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161-625: Joshua ( / ˈ dʒ ɒ ʃ u ə / ), also known as Yehoshua ( Hebrew : יְהוֹשֻׁעַ ‎ Yəhōšuaʿ , ‍ Tiberian: Yŏhōšuaʿ, lit. ' Yahweh is salvation'), Jehoshua , or Josue , functioned as Moses ' assistant in the books of Exodus and Numbers , and later succeeded Moses as leader of the Israelite tribes in the Book of Joshua of the Hebrew Bible . His name was Hoshea ( הוֹשֵׁעַ ‎ Hōšēaʿ , ‍ lit. 'Save')

322-400: A false god . He cites Exodus 32:4–5 as evidence: He [Aaron] took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a festival to the L ORD ( Yahweh )." Importantly, there

483-453: A "golden calf" and he declared, "'This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!'" ( Exodus 32:1–4 ). Aaron built an altar before the calf and proclaimed the next day to be a feast to yhwh (again in order to stall for time). "Early next day, the people offered up burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being ; they sat down to eat and drink, and then rose to dance." ( Exodus 32:6 ) yhwh told Moses what

644-685: A Hebrew form. Medieval Hebrew added 6421 words to (Modern) Hebrew. The approximate number of new lexical items in Israeli is 17,000 (cf. 14,762 in Even-Shoshan 1970 [...]). With the inclusion of foreign and technical terms [...], the total number of Israeli words, including words of biblical, rabbinic and medieval descent, is more than 60,000. In Israel, Modern Hebrew is currently taught in institutions called Ulpanim (singular: Ulpan). There are government-owned, as well as private, Ulpanim offering online courses and face-to-face programs. Modern Hebrew

805-598: A blessing upon you today." The golden calf is mentioned in Nehemiah 9:16–21 . But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and they did not obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them, even when they cast for themselves an image of

966-503: A calf and said, 'This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt', or when they committed awful blasphemies. Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. For forty years you sustained them in

1127-595: A century ago, was fluent enough in this idiom to be able to follow the Mishna Berurah without any trouble." Hebrew has been revived several times as a literary language, most significantly by the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement of early and mid-19th-century Germany. In the early 19th century, a form of spoken Hebrew had emerged in the markets of Jerusalem between Jews of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate for commercial purposes. This Hebrew dialect

1288-573: A combination of the Tetragrammaton with the Hebrew noun יְשׁוּעָה ( Modern: yəšūʿa , Tiberian: yăšūʿā ), meaning "salvation"; derived from the Hebrew root ישׁע ( y-š-ʿ ), meaning "to save/help/deliver". Other theophoric names sharing a similar meaning can also be found throughout the Hebrew Bible , such as that of the son of David אֱלִישׁוּעַ ( ʾĔlīšūaʿ ), whose name means "My El ( God )

1449-608: A corollary Hebrew ceased to function as a spoken language around the same time. Moshe Zvi Segal , Joseph Klausner and Ben Yehuda are notable exceptions to this view. During the latter half of the 20th century, accumulating archaeological evidence and especially linguistic analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls has disproven that view. The Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered in 1946–1948 near Qumran revealed ancient Jewish texts overwhelmingly in Hebrew, not Aramaic. The Qumran scrolls indicate that Hebrew texts were readily understandable to

1610-579: A distinct style of philosophical Hebrew. This is used in the translations made by the Ibn Tibbon family. (Original Jewish philosophical works were usually written in Arabic. ) Another important influence was Maimonides , who developed a simple style based on Mishnaic Hebrew for use in his law code, the Mishneh Torah . Subsequent rabbinic literature is written in a blend between this style and

1771-594: A gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904–1914 Second Aliyah that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the more highly organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When the British Mandate of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion. A constructed modern language with

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1932-468: A literary language down through the Byzantine period from the 4th century CE. The exact roles of Aramaic and Hebrew remain hotly debated. A trilingual scenario has been proposed for the land of Israel. Hebrew functioned as the local mother tongue with powerful ties to Israel's history, origins and golden age and as the language of Israel's religion; Aramaic functioned as the international language with

2093-413: A man approached Moses after he gave a talk and asked him, "Who is the most knowledgeable person on earth?" Moses responded, "That would be me!" So Allah revealed to Moses that he should not have said this and there was in fact someone who was more knowledgeable than him. Moses was commanded to travel to meet this man, named Al-Khaḍir, at the junction of the two seas. Islamic scholars have argued this could be

2254-742: A modern version of the ancient language was led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda . Modern Hebrew ( Ivrit ) became the main language of the Yishuv in Palestine , and subsequently the official language of the State of Israel . Estimates of worldwide usage include five million speakers in 1998, and over nine million people in 2013. After Israel, the United States has the largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans ). Modern Hebrew

2415-701: A return to King Rehoboam . He makes two golden calves and places them in Bethel and Dan . He erects the two calves in what he figures (in some interpretations) as substitutes for the cherubim built by King Solomon in Jerusalem . However, in the Antiquities of the Jews (v. VIII: 8), which is taken from the Septuagint , Josephus states: "He made two golden heifers, and built two little temples for them,

2576-548: A set of dialects evolving out of Late Biblical Hebrew and into Mishnaic Hebrew, thus including elements from both but remaining distinct from either. By the start of the Byzantine Period in the 4th century CE, Classical Hebrew ceased as a regularly spoken language, roughly a century after the publication of the Mishnah, apparently declining since the aftermath of the catastrophic Bar Kokhba revolt around 135 CE. In

2737-668: A spoken language, it continued to be used as a lingua franca among scholars and Jews traveling in foreign countries. After the 2nd century CE when the Roman Empire exiled most of the Jewish population of Jerusalem following the Bar Kokhba revolt , they adapted to the societies in which they found themselves, yet letters, contracts, commerce, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry and laws continued to be written mostly in Hebrew, which adapted by borrowing and inventing terms. After

2898-529: A throne. This reading suggests that the golden calf was merely an alternative to the Ark of the Covenant or the cherubim upon which Yahweh was enthroned. The reason for this complication may be understood as The documentary hypothesis can be used to further understand the layers of this narrative: it is plausible that the earliest story of the golden calf was preserved by E (Israel source) and originated in

3059-472: A truly Semitic vocabulary and written appearance, although often European in phonology , was to take its place among the current languages of the nations. While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous (because Hebrew was the holy language of the Torah and therefore some thought that it should not be used to discuss everyday matters), many soon understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of

3220-558: A vernacular in Judea until it was displaced by Aramaic, probably in the 3rd century CE. Certain Sadducee , Pharisee , Scribe , Hermit, Zealot and Priest classes maintained an insistence on Hebrew, and all Jews maintained their identity with Hebrew songs and simple quotations from Hebrew texts. While there is no doubt that at a certain point, Hebrew was displaced as the everyday spoken language of most Jews, and that its chief successor in

3381-518: Is 8198, of which some 2000 are hapax legomena (the number of Biblical Hebrew roots, on which many of these words are based, is 2099). The number of attested Rabbinic Hebrew words is less than 20,000, of which (i) 7879 are Rabbinic par excellence, i.e. they did not appear in the Old Testament (the number of new Rabbinic Hebrew roots is 805); (ii) around 6000 are a subset of Biblical Hebrew; and (iii) several thousand are Aramaic words which can have

