars such as Apollonius Dyscolus (second century AD) and Aelius Herodianus (second century AD) maintained the term koine to refer to the Proto-Greek language , while others used it to refer to any vernacular form of Greek speech which differed somewhat from

7957-533: The letters. In addition, the Samaritan reading tradition is independent of these systems and was occasionally notated with a separate vocalization system. These systems often record vowels at different stages of historical development; for example, the name of the Judge Samson is recorded in Greek as Σαμψών Sampsōn with the first vowel as /a/ , while Tiberian שִמְשוֹן /ʃimʃon/ with /i/ shows

8066-403: The literary language. When Koine Greek became a language of literature by the first century BC, some people distinguished two forms: written as the literary post-classical form (which should not be confused with Atticism ), and vernacular as the day-to-day vernacular . Others chose to refer to Koine as "the dialect of Alexandria " or "Alexandrian dialect" ( ἡ Ἀλεξανδρέων διάλεκτος ), or even

8175-430: The long vowels occurred only in open syllables; and two diphthongs */aj aw/ . The stress system of Proto-Semitic is unknown but it is commonly described as being much like the system of Classical Latin or the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic : If the penultimate (second last) syllable is light (has a short vowel followed by a single consonant), stress goes on the antepenult (third to last); otherwise, it goes on

8284-702: The main of the Greek language. S. J. Thackeray, in A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint (1909), wrote that only the five books of the Pentateuch , parts of the Book of Joshua and the Book of Isaiah may be considered "good Koine". One issue debated by scholars is whether and how much the translation of the Pentateuch influenced the rest of the Septuagint, including

8393-460: The masculine plural marker -ם , first person singular pronoun אנכי , interrogative pronoun מי , definite article ה- (appearing in the first millennium BCE), and third person plural feminine verbal marker -ת . Biblical Hebrew as preserved in the Hebrew Bible is composed of multiple linguistic layers. The consonantal skeleton of the text is the most ancient, while the cantillation and modern vocalization are later additions reflecting

8502-676: The modern Samaritan Hebrew reading tradition. The vowel system of Biblical Hebrew changed over time and is reflected differently in the ancient Greek and Latin transcriptions, medieval vocalization systems, and modern reading traditions. Biblical Hebrew had a typical Semitic morphology with nonconcatenative morphology , arranging Semitic roots into patterns to form words. Biblical Hebrew distinguished two genders (masculine, feminine), three numbers (singular, plural, and uncommonly, dual). Verbs were marked for voice and mood , and had two conjugations which may have indicated aspect and/or tense (a matter of debate). The tense or aspect of verbs

8611-566: The more southern Canaanite dialects (like Hebrew) that the Egyptians were in contact with, so that there is no contradiction within this argument. Originally, the Hebrew letters ⟨ ח ⟩ and ⟨ ע ⟩ each represented two possible phonemes, uvular and pharyngeal, with the distinction unmarked in Hebrew orthography. However the uvular phonemes /χ/ ח and /ʁ/ ע merged with their pharyngeal counterparts /ħ/ ח and /ʕ/ ע respectively c. 200 BCE. This

8720-454: The musical motifs used in formal recitation of the text. While the Babylonian and Palestinian reading traditions are extinct, various other systems of pronunciation have evolved over time, notably the Yemenite , Sephardi , Ashkenazi , and Samaritan traditions. Modern Hebrew pronunciation is also used by some to read biblical texts. The modern reading traditions do not stem solely from

8829-509: The northern Kingdom of Israel, known as Israelian Hebrew , shows phonological, lexical, and grammatical differences from southern dialects. The northern dialect spoken around Samaria shows a more frequent simplification of /aj/ into /eː/ as attested by the Samaria ostraca (8th century BCE), e.g. ין (= /jeːn/ < */jajn/ 'wine'), while the southern or Judean dialect instead adds in an epenthetic vowel /i/ , added halfway through

8938-426: The notion of meeting and gathering of men, without any particular character. Therefore, etymologizing this word could be needless, or even misleading, when it could guide to false meanings, for example that ἐκκλησία is a name used for the people of God, Israel. The authors of the New Testament follow the Septuagint translations for over half their quotations from the Old Testament. The " historical present " tense

9047-616: The official language of Israel . Currently, Classical Hebrew is generally taught in public schools in Israel and Biblical Hebrew forms are sometimes used in Modern Hebrew literature, much as archaic and biblical constructions are used in Modern English literature. Since Modern Hebrew contains many biblical elements, Biblical Hebrew is fairly intelligible to Modern Hebrew speakers. The primary source of Biblical Hebrew material

