166-613: Midrash ( / ˈ m ɪ d r ɑː ʃ / ; Hebrew : מִדְרָשׁ ; pl. מִדְרָשִׁים midrashim or מִדְרָשׁוֹת midrashot ) is expansive Jewish Biblical exegesis using a rabbinic mode of interpretation prominent in the Talmud . The word itself means "textual interpretation", "study", or " exegesis ", derived from the root verb darash ( דָּרַשׁ ), which means "resort to, seek, seek with care, enquire, require". Midrash and rabbinic readings "discern value in texts, words, and letters, as potential revelatory spaces", writes
332-678: A LMLK seal , led de Vaux to identify Qumran as the City of Salt listed in Josh 15:62. The site, however, may be identified with Secacah , which is referenced in the same area as the City of Salt in the Book of Joshua 15:61. Secacah is mentioned in the Copper Scroll , and the water works of Secacah that are described in this source are consistent with those of Qumran. The excavations revealed that after
498-569: A scriptorium as well as pottery kilns and a tower. Many scholars believe the location was home to a Jewish sect , probably the Essenes . But, according to Lawrence Schiffman , the rules of the community, its heavy stress on priesthood and the Zadokite legacy, and other details indicate a Sadducean -oriented sect either distinct from or one of the various Essene groupings. Others propose non-sectarian interpretations, some of these starting with
664-412: A 2010 season). Some new discoveries have been made. Most of the small finds from the de Vaux excavations were taken back to Jerusalem to be used in later excavation reports for Qumran, but the death of Roland de Vaux brought a halt to the reports and the small finds were left to gather dust on shelves in museum backrooms. In the late 1980s, archaeologist Robert Donceel worked on the de Vaux materials in
830-685: 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
996-422: A central courtyard and a defensive tower on its north-western corner; and a secondary building to the west. The excavation revealed a complex water system that had supplied water to several stepped cisterns, some quite large, located in various parts of the site. Two of these cisterns were within the walls of the main building. Both the buildings and the water system evince signs of consistent evolution throughout
1162-595: 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
1328-661: 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
1494-579: 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
1660-410: A few dozen candidates to the population, yielding over 170 people. From 1983 to 1987 Joseph Patrich carried out archaeological surveys around Qumran and its caves. He concluded that the caves were "stores and hiding places". He found no traces of permanent tent dwellings and that any "dwelling quarters should be sought inside the wall of Khirbet Qumran, mainly on the upper floor". Patrich estimated that
1826-431: A figure of "a few tens of residents, fifty at most". Jodi Magness accepted Broshi's estimate, adding "This number accords better than lower estimates with the presence of over 1000 dining dishes in the pantry (L86)." Working from ratios of populations in other ancient settlements, Yizhar Hirschfeld estimated the population of Qumran thus: "If we use the lower value of fifteen people per dunam [1,000 m ], it emerges that in
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#17327725509171992-468: A fixed, canonical text, considered to be the authoritative and revealed word of God by the midrashist and his audience, and in which this canonical text is explicitly cited or clearly alluded to". Lieve M. Teugels, who would limit midrash to rabbinic literature, offered a definition of midrash as "rabbinic interpretation of Scripture that bears the lemmatic form", a definition that, unlike Porton's, has not been adopted by others. While some scholars agree with
2158-485: A foreshadowing of the technical sense that the rabbis later gave to the word. Since the early Middle Ages the function of much of midrashic interpretation has been distinguished from that of peshat , straight or direct interpretation aiming at the original literal meaning of a scriptural text. A definition of "midrash" repeatedly quoted by other scholars is that given by Gary G. Porton in 1981: "a type of literature, oral or written, which stands in direct relationship to
2324-573: A full report on the excavations at Qumran. In 1986 the École Biblique appointed the Belgian archaeologist Robert Donceel to the task of publishing the final results of de Vaux's excavations. Preliminary findings were presented at a conference in New York in 1992, but a final report never eventuated. According to Pauline Donceel-Voûte the final report was impossible to write, because many artifacts had been lost or corrupted (in particular, according to
2490-594: 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
2656-468: 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
2822-536: 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 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