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3542-408: Is a single calf in this narrative. While the people refer to it as representative of the "gods", this is a possessive form of the word Elohim ( אֱלֹהֶיךָ ‎ elo'hecha , from אֱלֹהִים ‎), which is a name of God as well as general word for "gods". While a reference to singular god does not necessarily imply Yahweh worship, the word usually translated as 'lord' is Yahweh יהוה ‎ in

3703-428: Is also referred to in the journey Musa (Moses) took with him to find Khidr . And remember when Moses said to his young assistant, "I will never give up until I reach the junction of the two seas, even if I travel for ages". But when they finally reached the point where the seas met, they forgot their salted fish, and it made its way into the sea, slipping away wondrously. He replied, "Do you remember when we rested by

3864-447: Is also the first part of the same verse, "Whoso keeps the fig-tree shall eat the fruit thereof". That "honor shall uphold the humble in spirit" is proved by Joshua's victory over Amalek . Not the sons of Moses —as Moses himself had expected—but Joshua was appointed as Moses' successor. Moses was shown how Joshua reproved that Othniel . "God would speak to Moses face to face, like someone would speak to his friend. Then he would return to

4025-818: Is also true in some Slavic languages following the Eastern Orthodox tradition (e.g. " Иисус Навин ", Iisús Navín , in Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian, but not Czech). Joshua was a major figure in the events of the Exodus. He was charged by Moses with selecting and commanding a militia group for their first battle after exiting Egypt, against the Amalekites in Rephidim , in which they were victorious. He later accompanied Moses when he ascended biblical Mount Sinai to commune with God, visualize God's plan for

4186-482: Is believed to be based on the Semitic root ʕ-b-r ( ע־ב־ר ‎), meaning "beyond", "other side", "across"; interpretations of the term "Hebrew" generally render its meaning as roughly "from the other side [of the river/desert]"—i.e., an exonym for the inhabitants of the land of Israel and Judah , perhaps from the perspective of Mesopotamia , Phoenicia or Transjordan (with the river referred to being perhaps

4347-661: Is considered a type of Jesus Christ. The story of Joshua and the Canaanite kings is also alluded to in the 2 Meqabyan , a book considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church . Joshua ( Arabic : يُوشَعُ بْنُ نُونٍ , Yūšaʿ ibn Nūn [juːʃaʕ ibn nuːn] , is not mentioned by name in the Quran , but his name appears in other Islamic literature . In the Quranic account of

4508-539: Is derived from Old French Ebrau , via Latin from the Ancient Greek Ἑβραῖος ( hebraîos ) and Aramaic 'ibrāy , all ultimately derived from Biblical Hebrew Ivri ( עברי ), one of several names for the Israelite ( Jewish and Samaritan ) people ( Hebrews ). It is traditionally understood to be an adjective based on the name of Abraham 's ancestor, Eber , mentioned in Genesis 10:21 . The name

4669-561: Is derived from the name of the alphabet used , in contrast to Ivrit , meaning the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . Hebrew ceased to be a regular spoken language sometime between 200 and 400 CE, as it declined in the aftermath of the unsuccessful Bar Kokhba revolt , which was carried out against the Roman Empire by the Jews of Judaea . Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among societal elites and immigrants. Hebrew survived into

4830-567: Is fighting to stop businesses from using only English signs to market their services. In 2012, a Knesset bill for the preservation of the Hebrew language was proposed, which includes the stipulation that all signage in Israel must first and foremost be in Hebrew, as with all speeches by Israeli officials abroad. The bill's author, MK Akram Hasson , stated that the bill was proposed as a response to Hebrew "losing its prestige" and children incorporating more English words into their vocabulary. Hebrew

4991-492: Is grouped with the other "warriors of the faith." Baroque composer Georg Frideric Handel composed the oratorio Joshua in 1747. Composer Franz Waxman composed an oratorio Joshua in 1959. Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed Josue (H.404 and H.404 a), an oratorio for soloists, double chorus, double orchestra and continuo, in 1680. According to legend, Mormon pioneers in the United States first referred to

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5152-553: Is marked on the 26th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar . Thousands make the pilgrimage to the Tomb of Joshua at Kifl Haris near Nablus , West Bank , on the preceding night. Yom HaAliyah ( Aliyah Day; Hebrew : יום העלייה ) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan , as per the opening clause of the Yom HaAliyah Law, as a Zionist celebration of "Jewish immigration to

5313-565: Is mentioned as Yusha' bin Nun and is the attendant to Moses during his meeting with Khidr . This hadith episode was used by scholars for the exegesis of Quran scripture chapter Al-Kahf about the journey of Moses. In the literary tradition of medieval Europe, Joshua is known as one of the Nine Worthies . In The Divine Comedy Joshua's spirit appears to Dante in the Heaven of Mars, where he

5474-411: Is no text on this object. In July 2008, Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa that he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating from around 3,000 years ago. Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said that the inscription was "proto-Canaanite" but cautioned that "[t]he differentiation between the scripts, and between

5635-515: Is one of several languages for which the constitution of South Africa calls to be respected in their use for religious purposes. Also, Hebrew is an official national minority language in Poland , since 6 January 2005. Hamas has made Hebrew a compulsory language taught in schools in the Gaza Strip. Golden Calf Bull worship was common in many cultures. In Egypt , whence according to

5796-598: Is primarily located in Exodus ;32:4 where "gods" is plural despite the construction of a single calf. The episode of the golden calf is also mentioned in the New Testament , by the apostle Paul , in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 , as a warning against idolatry. "Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were... ." Scholars are divided on other intertextual references to

5957-582: Is salvation". " Jesus " is the English derivative of the Greek transliteration of "Yehoshua" via Latin. In the Septuagint , all instances of the word "Yehoshua" are rendered as " Ἰησοῦς " (Iēsûs), the closest Greek pronunciation of the Imperial Aramaic : יֵשׁוּעַ Yēšūaʿ . Thus, in modern Greek, Joshua is called "Jesus son of Naue" ( τοῦ Ναυή , tû Nauḗ ) to differentiate him from Jesus . This

6118-748: Is the official language of the State of Israel, while pre-revival forms of Hebrew are used for prayer or study in Jewish and Samaritan communities around the world today; the latter group utilizes the Samaritan dialect as their liturgical tongue. As a non- first language , it is studied mostly by non-Israeli Jews and students in Israel, by archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations , and by theologians in Christian seminaries . The modern English word "Hebrew"

6279-707: Is the 13th century BCE which was a time of widespread city-destruction, but with a few exceptions ( Hazor , Lachish ) the destroyed cities are not the ones the Bible associates with Joshua, and the ones it does associate with him show little or no sign of even being occupied at the time. Given its lack of historicity, Carolyn Pressler in her commentary for the Westminster Bible Companion series suggests that readers of Joshua should give priority to its theological message ("what passages teach about God") and be aware of what these would have meant to audiences in

6440-841: Is the famous Moabite Stone , written in the Moabite dialect; the Siloam inscription , found near Jerusalem , is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Archaic Hebrew include the ostraca found near Lachish , which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE. In its widest sense, Biblical Hebrew refers to the spoken language of ancient Israel flourishing between c.  1000 BCE and c.  400 CE . It comprises several evolving and overlapping dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are often named after important literary works associated with them. Sometimes