9156-459: The older consonantal layer of the Bible between 600 CE and the beginning of the 10th century. The scholars who preserved the pronunciation of the Bibles were known as the Masoretes . The most well-preserved system that was developed, and the only one still in religious use, is the Tiberian vocalization, but both Babylonian and Palestinian vocalizations are also attested. The Palestinian system

9265-457: The opening of ε . Influence of the Aramaic substrate could have also caused confusion between α and ο , providing further evidence for the back vowel realization. The following texts show differences from Attic Greek in all aspects – grammar, morphology, vocabulary and can be inferred to show differences in phonology. The following comments illustrate the phonological development within

9374-494: The penult. Koine Greek Koine Greek included styles ranging from conservative literary forms to the spoken vernaculars of the time. As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek , which then turned into Modern Greek . Literary Koine was the medium of much post-classical Greek literary and scholarly writing, such as the works of Plutarch and Polybius . Koine

9483-399: The period generally designated as Koine Greek, a great deal of phonological change occurred. At the start of the period, the pronunciation was virtually identical to Ancient Greek phonology , whereas in the end, it had much more in common with Modern Greek phonology . The three most significant changes were the loss of vowel length distinction, the replacement of the pitch accent system by

9592-534: The period of Koine. The phonetic transcriptions are tentative and are intended to illustrate two different stages in the reconstructed development, an early conservative variety still relatively close to Classical Attic, and a somewhat later, more progressive variety approaching Modern Greek in some respects. The following excerpt, from a decree of the Roman Senate to the town of Thisbae in Boeotia in 170 BC,

9701-438: The post-Classical period of Greek is defined as beginning with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, when cultures under Greek sway in turn began to influence the language. The passage into the next period, known as Medieval Greek , is sometimes dated from the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine the Great in 330 AD, but often only from the end of late antiquity . The post-Classical period of Greek thus refers to

9810-505: The practice of translating closely from Biblical Hebrew or Aramaic originals, or through the influence of the regional non-standard Greek spoken by originally Aramaic-speaking Hellenized Jews . Some of the features discussed in this context are the Septuagint's normative absence of the particles μέν and δέ , and the use of ἐγένετο to denote "it came to pass". Some features of Biblical Greek which are thought to have originally been non-standard elements eventually found their way into

9919-460: The proto-Semitic phoneme */θ/ , which shifted to /ʃ/ in most dialects of Hebrew, may have been retained in the Hebrew of the Transjordan (however, there is evidence that שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת 's Proto-Semitic ancestor had initial consonant š (whence Hebrew /ʃ/ ), contradicting this theory; for example, שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת 's proto-Semitic ancestor has been reconstructed as * š u(n)bul-at- . ); or that

10028-448: The purpose of Torah manuscripts and occasionally other literary works, distinct from the calligraphic styles used mainly for private purposes. The Mizrahi and Ashkenazi book-hand styles were later adapted to printed fonts after the invention of the printing press. The modern Hebrew alphabet , also known as the Assyrian or Square script, appears a descendant of the Aramaic alphabet. The Phoenician script had dropped five characters by

10137-527: The region of the Hellenistic world. In that respect, the varieties of Koine spoken in the Ionian colonies of Anatolia (e.g. Pontus , cf. Pontic Greek ) would have more intense Ionic characteristics than others and those of Laconia and Cyprus would preserve some Doric and Arcadocypriot characteristics, respectively. The literary Koine of the Hellenistic age resembles Attic in such a degree that it

10246-541: The roman colonia of Aelia Capitolina . Hebrew after the Second Temple period evolved into Mishnaic Hebrew, which ceased being spoken and developed into a literary language around 200 CE. Hebrew continued to be used as a literary and liturgical language in the form of Medieval Hebrew . The revival of the Hebrew language as a vernacular began in the 19th century, culminating in Modern Hebrew becoming

10355-521: The rule in Mishnaic Hebrew. In all Jewish reading traditions /ɬ/ and /s/ have merged completely; however in Samaritan Hebrew /ɬ/ has instead merged with /ʃ/ . Allophonic spirantization of /b ɡ d k p t/ to [v ɣ ð x f θ] (known as begadkefat spirantization) developed sometime during the lifetime of Biblical Hebrew under the influence of Aramaic. This probably happened after the original Old Aramaic phonemes /θ, ð/ disappeared in

10464-517: The second millennium BCE, but disappear almost totally afterwards. Mimation is absent in singular nouns, but is often retained in the plural, as in Hebrew. The Northwest Semitic languages formed a dialect continuum in the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), with Phoenician and Aramaic on each extreme. Hebrew is classed with Phoenician in the Canaanite subgroup, which also includes Ammonite , Edomite , and Moabite . Moabite might be considered