2988-513: A local garrison. According to Lönnqvist, the technical evidence of the recording and documenting of the Qumran silver coin hoards in 2006–2007 showed that the coins came from lots, groups or batches of coins that originated in a few or one single large payment. This payment may have come from a mint, bank or an authority like the treasury of the Roman army. The new evidence refutes the possibility that
3154-443: A long philosophical discussion Jacob Neusner distinguishes three midrash processes: Numerous Jewish midrashim previously preserved in manuscript form have been published in print, including those denominated as smaller or minor midrashim. Bernard H. Mehlman and Seth M. Limmer deprecate this usage claiming that the term "minor" seems judgmental and "small" is inappropriate for midrashim some of which are lengthy. They propose instead
3320-512: A means of rewriting it in a way that both makes it more acceptable to later ethical standards and conforms more to later notions of plausibility. James L. Kugel , in The Bible as It Was (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), examines a number of early Jewish and Christian texts that comment on, expand, or re-interpret passages from the first five books of the Tanakh between
3486-509: A much greater freedom of exposition than the halakhic midrashim (midrashim on Jewish law). Aggadic expositors availed themselves of various techniques, including sayings of prominent rabbis. These aggadic explanations could be philosophical or mystical disquisitions concerning angels , demons , paradise , hell , the messiah , Satan , feasts and fasts, parables , legends, satirical assaults on those who practice idolatry , etc. Some of these midrashim entail mystical teachings. The presentation
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#17327725509173652-418: A new effort towards publishing excavation reports. He found artifacts he believed did not fit the religious settlement model, including "sophisticated glass and stoneware". In 1992 Pauline Donceel-Voute put forward the Roman villa model in an attempt to explain these artifacts. In 2002 archaeologists Minna and Kenneth Lönnqvist published their archaeological and spatial studies at Qumran bringing another view to
3818-422: A new interpretations as to the importance, chronology and significance of the coins. According to Lönnqvist, the newly dated coins in the silver coin hoards give an earliest possible burial date for the coin hoards to 52/3–66 CE, based on an interpretation of a countermark. However, the archaeological and numismatic nature of the silver coin hoard burials may suggest that the coin hoards may have been buried in
3984-548: 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
4150-668: 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
4316-580: A string of fortresses along the southeastern Judean border. Full-scale work at the site began after Roland de Vaux and Gerald Lankester Harding in 1949 excavated what became known as Cave 1, the first scroll-bearing cave. A cursory surface survey that year produced nothing of interest, but continued interest in the scrolls led to a more substantial analysis of the ruins at Qumran in 1951. This analysis yielded traces of pottery closely related to that found in Cave 1. This discovery led to intensive excavations at
4482-464: A tower or stronghold of some kind. The situation is commanding, and well adapted for defensive operations." Finn later suggested Qumran was "some ancient fort with a cistern". The British scholar Ernest William Gurney Masterman visited Qumran on several occasions between 1900 and 1901. After observing the positioning of Qumran atop a plateau overlooking the ‘Ein Feshkha Springs, he concluded
4648-472: 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
4814-558: 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
4980-518: 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
5146-644: Is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family . A regional dialect of 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
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5312-524: Is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel 's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about 1.5 km (1 mi) from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea , about 10 km (6 mi) south of the historic city of Jericho , and adjacent to the modern Israeli settlement and kibbutz of Kalya . The Hellenistic period settlement was constructed during
5478-450: Is an integral part of the site, as seen with the numerous cisterns and channels. If the large cisterns were ritual baths, the water would sit getting dirtier through ritual bathing throughout the year and was extremely infrequently replenished by the run off. The current state of analysis of the cisterns is still unresolved, but Katharina Galor suggests a mixed usage of the stepped cisterns as both ritual baths and water storage. According to