6601-405: Is the primary official language of the State of Israel. As of 2013 , there are about 9 million Hebrew speakers worldwide, of whom 7 million speak it fluently. Currently, 90% of Israeli Jews are proficient in Hebrew, and 70% are highly proficient. Some 60% of Israeli Arabs are also proficient in Hebrew, and 30% report having a higher proficiency in Hebrew than in Arabic. In total, about 53% of

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6762-547: Is used to pronounce the Hebrew Bible; however, properly it should be distinguished from the historical Biblical Hebrew of the 6th century BCE, whose original pronunciation must be reconstructed. Tiberian Hebrew incorporates the scholarship of the Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who added vowel points and grammar points to the Hebrew letters to preserve much earlier features of Hebrew, for use in chanting

6923-650: The Chayei Adam in Hebrew, as opposed to Yiddish , as a guide to Halacha for the " average 17-year-old" (Ibid. Introduction 1). Similarly, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan 's purpose in writing the Mishnah Berurah was to "produce a work that could be studied daily so that Jews might know the proper procedures to follow minute by minute". The work was nevertheless written in Talmudic Hebrew and Aramaic, since, "the ordinary Jew [of Eastern Europe] of

7084-504: The yucca brevifolia agave plant as the Joshua tree because its branches reminded them of Joshua stretching his arms upward in supplication, guiding the travelers westward. Joshua is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of snake, Joshua's blind snake ( Trilepida joshuai ), the holotype of which was collected at Jericó, Antioquia , Colombia . The annual commemoration of Joshua's yahrtzeit (the anniversary of his death)

7245-651: The Canaanite languages , it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until after 200 CE and as the liturgical language of Judaism (since the Second Temple period ) and Samaritanism . The language was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, and is the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival . It is the only Canaanite language, as well as one of only two Northwest Semitic languages, with

7406-462: The Euphrates , Jordan or Litani ; or maybe the northern Arabian Desert between Babylonia and Canaan ). Compare the word Habiru or cognate Assyrian ebru , of identical meaning. One of the earliest references to the language's name as " Ivrit " is found in the prologue to the Book of Sirach , from the 2nd century BCE. The Hebrew Bible does not use the term "Hebrew" in reference to

7567-572: The Gospel of Matthew . (See the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis or Language of Jesus for more details on Hebrew and Aramaic in the gospels.) The term "Mishnaic Hebrew" generally refers to the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud , excepting quotations from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects organize into Mishnaic Hebrew (also called Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which

7728-593: The Israelites , the bull was widely worshipped as the sacred bull and the creature of El . When Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments ( Exodus 24:12–18 ), he left the Israelites for forty days and nights . The Israelites feared that he would not return and demanded that Aaron make them "a god who shall go before us". Aaron told the Israelites' to bring their golden earrings and ornaments in order to stall for time, constructed

7889-598: The Land of Canaan among the twelve tribes of Israel, planted sea squill ( Hebrew : חצוב ) to mark off the butts and bounds of tribal properties. Moreover, Joshua, on dividing the land of Canaan amongst the tribes of Israel, made the tribes agree to ten conditions, the most important of which being the common use of the forests as pasture for cattle, and the common right of fishing in the Sea of Tiberias . Natural springs were to be used for drinking and laundry by all tribes, although

8050-595: The Land of Israel as the basis for the existence of the State of Israel ", and secondarily "to mark the date of entry into the Land of Israel", i.e. to commemorate Joshua having led the Israelites across the Jordan River into the Land of Israel while carrying the Ark of the Covenant . According to a Samaritan tradition, noted in 1877, the tombs of Joshua and Caleb were in Kifl Haris. According to Joshua 24:30 ,

8211-682: The Maccabean Revolt (167–160 BCE) and the emergence of the Hasmonean kingdom , the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), and the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE). The nationalist significance of Hebrew manifested in various ways throughout this period. Michael Owen Wise notes that "Beginning with the time of the Hasmonean revolt [...] Hebrew came to the fore in an expression akin to modern nationalism. A form of classical Hebrew

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8372-536: The Second Aliyah , it replaced a score of languages spoken by Jews at that time. Those languages were Jewish dialects of local languages, including Judaeo-Spanish (also called "Judezmo" and "Ladino"), Yiddish , Judeo-Arabic and Bukhori (Tajiki), or local languages spoken in the Jewish diaspora such as Russian , Persian and Arabic . The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals along

8533-461: The Talmud , Joshua in his book enumerated only those towns on the frontier. When he was "old and well advanced in years", Joshua convened the elders and chiefs of the Israelites and exhorted them to have no fellowship with the native population, because it could lead them to be unfaithful to God. At a general assembly of the clans at Shechem , he took leave of the people, admonishing them to be loyal to their God, who had been so mightily manifested in

8694-554: The Upper Galilee with the burial site of Joshua. Joshua is believed by some Muslims to be buried on Joshua's Hill in the Beykoz district of Istanbul . Alternative traditional sites for his tomb are situated in Israel (the Shia shrine at Al-Nabi Yusha' ), Jordan (An-Nabi Yusha' bin Noon, a Sunni shrine near the city of Al-Salt ), Iran (Historical cemetery of Takht e Foolad in Esfahan) and Iraq (the Nabi Yusha' shrine of Baghdad ). A local tradition combining three versions of three different Yushas, including biblical Joshua, places

8855-446: The fall of Jerusalem to the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE, and possibly after the return from the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE. In the 1930s Martin Noth made a sweeping criticism of the usefulness of the Book of Joshua for history. Noth was a student of Albrecht Alt , who emphasized form criticism and the importance of etiology . Alt and Noth posited a peaceful movement of the Israelites into various areas of Canaan, contra

9016-399: The literary and liturgical language into everyday spoken language . However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe by different grammar and style, in the writings of people like Ahad Ha'am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization activity into

9177-408: The medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy , rabbinic literature , intra-Jewish commerce, and Jewish poetic literature . The first dated book printed in Hebrew was published by Abraham Garton in Reggio ( Calabria , Italy) in 1475. With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, the Hebrew language experienced a full-scale revival as a spoken and literary language. The creation of

9338-403: The tomb of Joshua is in Timnath-heres , and Jewish tradition also places the tombs of Joshua's father, Nun, an his companion, Caleb , at that site, which is identified by Orthodox Jews with Kifl Haris. Thousands make the pilgrimage to the tombs on the annual commemoration of Joshua's death , 26th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. It seems that old Jewish traditions once associated Meron in

9499-454: The 1980s in the USSR , Hebrew studies reappeared due to people struggling for permission to go to Israel ( refuseniks ). Several of the teachers were imprisoned, e.g. Yosef Begun , Ephraim Kholmyansky , Yevgeny Korostyshevsky and others responsible for a Hebrew learning network connecting many cities of the USSR. Standard Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, was based on Mishnaic spelling and Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation. However,

9660-535: The 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New words and expressions were adapted as neologisms from the large corpus of Hebrew writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by Ben-Yehuda) and older Aramaic and Latin. Many new words were either borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially English, Russian, German, and French. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921 (along with English and Arabic), and then in 1948 became an official language of