10573-429: The spirantization of Γ , with palatal allophone before front-vowels and a plosive allophone after nasals, and β . φ, θ and χ still preserve their ancient aspirated plosive values, while the unaspirated stops π, τ, κ have perhaps begun to develop voiced allophones after nasals. Initial aspiration has also likely become an optional sound for many speakers of the popular variety. Monophthongization (including

10682-536: The time. They initially indicated only consonants, but certain letters, known by the Latin term matres lectionis , became increasingly used to mark vowels . In the Middle Ages, various systems of diacritics were developed to mark the vowels in Hebrew manuscripts; of these, only the Tiberian vocalization is still widely used. Biblical Hebrew possessed a series of emphatic consonants whose precise articulation

10791-427: The translation of Isaiah. Another point that scholars have debated is the use of ἐκκλησία ekklēsía as a translation for the Hebrew קָהָל qāhāl . Old Testament scholar James Barr has been critical of etymological arguments that ekklēsía refers to "the community called by God to constitute his People". Kyriakoula Papademetriou explains: He maintains that ἐκκλησία is merely used for designating

10900-707: The universal dialect of its time. Modern classicists have often used the former sense. Koine Greek arose as a common dialect within the armies of Alexander the Great . Under the leadership of Macedon , their newly formed common variety was spoken from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt to the Seleucid Empire of Mesopotamia . It replaced existing ancient Greek dialects with an everyday form that people anywhere could understand. Though elements of Koine Greek took shape in Classical Greece ,

11009-465: The use of זה , זוֹ , and זוּ as relative particles, negative בל , and various differences in verbal and pronominal morphology and syntax. Later pre-exilic Biblical Hebrew (such as is found in prose sections of the Pentateuch, Nevi'im , and some Ketuvim ) is known as 'Biblical Hebrew proper' or 'Standard Biblical Hebrew'. This is dated to the period from the 8th to the 6th century BCE. In contrast to Archaic Hebrew, Standard Biblical Hebrew

11118-429: Was also attested in later Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic (see Eruvin 53b). In Samaritan Hebrew, /ʔ ħ h ʕ/ have generally all merged, either into /ʔ/ , a glide /w/ or /j/ , or by vanishing completely (often creating a long vowel), except that original /ʕ ħ/ sometimes have reflex /ʕ/ before /a ɒ/ . Geminate consonants are phonemically contrastive in Biblical Hebrew. In the Secunda /w j z/ are never geminate. In

11227-587: Was also influenced by the conjunction ו , in the so-called waw-consecutive construction. Unlike modern Hebrew, the default word order for biblical Hebrew was verb–subject–object , and verbs were inflected for the number, gender, and person of their subject. Pronominal suffixes could be appended to verbs (to indicate object ) or nouns (to indicate possession ), and nouns had special construct states for use in possessive constructions. The earliest written sources refer to Biblical Hebrew as שפת כנען ‎ "the language of Canaan". The Hebrew Bible also calls

11336-901: Was destroyed. Later, the Achaemenid Empire made Judah a province, Yehud Medinata , and permitted the Judahite exiles to return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem . According to the Gemara , Hebrew of this period was similar to Imperial Aramaic ; Hanina bar Hama said that God sent the exiled Jews to Babylon because "[the Babylonian] language is akin to the Leshon Hakodesh " in the Talmud ( Pesahim 87b ). Aramaic became

11445-591: Was in continuous use until the early 6th century BCE, the end of the First Temple period. In the Second Temple Period the Paleo-Hebrew script gradually fell into disuse, and was completely abandoned among the Jews after the failed Bar Kochba revolt . The Samaritans retained the ancient Hebrew alphabet, which evolved into the modern Samaritan alphabet . By the end of the First Temple period

11554-467: Was not used in Phoenician inscriptions; however, there is no direct evidence for biblical texts being written without word division, as suggested by Nahmanides in his introduction to the Torah. Word division using spaces was commonly used from the beginning of the 7th century BCE for documents in the Aramaic script. In addition to marking vowels, the Tiberian system also uses cantillation marks, which serve to mark word stress, semantic structure, and

11663-481: Was preserved mainly in piyyutim , which contain biblical quotations. Biblical Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language from the Canaanite subgroup . As Biblical Hebrew evolved from the Proto-Semitic language it underwent a number of consonantal mergers parallel with those in other Canaanite languages. There is no evidence that these mergers occurred after the adaptation of the Hebrew alphabet. As

11772-615: Was retained by the Samaritans , who use the descendent Samaritan script to this day. However, the Imperial Aramaic alphabet gradually displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet after the Babylonian captivity , and it became the source for the current Hebrew alphabet . These scripts lack letters to represent all of the sounds of Biblical Hebrew, although these sounds are reflected in Greek and Latin transcriptions/translations of

11881-473: Was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. The Hebrew language is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when it was almost identical to Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period , which ended in the siege of Jerusalem (70 CE) . It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was spoken until

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