5644-611: Is derived from the root of the verb darash ( דָּרַשׁ ), which means "resort to, seek, seek with care, enquire, require", forms of which appear frequently in the Bible. The word midrash occurs twice in the Hebrew Bible: 2 Chronicles 13:22 "in the midrash of the prophet Iddo ", and 24:27 "in the midrash of the book of the kings". Both the King James Version (KJV) and English Standard Version (ESV) translate
5810-567: 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
5976-476: Is not available anywhere other than in the Torah. Targum Neophyti (Deuteronomy 30:12) and b. Baba Metzia 59b claim that this text means that Torah is no longer hidden away, but has been given to humans who are then responsible for following it. Hebrew language Hebrew ( Hebrew alphabet : עִבְרִית , ʿĪvrīt , pronounced [ ʔivˈʁit ] or [ ʕivˈrit ] ; Samaritan script : ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ʿÎbrit )
6142-510: 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. Qumran Qumran ( Hebrew : קומראן ; Arabic : خربة قمران Khirbet Qumran )
6308-449: Is such that the midrash is a simple lesson to the uninitiated, and a direct allusion, or analogy, to a mystical teaching for those educated in this area. A wealth of literature and artwork has been created in the 20th and 21st centuries by people aspiring to create "contemporary midrash". Forms include poetry, prose, Bibliodrama (the acting out of Bible stories), murals, masks, and music, among others. The Institute for Contemporary Midrash
6474-580: Is the name given to a group of tannaitic expositions on the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. These midrashim, written in Mishnaic Hebrew , clearly distinguish between the Biblical texts that they discuss, and the rabbinic interpretation of that text. They often go well beyond simple interpretation, and derive or provide support for halakha. This work is based on pre-set assumptions about
6640-573: 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 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
6806-457: 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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6972-486: 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
7138-650: 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
7304-563: The Encyclopaedia Britannica , "Midrash was initially a philological method of interpreting the literal meaning of biblical texts. In time it developed into a sophisticated interpretive system that reconciled apparent biblical contradictions, established the scriptural basis of new laws, and enriched biblical content with new meaning. Midrashic creativity reached its peak in the schools of Rabbi Ishmael and Akiba , where two different hermeneutic methods were applied. The first
7470-727: 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 is believed to be based on the Semitic root ʕ-b-r ( ע־ב־ר ), meaning "beyond", "other side", "across"; interpretations of
7636-547: 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 the widely accepted view that the earlier layers of biblical literature reflect the language used in these kingdoms. Furthermore,
7802-517: The Dead Sea Scrolls —which continued to be discovered in the nearby caves throughout his excavations . De Vaux concluded that the remains at Qumran were left by a sectarian religious community. Using his excavations as well as textual sources, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the historical accounts recorded by Pliny the Elder , Philo , and Flavius Josephus , De Vaux's conclusion was that
7968-520: 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
8134-549: The Jerusalem Temple Mount . Regarding the scrolls De Vaux cautiously stated that "manuscripts were copied in the scriptorium of Qumran... We may also suppose... that certain works were composed at Khirbet Qumran. But beyond this we cannot go." He believed that the Essenes later hid the scrolls in the nearby caves when they felt their safety was in danger. Roland de Vaux died in 1971 without having provided
8300-495: 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 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
8466-682: 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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#17327725509178632-536: 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
8798-493: The Tanna Rabbi Ishmael , which are used in the interpretation of halakha (Jewish law). The presence of words or letters which are seen to be apparently superfluous, and the chronology of events, parallel narratives or what are seen as other textual "anomalies" are often used as a springboard for interpretation of segments of Biblical text. In many cases, a handful of lines in the Biblical narrative may become
8964-669: The Written Torah and Oral Torah (spoken law and sermons), as well as non-legalistic rabbinic literature ( aggadah ) and occasionally Jewish religious laws ( halakha ), which usually form a running commentary on specific passages in the Hebrew Scripture ( Tanakh ). The word Midrash , especially if capitalized, can refer to a specific compilation of these rabbinic writings composed between 400 and 1200 CE . According to Gary Porton and Jacob Neusner , midrash has three technical meanings: The Hebrew word midrash