9821-579: The Aramaized Rabbinic Hebrew of the Talmud. Hebrew persevered through the ages as the main language for written purposes by all Jewish communities around the world for a large range of uses—not only liturgy, but also poetry, philosophy, science and medicine, commerce, daily correspondence and contracts. There have been many deviations from this generalization such as Bar Kokhba 's letters to his lieutenants, which were mostly in Aramaic, and Maimonides' writings, which were mostly in Arabic; but overall, Hebrew did not cease to be used for such purposes. For example,

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9982-419: The Biblical account. William Foxwell Albright questioned the "tenacity" of etiologies, which were key to Noth's analysis of the campaigns in Joshua. Archaeological evidence in the 1930s showed that the city of Ai , an early target for conquest in the putative Joshua account, had existed and been destroyed, but in the 22nd century BCE. Some alternate sites for Ai have been proposed which would partially resolve

10143-503: The British Mandate who at the turn of the 20th century were arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. After the establishment of Israel, it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language . The results of Ben-Yehuda's lexicographical work were published in a dictionary ( The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew , Ben-Yehuda Dictionary ). The seeds of Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by

10304-412: The Exodus narrative, the Israelites had recently come, the Apis was a comparable object of worship, which some believe the Hebrews were reviving in the wilderness. Alternatively, some believe Yahweh , the national god of the Israelites, was associated with or pictured as a sacred bull through the process of religious assimilation and syncretism . Among the Canaanites , some of whom would become

10465-416: The Great conquered Babylon, he allowed the Jewish people to return from captivity. In time, a local version of Aramaic came to be spoken in Israel alongside Hebrew. By the beginning of the Common Era , Aramaic was the primary colloquial language of Samarian , Babylonian and Galileean Jews, and western and intellectual Jews spoke Greek , but a form of so-called Rabbinic Hebrew continued to be used as

10626-437: The Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes inherited a biblical text whose letters were considered too sacred to be altered, so their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters. The Syriac alphabet , precursor to the Arabic alphabet , also developed vowel pointing systems around this time. The Aleppo Codex , a Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic pointing, was written in the 10th century, likely in Tiberias, and survives into

10787-454: The Israeli population speaks Hebrew as a native language, while most of the rest speak it fluently. In 2013 Hebrew was the native language of 49% of Israelis over the age of 20, with Russian , Arabic , French , English , Yiddish and Ladino being the native tongues of most of the rest. Some 26% of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and 12% of Arabs reported speaking Hebrew poorly or not at all. Steps have been taken to keep Hebrew

10948-453: The Israelite tabernacle , and receive the Ten Commandments . Joshua was with Moses when he descended from the mountain, heard the Israelites' celebrations around the Golden Calf , and broke the tablets bearing the words of the commandments. Similarly, in the narrative which refers to Moses being able to speak with God in his tent of meeting outside the camp, Joshua is seen as custodian of the tent ('tabernacle of meeting') when Moses returned to

11109-472: The Israelite encampment. However, when Moses returned to the mountain to re-create the tablets recording the Ten Commandments, Joshua was not present, as the biblical text states "no man shall come up with you". Later, Joshua was identified as one of the twelve spies sent by Moses to explore and report on the land of Canaan , and only he and Caleb gave an encouraging report, a reward for which would be that only these two of their entire generation would enter

11270-410: The Israelite tribes in the conquest of Canaan, and allocated lands to the tribes. According to biblical chronology , Joshua lived some time in the Bronze Age . According to Joshua 24:29 Joshua died at the age of 110. Joshua holds a position of respect among Muslims , who also see him as the leader of the faithful following the death of Moses. In Islam, it is also believed that Yusha bin Nun (Joshua)

11431-400: The Israelites and that he was afraid of being killed, he explained "Son of my mother, indeed this people thought me to be weak, and they were about to kill me. So do not let the enemies gloat over me, and do not take me with the wrongdoing lot." Moses realized his helplessness in the situation, and both prayed to God for forgiveness. According to Qur’anic sources Moses then questioned Samiri for

11592-455: The Israelites that Aaron was to lead them. The Israelites grew restless, since Moses had not returned to them, and after thirty days, a man the Quran names as Samiri raised doubts among the Israelites. Samiri claimed that Moses had forsaken the Israelites and ordered his followers among the Israelites to light a fire and bring him all the jewelry and gold ornaments they had. Samiri fashioned

11753-452: The Israelites were up to back in camp, that they had turned aside quickly from the way which God commanded them and he was going to destroy them and start a new people from Moses. Moses pleaded that they should be spared "And yhwh renounced the punishment planned for God’s people." ( Exodus 32:11–14 ) Moses went down from the mountain; upon seeing the calf, he became angry and threw down the two Tablets of Stone , breaking them. Moses burnt

11914-465: The Jews , the Conservative rabbi and scholar Louis Ginzberg wrote that the worship of the golden calf was the disastrous consequence for Israel who took a mixed multitude in their exodus from Egypt. Had not the mixed multitude joined them, Israel would not have been misled to worship this molten idol. The form of the calf itself came from a magical virtue of an ornament leaf with the image of

12075-687: The Jews to draw a clear distinction between themselves, who knew and accepted the sovereignty of God, and those nations of the world which did not. In the modern era, religious Jews still pray the Aliyah inspired Aleinu three times daily, including on the High Holidays . The Aleinu prayer begins: It is our duty to praise the Master of all, to exalt the Creator of the Universe, who has not made us like

12236-581: The Kingdom of Israel (North) of identifying Yahweh with a bull. The cult of the bull was rooted in Palestine from pre-Israelite times, as attested by the archaeological find of a bronze bull in the sanctuary of the acropolis of Jasor dated to the late Bronze Age. A bronze bull has also been found in an Israelite sanctuary east of Tel Dothan , in the mountains of Samaria, dated to around the 11th century BCE. Albertz says that when we read in 1 Kings 12:28 that

12397-557: The L ORD to cause the Sun and Moon to stand still, so that he could finish the battle in daylight. According to the text, the Sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. This event is most notable because "There has been no day like it before or since, when the L ORD heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel." The L ORD also fought for the Israelites in this battle, for he hurled huge hailstones from

12558-477: The Middle East was the closely related Aramaic language, then Greek , scholarly opinions on the exact dating of that shift have changed very much. In the first half of the 20th century, most scholars followed Abraham Geiger and Gustaf Dalman in thinking that Aramaic became a spoken language in the land of Israel as early as the beginning of Israel's Hellenistic period in the 4th century BCE, and that as

12719-575: The Near Eastern Late Bronze Age , although recent excavations at Jericho have questioned this. The story of the conquest perhaps represents the nationalist propaganda of the eighth century BCE kings of Judah and their claims to the territory of the Kingdom of Israel , incorporated into an early form of Joshua written late in the reign of king Josiah (reigned 640–609 BCE). The book was probably revised and completed after

12880-576: The Prophets and Kings that Joshua was one of the twelve spies, and Muslim scholars believe that the two believing spies referred to in the Quran are Joshua and Caleb. Joshua was exceptional among the Israelites for being one of the few faithful followers of Allah. Significant events from Joshua's Muslim narratives include the crossing of the Jordan river and the conquest of Bait al-Maqdis . The traditional Muslim scholastic commentaries has narrated