9130-462: 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
9296-620: 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 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
9462-543: 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
9628-607: 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 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
9794-525: The 1967 Six-Day War , Qumran has been managed by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority . Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947–1956, extensive excavations have taken place in Qumran. Nearly 900 scrolls were discovered. Most were written on parchment and some on papyrus . Cisterns , Jewish ritual baths , and cemeteries have been found, along with a dining or assembly room and debris from an upper story alleged by some to have been
9960-555: 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,
10126-611: 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
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#173277255091710292-583: The 19th century. The initial attention of the early explorers was focused on the cemetery, beginning with de Saulcy in 1851. In fact, the first excavations at Qumran (prior to the development of modern methodology) were of burials in the cemetery, conducted by Henry Poole in 1855 followed by Charles Clermont-Ganneau in 1873. Albert Isaacs , British counsel James Finn , and photographer James Graham visited Qumran in December 1856. Isaacs stated regarding Qumran's tower, "It can hardly be doubted that this formed
10458-604: 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. ' 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
10624-766: 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,
10790-503: 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
10956-404: The Donceels, some of the coins excavated by Roland de Vaux from Qumran had been lost. ) To fill the gap, the École had a synthesis of de Vaux's field notes published in 1994. This volume included several hundred photographs, 48 pages of measurement, and summary descriptions of the field diaries. An English translation of the field notes synthesis was published in 2003. Two later books, devoted to
11122-416: 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
11288-405: The Hasmonean period only about 20 people occupied the site of Qumran. Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg entered the discussion commenting on how one could feed such large numbers of community members: "Were we to accept the claim that the sect lived at Qumran for about 170 years, we would expect to find hundreds of cooking and baking ovens as well as thousands of cooking pots." The population question
11454-432: 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 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
11620-437: 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
11786-401: The Hebrew scholar Wilda Gafney . "They reimagine dominant narratival readings while crafting new ones to stand alongside—not replace—former readings. Midrash also asks questions of the text; sometimes it provides answers, sometimes it leaves the reader to answer the questions". Vanessa Lovelace defines midrash as "a Jewish mode of interpretation that not only engages the words of the text, behind
11952-407: The Iron Age, Qumran was principally in use from the Hasmonean times until some time after the destruction of the temple by Titus in 70 CE. De Vaux divided this use into three periods: De Vaux's periodization has been challenged by both Jodi Magness and Yizhar Hirschfeld. The site that de Vaux uncovered divides into two main sections: a main building , a squarish structure of two stories featuring
12118-596: The Israel Numismatic Bulletin supports his theory of a third-century CE date for the three silver coin hoards from Qumran. This Ain Hanaziv coin hoard spanned hundreds of years, starting from the Seleucid era and ended with the same kind of coins from the reign of Septimius Severus in 210. Therefore, according to Lönnqvist, claiming an earlier date for the silver hoards is untenable and contradicts
12284-431: The Israeli archaeologists Magen and Peleg, the clay found in the cisterns was used for pottery factory facilities. The construction of the Qumran aqueduct that fed the cisterns and the baths can be seen as an important chronological marker. Although there are some disagreements in this area, Stacey (2004) argues that it should be dated to around 95-90 BCE, which is during de Vaux’s Period Ib. Coins from Qumran are one of
12450-454: 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
12616-564: The Jericho pottery data, refers to cylindrical jars at Jericho, saying "[a]t Jericho, most of these jars .. come from an industrial area dating to the time of Herod". Jan Gunneweg observed that the supposed single partial parallel at Jericho – "a partly preserved rim and neck with a vertical loop handle" – is in fact not a "scroll" jar. Another one was reported found in Jordan in a later burial near Abila but no photos or drawings were published and
12782-477: 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
12948-572: The Qumran coin hoards and the museum bags where the coins were kept do not support the hypothesis that the 2nd- and 3rd-century Roman coins are intrusive in relation to the Tyrian silver. Furthermore, the new countermark that went unrecorded is apparently from 52/53 CE and the Greek letters in it do not support a date of 9/8 BCE, as the other countermarks. This means archaeologically and numismatically that at least one, but probably two minimum, of
13114-621: 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
13280-460: 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
13446-567: The Zadokites against the Hasmonean priest/kings. A literary epistle published in the 1990s expresses reasons for creating a community, some of which resemble Sadducean arguments in the Talmud . Most of the scrolls seem to have been hidden in the caves during the turmoil of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), although some of them may have been deposited earlier. The site of Khirbet Qumran had been known to European explorers since
13612-488: 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
13778-478: 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
13944-470: The area of Qumran and probably also from the Plain of Jericho." Many scholars have viewed the several large stepped cisterns at Qumran as ritual baths. This supports the religious settlement model. There are difficulties in understanding all these cisterns as baths, however. Qumran's water arrived perhaps twice a year from rainwater runoff. Water was one of Qumran's most valued commodities, and water management
14110-409: The area. Many of the texts found in the caves appear to represent widely accepted Jewish beliefs and practices, while other texts appear to speak of divergent, unique, or minority interpretations and practices. Some scholars believe that some of these texts describe the beliefs of the inhabitants of Qumran, who may have been Essenes , or the asylum for supporters of the traditional priestly family of
14276-496: The assumed date of hiding of the coin hoards, which in turn dated the coin hoards themselves. Nevertheless, Lönnqvist's theories have been criticized by Farhi and Price. They point to the fact that the identity of the silver coins from Qumran held at the Amman Museum in Jordan is not certain. One important issue for the understanding of the site of Qumran is a realistic calculation of its population. Using estimates based on
14442-506: 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
14608-463: The average population, working on the comparison with the population of the monastery of Mar Saba, which numbered 150 monks in the 9th century and from Josephus' figure of 3,000 Essenes calculating that "at least five per cent lived the strict monastic life". E.M. Laperrousaz went as high as 1,428 inhabitants. Magen Broshi, analyzing the size of L77 (which he calls an assembly hall), estimated that about 120 to 150 people could sit there, to which he added
14774-547: 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,
14940-487: The caves north of Qumran; they also dug in the cemetery and in marl terrace caves. In 1996 James Strange and others dug at Qumran using remote sensing equipment. From 1996 to 1999 and later Yitzhak Magen and Yuval Peleg carried out excavations at Qumran under the auspices of the National Parks Authority. Randall Price and Oren Gutfeld dug on the Qumran plateau, seasons in 2002, 2004 and 2005 (and plan
15106-498: The cemetery, excavating twelve tombs. In 1967 restoration work was performed at Qumran by R.W. Dajjani of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. In 1984 and 1985 Joseph Patrich and Yigael Yadin carried out a systematic survey of the caves and pathways around Qumran. Between 1985 and 1991 Patrich excavated five caves, including Caves 3Q and 11Q. One of Patrich's conclusions was that the caves "did not serve as habitations for
15272-602: 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
15438-410: 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 the region was Old Aramaic . Hebrew was extinct as a colloquial language by late antiquity , but it continued to be used as
15604-569: The context of a sectarian settlement according to the Donceels. These materials point to trade connections in the area, and provide evidence that Qumran may not have been in a vacuum in the Graeco-Roman period. Rachel Bar-Nathan has argued from similarities between pottery finds at Qumran and at the Hasmonean and Herodian palaces of Jericho that Qumran should be seen as part of the Jordan valley context, rather than as an isolated site. While