13041-674: The Talmud, the Gemara , generally comments on the Mishnah and Baraitot in two forms of Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew survived as a liturgical and literary language in the form of later Amoraic Hebrew, which occasionally appears in the text of the Gemara, particularly in the Jerusalem Talmud and the classical aggadah midrashes . Hebrew was always regarded as the language of Israel's religion, history and national pride, and after it faded as

13202-460: The Talmud, various regional literary dialects of Medieval Hebrew evolved. The most important is Tiberian Hebrew or Masoretic Hebrew, a local dialect of Tiberias in Galilee that became the standard for vocalizing the Hebrew Bible and thus still influences all other regional dialects of Hebrew. This Tiberian Hebrew from the 7th to 10th century CE is sometimes called "Biblical Hebrew" because it

13363-498: The [following] hadīth, 'The sun was never detained for any human, except for Joshua during those days in which he marched towards the Holy House [of Jerusalem]'." Muslim literature includes traditions of Joshua not found in the Hebrew Bible . Joshua is credited with being present at Moses's death and literature records that Moses's garments were with Joshua at the time of his departure. In Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim , Joshua

13524-488: The ability to speak the language and attempted to promote its use. According to the Jerusalem Talmud , Megillah 1:9: "Rebbi Jonathan from Bet Guvrrin said, four languages are appropriate that the world should use them, and they are these: The Foreign Language (Greek) for song, Latin for war, Syriac for elegies, Hebrew for speech. Some are saying, also Assyrian (Hebrew script) for writing." The later section of

13685-478: The above phases of spoken Classical Hebrew are simplified into "Biblical Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 10th century BCE to 2nd century BCE and extant in certain Dead Sea Scrolls) and "Mishnaic Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE and extant in certain other Dead Sea Scrolls). However, today most Hebrew linguists classify Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew as

13846-561: The average Jew, and that the language had evolved since Biblical times as spoken languages do. Recent scholarship recognizes that reports of Jews speaking in Aramaic indicate a multilingual society, not necessarily the primary language spoken. Alongside Aramaic, Hebrew co-existed within Israel as a spoken language. Most scholars now date the demise of Hebrew as a spoken language to the end of the Roman period , or about 200 CE. It continued on as

14007-547: The beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British Palestine. At the time, members of the Old Yishuv and a very few Hasidic sects, most notably those under the auspices of Satmar , refused to speak Hebrew and spoke only Yiddish. In the Soviet Union, the use of Hebrew, along with other Jewish cultural and religious activities,

14168-532: The bull which is made by Aaron. The devotion of Israel to this worship of the calf was partly explained by a circumstance at passing through the Red Sea , when they beheld the most distinct creature about the Celestial Throne which is the resemblance of ox, then they thought it was an ox who had helped God in their journey from Egypt. After seeing Hur , son of Miriam , who was carelessly murdered by

14329-563: The camp. But his attendant, Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not leave the tent. Joshua never moved from the tent". Didn't Joshua leave the tent to eat, sleep or attend to his needs? This praise shows that Joshua had complete faith in Moses, the Tzaddik . One who has this faith is cognizant of the tzaddik in everything he does; he remains steadfastly with the tzaddik whatever he does. According to rabbinic tradition , Joshua, when dividing

14490-576: The city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that, through the Greeks and Etruscans , later became the Latin alphabet of ancient Rome . The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels , and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places in which later Hebrew spelling requires them. Numerous older tablets have been found in

14651-602: The composition of 1 Maccabees in archaizing Hebrew, Hasmonean coinage under John Hyrcanus (134-104 BCE), and coins from both the Great Revolt and Bar Kokhba Revolt featuring exclusively Hebrew and Palaeo-Hebrew script inscriptions. This deliberate use of Hebrew and Paleo-Hebrew script in official contexts, despite limited literacy, served as a symbol of Jewish nationalism and political independence. The Christian New Testament contains some Semitic place names and quotes. The language of such Semitic glosses (and in general

14812-524: The conquest of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb are referenced, but not named, as two God-fearing men on whom God "had bestowed His grace". They said, "Moses, there is a fearsome people in this land. We will not go there until they leave. If they leave, then we will enter." Yet the two men whom God had blessed among those who were afraid said, "Go in to them through the gate and when you go in you will overcome them. If you are true believers, put your trust in God. Joshua

14973-407: The country" (i.e., "a period of tremendous violence"). He gives particular weight to what were then recent digs at Hazor by Yigael Yadin . In rabbinic literature Joshua is regarded as a faithful, humble, deserving, wise man. Biblical verses illustrative of these qualities and of their reward are applied to him. "He that waits on his master shall be honored" is construed as a reference to Joshua, as

15134-480: The creation of the golden calf; Samiri justified his actions by stating that he had thrown the dust of the ground upon which Gabriel had tread on into the fire because his soul had suggested it to him. Moses informed him that he would be banished and that they would burn the golden calf and spread its dust into the sea. Moses ordered seventy delegates to repent to God and pray for forgiveness. The delegates traveled alongside Moses to Mount Sinai, where they witnessed

15295-568: The dialects of Classical Hebrew that functioned as a living language in the land of Israel. A transitional form of the language occurs in the other works of Tannaitic literature dating from the century beginning with the completion of the Mishnah. These include the halachic Midrashim ( Sifra , Sifre , Mekhilta etc.) and the expanded collection of Mishnah-related material known as the Tosefta . The Talmud contains excerpts from these works, as well as further Tannaitic material not attested elsewhere;

15456-533: The discrepancy in dates, but these sites have not been widely accepted. In 1951 Kathleen Kenyon showed that City IV at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) was destroyed at the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2100–1550 BCE), not during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1550–1200 BCE). Kenyon argued that the early Israelite campaign could not be historically corroborated, but rather explained as an etiology of

15617-513: The earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew had Yiddish as their native language and often introduced calques from Yiddish and phono-semantic matchings of international words. Despite using Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation as its primary basis, modern Israeli Hebrew has adapted to Ashkenazi Hebrew phonology in some respects, mainly the following: The vocabulary of Israeli Hebrew is much larger than that of earlier periods. According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann : The number of attested Biblical Hebrew words

15778-590: The early 6th century BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered the ancient Kingdom of Judah , destroying much of Jerusalem and exiling its population far to the east in Babylon . During the Babylonian captivity , many Israelites learned Aramaic, the closely related Semitic language of their captors. Thus, for a significant period, the Jewish elite became influenced by Aramaic. After Cyrus

15939-436: The finding of what he claims to be the oldest known Hebrew inscription, a curse tablet found at Mount Ebal , dated from around 3200 years ago. The presence of the Hebrew name of god , Yahweh, as three letters, Yod-Heh-Vav (YHV), according to the author and his team meant that the tablet is Hebrew and not Canaanite. However, practically all professional archeologists and epigraphers apart from Stripling's team claim that there

16100-711: The first Middle East printing press, in Safed (modern Israel), produced a small number of books in Hebrew in 1577, which were then sold to the nearby Jewish world. This meant not only that well-educated Jews in all parts of the world could correspond in a mutually intelligible language, and that books and legal documents published or written in any part of the world could be read by Jews in all other parts, but that an educated Jew could travel and converse with Jews in distant places, just as priests and other educated Christians could converse in Latin. For example, Rabbi Avraham Danzig wrote