15770-422: The cylindrical "scroll jars" from Qumran were once thought unique, she cites a proposed similar find at Jericho, shows a related form existed at Masada , and reports that such jars have been found at Qalandiya. Bar-Nathan states from the Jericho palace data that, "It is possible to trace the typological development of this group of jars", i.e., the cylindrical jars. Jodi Magness, citing Bar-Nathan's M.A. thesis on
15936-568: 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;
16102-423: 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 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
16268-513: 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
16434-452: The early 3rd century. The final coin was minted in Rome between 206 and 210, during the reign of the emperor Caracalla . The new suggestion made is that the silver coin hoards from Qumran may be connected to Roman military campaigns in the region, as these are widely attested in the early 3rd century CE. It is also quite possible that the silver was part of Roman army payments made to troops in
16600-532: 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
16766-711: 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
16932-408: The first complete recording of the Qumran silver hoards made by him in 2007, which includes the first photographic evidence of the coin hoards, and the regional coin evidence from other hoards. It has already been shown that de Vaux's dating system of Qumran and the silver coin hoards was based on what is generally known as a circular argument; the end of the first major settlement period was dated after
17098-654: The following years more inkwells have come to light with a Qumran origin. Jan Gunneweg identified a fourth (locus 129). S. Steckoll found a fifth (reportedly near the scriptorium). Magen and Peleg found a sixth inkwell. Without counting the Ein Feshkha inkwell or others with debated provenance, that number is more inkwells than found at any other site of the Second Temple Period, a significant indication of writing at Qumran. De Vaux interpreted his findings at Qumran based (at least in part) upon information in
17264-406: 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
17430-419: The graves contain the remains of males, some females were also discovered, though some burials may be from medieval times. Only a small portion of the graves were excavated, as excavating cemeteries is forbidden under Jewish law. Over a thousand bodies are buried at Qumran cemetery. One theory is that bodies were those of generations of sectarians, while another is that they were brought to Qumran because burial
17596-514: The growing canonization of the contents of the Hebrew Bible , both in terms of the books that it contained, and the version of the text in them, and an acceptance that new texts could not be added, there came a need to produce material that would clearly differentiate between that text, and rabbinic interpretation of it. By collecting and compiling these thoughts they could be presented in a manner which helped to refute claims that they were only human interpretations—the argument being that, by presenting
17762-451: The importance of these texts for finding insights into the rabbinic culture that created them. Midrash is increasingly seen as a literary and cultural construction, responsive to literary means of analysis. Frank Kermode has written that midrash is an imaginative way of "updating, enhancing, augmenting, explaining, and justifying the sacred text". Because the Tanakh came to be seen as unintelligible or even offensive, midrash could be used as
17928-441: The inhabitants of the site were a sect of highly ritualistic Jews called the Essenes , a conclusion that has come to be known as the "Qumran–Essene hypothesis". This hypothesis suggests that the original residents of the settlement were the Essenes, and that they established the site in the desert for religious purposes. He interpreted the room above locus 30 as a "scriptorium" because he discovered inkwells there. A plastered bench
18094-495: The interpretation of the excavations of de Vaux, were published by Jean-Baptiste Humbert in 2003 and 2016. However, not all of de Vaux's archaeological findings from Qumran (which are stored in the Rockefeller Museum ) have yet been published; some are still inaccessible to scholars and the public. Although de Vaux's excavations of Qumran were quite exhaustive, and thereby the most important source of information on
18260-483: The jar has not been relocated, showing de Vaux sought parallels. Taking into account subtypes of pottery, true cylindrical "scroll" jars are not common outside Qumran. They are, however, clearly not unique to Qumran. Bar-Nathan noted the jar's "rarity in the Second Temple period". Of some of the proposed parallel Masada jars, Bar-Nathan wrote "It seems that this group of storage jars was brought (or pillaged?) from
18426-462: The language as Ivrit , meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit , meaning Assyrian , which 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
18592-465: 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
18758-471: 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