16261-414: The first and most important of them, and forsook God to worship idols. Saint Paul calls lust and covetousness idolatry. Whenever a man loves anything more than he loves God, he is guilty of idolatry." The incident of the worship of the golden calf is narrated in the second chapter of the Quran , named Al-Baqarah , and other works of Islamic literature . The Quran narrates that after they refused to enter

16422-550: The first monarch of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam, had introduced the worship of golden calves in Bethel and Dan, we must interpret that what Jeroboam really does is to return to the traditional Israelite religion, as opposed to the syncretistic innovations introduced by David and Solomon in centralizing the cult in Jerusalem. According to Michael Coogan , it seems that the golden calf was not an idol for another god, and thus

16583-406: The generic term for these passages is Baraitot . The dialect of all these works is very similar to Mishnaic Hebrew. About a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew fell into disuse as a spoken language. By the third century CE, sages could no longer identify the Hebrew names of many plants mentioned in the Mishnah. Only a few sages, primarily in the southern regions, retained

16744-493: The gold into a golden calf along with the dust on which the angel Gabriel had trodden, which he proclaimed to be the God of Moses and the God who had guided them out of Egypt. There is a sharp contrast between the Quranic and the biblical accounts of the prophet Aaron's actions. The Quran mentions that Aaron attempted to guide and warn the people from worshipping the golden calf. However, the Israelites refused to stop until Moses had returned. The righteous separated themselves from

16905-419: The golden calf in a fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on water, and forced the Israelites to drink it. When Moses asked him, Aaron admitted to collecting the gold and throwing it into the fire; he said it came out as a calf. ( Exodus 32:21–24 ) The Bible records that the tribe of Levi did not worship the golden calf. Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, “Whoever is for YHWH, come here!” Then all

17066-462: The golden calf in the Torah , notably the ordeal of the bitter water in the Book of Numbers 5:17–24. Specific elements of the ritual, such as the powder mixed into water and being forced to drink, echo similar language in the aftermath of Moses punishing Israel at the end of the narrative. According to 1 Kings 12:26–30 , after Jeroboam establishes the northern Kingdom of Israel , he contemplates

17227-554: The golden calf that the greater part of the people lost the right to priesthood, except the tribe of Levi as the only tribe who remained faithful to God and did not partake in this sinful deed. According to Nachman of Breslov , everyone contributed to the building of the Tabernacle , and the contribution that each Jew made was his or her good points. Thus, the Tabernacle was built by the good points found in each person; this

17388-491: The holy tongue ' or ' the tongue [of] holiness ' ) since ancient times. The language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Bible , but as Yehudit ( transl.  ' Judean ' ) or Səpaṯ Kəna'an ( transl.  "the language of Canaan " ). Mishnah Gittin 9:8 refers to the language as Ivrit , meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit , meaning Assyrian , which

17549-587: The language of the Hebrew people; its later historiography, in the Book of Kings , refers to it as יְהוּדִית Yehudit " Judahite (language)". Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages . Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages. Hebrew was the spoken language in the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the period from about 1200 to 586 BCE. Epigraphic evidence from this period confirms

17710-465: The language spoken by Jews in scenes from the New Testament) is often referred to as "Hebrew" in the text, although this term is often re-interpreted as referring to Aramaic instead and is rendered accordingly in recent translations. Nonetheless, these glosses can be interpreted as Hebrew as well. It has been argued that Hebrew, rather than Aramaic or Koine Greek, lay behind the composition of

17871-471: The language. The revival of the Hebrew language as a mother tongue was initiated in the late 19th century by the efforts of Ben-Yehuda. He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 immigrated to Palestine , then a part of the Ottoman Empire . Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora " shtetl " lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making

18032-499: The languages themselves in that period, remains unclear", and suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic period , the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon . Classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew , the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after

18193-540: The location and a representation of the Israelite settlement. In 1955, G. Ernest Wright discussed the correlation of archaeological data to the early Israelite campaigns, which he divided into three phases per the Book of Joshua. He pointed to two sets of archaeological findings that "seem to suggest that the biblical account is in general correct regarding the nature of the late thirteenth and twelfth-eleventh centuries in

18354-467: The matter, but preserved the negativity associated with the calf. Alternatively it could be said that there is no golden calf story in the J source, and if it is correct that the Jeroboam story was the original as stated by Friedman, then it is unlikely that the golden calf events as described in Exodus occurred at all. Friedman states that the smashing of the Ten Commandments by Moses when he beheld

18515-441: The men of Levi rallied to him. He said to them, "Thus says yhwh , the God of Israel: Each of you put sword on thigh, go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay sibling, neighbor, and kin." The men of Levi did as Moses had bidden; and some three thousand of the people fell that day. And Moses said, "Dedicate yourselves to yhwh this day—for each of you has been against blood relations—that [God] may bestow

18676-399: The midst of them. As a witness of their promise to serve God, Joshua set up a great stone under an oak by the sanctuary of God. Soon afterward he died, at the age of 110, and was buried at Timnath-heres , in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. The prevailing scholarly view is that the Book of Joshua is not a factual account of historical events. The apparent setting of Joshua

18837-473: The miracle which shown by Joshua as a sign that he is a prophet in Islam . Ibn Kathir gave commentary of Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal Hadith that during the siege of Jerusalem, Yoshua prayed to God to withheld the sun until he won, which resulted in the day did not cease, and the sun only set after the Israelites under Joshua manage to capture the city. al-Jalalayn says, " Ahmad [b. Hanbal] reported in his Musnad,

18998-403: The nations of the world and has not placed us like the families of the earth, who has not designed our destiny to be like theirs, nor our lot like that of all their multitude. Most modern Bibles translate Hebrews 4:8–10 to identify Jesus as a better Joshua, as Joshua led Israel into the rest of Canaan , but Jesus leads the people of God into "God's rest". Among the early Church Fathers , Joshua

19159-727: The newly declared State of Israel . Hebrew is the most widely spoken language in Israel today. In the Modern Period, from the 19th century onward, the literary Hebrew tradition revived as the spoken language of modern Israel, called variously Israeli Hebrew , Modern Israeli Hebrew , Modern Hebrew , New Hebrew , Israeli Standard Hebrew , Standard Hebrew and so on. Israeli Hebrew exhibits some features of Sephardic Hebrew from its local Jerusalemite tradition but adapts it with numerous neologisms, borrowed terms (often technical) from European languages and adopted terms (often colloquial) from Arabic. The literary and narrative use of Hebrew

19320-412: The northern kingdom. When E and J (Judah source) were combined after the fall of northern kingdom, "the narrative was reworked to portray the northern kingdom in a negative light," and the worship of the calf was depicted as "polytheism, with the suggestion of a sexual orgy" (see Exodus 32:6). When compiling the narratives, P (a later Priest source from Jerusalem) may have minimized Aaron's guilt in

19481-884: The northern part of the Sinai Peninsula between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea , the southern part of Sinai where the Rea Sea splits into the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba , or the Bosporus in Istanbul which is a strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara . Joshua was regarded by some classical scholars as the prophetic successor to Moses ( موسى ) Al-Tabari relates in his History of

19642-452: The one in the city Bethel , and the other in Dan ...and he put the heifers into both the little temples in the aforementioned cities." Richard Elliott Friedman says "at a minimum we can say that the writer of the golden calf account in Exodus seems to have taken the words that were traditionally ascribed to Jeroboam and placed them in the mouths of the people." Friedman believes that the story

19803-486: The original, so at least it cannot be ruled out. In the chronology of Exodus the commandment against the creation of graven images had not yet been given to the people when they pressed upon Aaron to help them make the calf, and that such behavior was not yet explicitly outlawed. Another understanding of the golden calf narrative is that the calf was meant to be the pedestal of Yahweh. In Near Eastern art, gods were often depicted standing on an animal, rather than seated on

19964-535: The other being Aramaic , still spoken today. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew , with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity . For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lashon Hakodesh ( לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶש , lit.   '

20125-416: The pagans. God informed Moses that He had tested the Israelites in his absence and that they had failed by worshipping the golden calf. Returning to the Israelites in great anger, Moses asked Aaron why he had not stopped the Israelites when he had seen them worshipping the golden calf. The Quran reports that Aaron stated that he did not act due to the fear that Moses would blame him for causing divisions among

20286-431: The people following his rebuke of their ingratitude action to God, Aaron was willing rather to take a sin upon himself to make an idol than to cast the burden of an evil deed upon the people if they commit so terrible sin of killing a priest and prophet among them. Also there would be among the Israelites no priestly caste , and the nation would have been a nation of priests only if Israel had not sinned through worshiping

20447-416: The people, "It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt." One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan . And this thing became a sin; the people came to worship the one at Bethel and went as far as Dan to worship the other. His concern was that the tendency to offer sacrifices in Jerusalem, which is in the southern Kingdom of Judah , would lead to

20608-643: The present day. It is perhaps the most important Hebrew manuscript in existence. During the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain , important work was done by grammarians in explaining the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew; much of this was based on the work of the grammarians of Classical Arabic . Important Hebrew grammarians were Judah ben David Hayyuj , Jonah ibn Janah , Abraham ibn Ezra and later (in Provence ), David Kimhi . A great deal of poetry

20769-635: The primary language of use, and to prevent large-scale incorporation of English words into the Hebrew vocabulary. The Academy of the Hebrew Language of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem currently invents about 2,000 new Hebrew words each year for modern words by finding an original Hebrew word that captures the meaning, as an alternative to incorporating more English words into Hebrew vocabulary. The Haifa municipality has banned officials from using English words in official documents, and

20930-402: The promised land, God decreed that as punishment the Israelites would wander for forty years. Moses continued to lead the Israelites to Mount Sinai for divine guidance. According to Islamic literature, God ordered Moses to fast for forty nights before receiving the guidance for the Israelites. When Moses completed the fasts, he approached God for guidance. During this time, Moses had instructed

21091-522: The promised land. According to Joshua 1:1, God appointed Joshua to succeed Moses as leader of the Israelites along with giving him a blessing of invincibility during his lifetime. The first part of the book of Joshua covers the period when he led the conquest of Canaan . At the Jordan River , the waters parted, as they had for Moses at the Red Sea . The first battle after the crossing of the Jordan

21252-451: The region was Old Aramaic . Hebrew was extinct as a colloquial language by late antiquity , but it continued to be used as a literary language, especially in Spain, as the language of commerce between Jews of different native languages, and as the liturgical language of Judaism, evolving various dialects of literary Medieval Hebrew , until its revival as a spoken language in the late 19th century. In May 2023, Scott Stripling published

21413-431: The region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example, Proto-Sinaitic . It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back to Egyptian hieroglyphs , though the phonetic values are instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is called Canaanite , and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from that of Egyptian. One ancient document

21574-674: The rest of the Middle East; and eventually Greek functioned as another international language with the eastern areas of the Roman Empire. William Schniedewind argues that after waning in the Persian period, the religious importance of Hebrew grew in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and cites epigraphical evidence that Hebrew survived as a vernacular language – though both its grammar and its writing system had been substantially influenced by Aramaic. According to another summary, Greek

21735-418: The rock? That is when I forgot the fish. None made me forget to mention this except Satan. And the fish made its way into the sea miraculously". Moses responded, "That is exactly what we were looking for". So they returned, retracing their footsteps. There they found a servant of Ours, to whom We had granted mercy from Us and enlightened with knowledge of Our Own. The narration collected by Bukhari reports that

21896-410: The sacrificial practices of the Israelites. Jeroboam thought to himself, "The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the L ORD in Jerusalem, they will again give their allegiance to their lord, Rehoboam king of Judah. They will kill me and return to King Rehoboam." After seeking advice, the king made two golden calves. He said to

22057-503: The seventh and sixth centuries BCE. Richard Nelson explained that the needs of the centralised monarchy favoured a single story of origins, combining old traditions of an exodus from Egypt , belief in a national god as "divine warrior," and explanations for ruined cities, social stratification and ethnic groups, and contemporary tribes. It has been argued that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value. The archaeological evidence shows that Jericho and Ai were not occupied in

22218-457: The sin of idolatry or polytheism . Shirk is the deification or worship of anyone or anything other than God ( Allah in Arabic) or more literally the establishment of "partners" placed beside God, a most serious sin. Current historiography considers that this episode was introduced into the Exodus account in the time of Josiah (late 7th century BCE) or later to discredit the custom rooted in

22379-538: The sky which killed more Canaanites than those which the Israelites slaughtered. From there on, Joshua was able to lead the Israelites to several victories, securing much of the land of Canaan. He presided over the Israelite gatherings at Gilgal and Shiloh which allocated land to the tribes of Israel (Joshua 14:1–5 and 18:1–10), and the Israelites rewarded him with the Ephraimite city of Timnath-heres or Timnath-serah, where he settled (Joshua 19:50). According to

22540-518: The son of Nun , of the tribe of Ephraim , but Moses called him "Yehoshua" (translated as "Joshua" in English), the name by which he is commonly known in English. According to the Bible, he was born in Egypt prior to the Exodus . The Hebrew Bible identifies Joshua as one of the twelve spies of Israel sent by Moses to explore the land of Canaan . In Numbers 13:1 and after the death of Moses, he led

22701-493: The southern villages of Judea." In other words, "in terms of dialect geography, at the time of the tannaim Palestine could be divided into the Aramaic-speaking regions of Galilee and Samaria and a smaller area, Judaea, in which Rabbinic Hebrew was used among the descendants of returning exiles." In addition, it has been surmised that Koine Greek was the primary vehicle of communication in coastal cities and among

22862-456: The speech between him and God but refused to believe until they had witnessed God with their sight. As punishment, God struck the delegates with lightning and killed them with a violent earthquake. Moses prayed to God for their forgiveness. God forgave and resurrected them and they continued on their journey. In the Islamic view, the calf-worshipers' sin had been shirk ( Arabic : شرك ),

23023-474: The spoken language of the Russian Jews, should be treated as their only national language, while Hebrew was to be treated as a foreign language. Hebrew books and periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the libraries, although liturgical texts were still published until the 1930s. Despite numerous protests, a policy of suppression of the teaching of Hebrew operated from the 1930s on. Later in

23184-574: The tomb inside a cave in the Tripoli Mountains, overlooking the coastal town of el-Minyieh near Tripoli, Lebanon . Hebrew language Hebrew ( Hebrew alphabet : עִבְרִית ‎, ʿĪvrīt , pronounced [ ʔivˈʁit ] or [ ʕivˈrit ] ; Samaritan script : ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ‎ ʿÎbrit ) is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family . A regional dialect of

23345-474: The tribe to which the water course fell had the first rights. Prickly burnet ( Sarcopoterium spinosum ) and the camelthorn ( Alhagi maurorum ) could be freely collected as firewood by any member of any tribe, in any tribal territory. According to Jewish religious tradition, upon making Aliyah by crossing the Jordan River to enter the Land of Israel , Joshua composed the Aleinu prayer thanking God. This idea

23506-580: The upper class of Jerusalem , while Aramaic was prevalent in the lower class of Jerusalem, but not in the surrounding countryside. After the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century CE, Judaeans were forced to disperse. Many relocated to Galilee, so most remaining native speakers of Hebrew at that last stage would have been found in the north. Many scholars have pointed out that Hebrew continued to be used alongside Aramaic during Second Temple times, not only for religious purposes but also for nationalistic reasons, especially during revolts such as

23667-413: The widely accepted view that the earlier layers of biblical literature reflect the language used in these kingdoms. Furthermore, the content of Hebrew inscriptions suggests that the written texts closely mirror the spoken language of that time. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a spoken vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile when the predominant international language in

23828-438: The wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen. The language suggests that there are some inconsistencies in the other accounts of the Israelites and their use of the calf. As the version in Exodus and 1 Kings are written by Deuteronomistic historians based in the southern Kingdom of Judah , there is a proclivity to expose the Israelites as unfaithful. The inconsistency

23989-478: The worship of the golden calf, is really an attempt to cast into doubt the validity of Judah's central shrine, the Ark of the Covenant . "The author of E, in fashioning the golden calf story, attacked both the Israelite and Judean religious establishments." A metaphoric interpretation emphasizes the "gold" part of "golden calf" to criticize the pursuit of wealth. This usage can be found in Spanish where Mammon ,

24150-421: Was a spoken language , and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a literary language . The earlier section of the Talmud is the Mishnah that was published around 200 CE, although many of the stories take place much earlier, and were written in the earlier Mishnaic dialect. The dialect is also found in certain Dead Sea Scrolls. Mishnaic Hebrew is considered to be one of

24311-637: Was first cited in the Kol Bo of the late 14th Century. Several medieval commentators noticed that Joshua's shorter birth name, Hosea, appears in the first few verses of Aleinu in reverse acrostic: ע – עלינו, ש – שלא שם, ו – ואנחנו כורעים, ה – הוא אלוקינו. The Teshuvot HaGeonim, a Geonic responsum, discussed that Joshua composed the Aleinu because although the Israelites had made Aliyah to the Promised Land , they were surrounded by other peoples, and he wanted

24472-491: Was now a more significant written language than Aramaic within Judaea." This nationalist aspect was further emphasized during periods of conflict, as Hannah Cotton observing in her analysis of legal documents during the Jewish revolts against Rome that "Hebrew became the symbol of Jewish nationalism, of the independent Jewish State." The nationalist use of Hebrew is evidenced in several historical documents and artefacts, including

24633-629: Was revived beginning with the Haskalah movement. The first secular periodical in Hebrew, Ha-Me'assef (The Gatherer), was published by maskilim in Königsberg (today's Kaliningrad ) from 1783 onwards. In the mid-19th century, publications of several Eastern European Hebrew-language newspapers (e.g. Hamagid , founded in Ełk in 1856) multiplied. Prominent poets were Hayim Nahman Bialik and Shaul Tchernichovsky ; there were also novels written in

24794-828: Was sufficient to counteract the blemish of the golden calf. The "good points" are reflected in the "gold, silver and copper" that the Jews donated. The various colors of these metals reflect the Supernal Colors and the beauty of a person's good deeds. Justus Knecht gives two important moral points from the episode of the golden calf: 1) The Mercy of God. "The people of Israel had sinned horribly against God by their idolatry, and yet, at Moses’ intercession, He forgave them." 2) Idolatry. "The weak people were most ungrateful and faithless to God. The Lord had done such great things for them! Only forty days before, full of holy fear, they had heard His voice and had repeatedly promised obedience to His Commandments; and now they transgressed

24955-479: Was suppressed. Soviet authorities considered the use of Hebrew "reactionary" since it was associated with Zionism, and the teaching of Hebrew at primary and secondary schools was officially banned by the People's Commissariat for Education as early as 1919, as part of an overall agenda aiming to secularize education (the language itself did not cease to be studied at universities for historical and linguistic purposes ). The official ordinance stated that Yiddish, being

25116-548: Was the Battle of Jericho . Joshua led the destruction of Jericho , then moved on to Ai , a small neighboring city to the west. However, they were defeated with thirty-six Israelite deaths. The defeat was attributed to Achan taking an "accursed thing" from Jericho; and was followed by Achan and his family and animals being stoned to death to restore God's favor. Joshua then went to defeat Ai. The Israelites faced an alliance of five Amorite kings from Jerusalem , Hebron , Jarmuth , Lachish , and Eglon . At Gibeon , Joshua asked

25277-428: Was the "attendant" of Moses mentioned in the Quran before Moses meets Khidr . Joshua plays a role in Islamic literature , with significant narration in the hadith . The English name "Joshua" is a rendering of the Hebrew Yehoshua , and is mostly interpreted as " Yahweh is salvation"; although others have also alternatively interpreted it as " Yahweh is lordly". The theophoric name appears to be constructed from

25438-437: Was the language of government, Hebrew the language of prayer, study and religious texts, and Aramaic was the language of legal contracts and trade. There was also a geographic pattern: according to Bernard Spolsky , by the beginning of the Common Era, " Judeo-Aramaic was mainly used in Galilee in the north, Greek was concentrated in the former colonies and around governmental centers, and Hebrew monolingualism continued mainly in

25599-408: Was to a certain extent a pidgin . Near the end of that century the Jewish activist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda , owing to the ideology of the national revival ( שיבת ציון , Shivat Tziyon , later Zionism ), began reviving Hebrew as a modern spoken language. Eventually, as a result of the local movement he created, but more significantly as a result of the new groups of immigrants known under the name of

25760-407: Was turned into a polemic , exaggerating the throne platform decoration into idolatry , by a family of priests sidelined by Jeroboam. The declarations of Aaron's people and Jeroboam are almost identical: After making the golden calf or golden calves, both Aaron and Jeroboam celebrate festivals. Aaron builds an altar and Jeroboam ascends an altar (Exod 32:5–6; 1 Kings 12:32–33). In Legends of

25921-570: Was written, by poets such as Dunash ben Labrat , Solomon ibn Gabirol , Judah ha-Levi , Moses ibn Ezra and Abraham ibn Ezra , in a "purified" Hebrew based on the work of these grammarians, and in Arabic quantitative or strophic meters. This literary Hebrew was later used by Italian Jewish poets. The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts from Classical Greek and Medieval Arabic motivated Medieval Hebrew to borrow terminology and grammar from these other languages, or to coin equivalent terms from existing Hebrew roots, giving rise to

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