18924-445: The life of the settlement. with frequent additions, extensions and improvements. The water channel was raised to carry water to newer cisterns farther away and a dam was placed in the upper section of Wadi Qumran to secure more water, which was brought to the site by an aqueduct. Rooms were added, floors were raised, pottery ovens relocated and locations were repurposed. De Vaux found three inkwells at Qumran (Loci 30 (2) and 31) and over
19090-601: The limitation of the term "midrash" to rabbinic writings, others apply it also to certain Qumran writings, to parts of the New Testament , and of the Hebrew Bible (in particular the superscriptions of the Psalms, Deuteronomy, and Chronicles), and even modern compositions are called midrashim. Midrash is now viewed more as method than genre, although the rabbinic midrashim do constitute a distinct literary genre. According to
19256-562: The members of the Dead Sea Sect, but rather as stores and hiding places". From mid-November 1993 to January 1994 the Israel Antiquities Authority carried out works in the Qumran compound and nearby installations as part of "Operation Scroll" under the direction of Amir Drori and Yitzhak Magen . In the winter of 1995–1996 and later seasons Magen Broshi and Hanan Eshel carried out further excavations in
19422-402: The most important groups of primary evidence from the ancient site. Much of what has been written on the chronology, the occupational periods and the history of Qumran is based on the preliminary report and lecture by the original excavator, Roland de Vaux in 1961, which was translated in 1973. A tentative list of the Qumran bronze coins along with Roland de Vaux's field diary from the excavations
19588-727: 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
19754-440: The notion that it was a Hasmonean fort that was later transformed into a villa for a wealthy family, or a production center, perhaps a pottery factory or something similar. A large cemetery was discovered to the east of the site. Besides this primary cemetery, there are also three separate extensions of it, as well as the north cemetery (about 10 minutes away from the primary) and a cemetery south of Wadi Qumran. While most of
19920-433: The paths near Qumran), and staying with 150–200 inhabitants. While waiting for the publication of Broshi and Eshel's results, Patrich, anticipating them, doubted the possibility that there were once "significantly more habitable caves" cut into the marl, pointing to the lack of paths and suitable terrain. He went on to discount the significance of the nails for tent dwelling without "further substantial evidence and returned to
20086-534: 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 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
20252-422: The population was only 50–70 people. Magen Broshi and Hanan Eshel, revisiting the caves and the territory around Qumran in 1995–1996, later pointed out that Patrich's estimate was far too high for what Qumran could offer, reducing the number to 12–20. They turned back to caves (mainly artificial ones cut into the marl terrace most of which have not survived) and tents (pointing to pottery and nails found along one of
20418-591: 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
20584-635: 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
20750-471: The reign of Hasmonean leader John Hyrcanus (134–104 BCE ) or somewhat later. Qumran was inhabited by a Jewish sect of the late Second Temple period , which most scholars identify with the Essenes ; however, other Jewish groups were also suggested. It was occupied most of the time until 68 CE and was destroyed by the Romans during the First Jewish–Roman War , possibly as late as 73 CE. It
20916-674: 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
21082-401: The role of coins and money in the economic system at Qumran during any of the occupational periods from ca. 150 BCE. to 73 CE. Worth noting here is that the amount of coins found at Qumran suggests according to numismatic principles of loss and survival of ancient coins that millions of bronze coins must have circulated at Qumran. The bronze coins identified from Qumran, some dating to
21248-412: The ruins "may have very well been once a small fortress". Masterman also questioned why a small fort would require a graveyard of over one thousand tombs. Gustaf Dalman visited Qumran in 1914, and explicitly identified Qumran as a burg , or fort. Archaeologist Michael Avi-Yonah agreed with Dalman's identification of Qumran as a fort and published a map that identified the remains at Qumran as part of
21414-529: The sacred and divine nature of the text, and the belief in the legitimacy that accords with rabbinic interpretation. Although this material treats the biblical texts as the authoritative word of God, it is clear that not all of the Hebrew Bible was fixed in its wording at this time, as some verses that are cited differ from the Masoretic , and accord with the Septuagint, or Samaritan Torah instead. With
21580-538: The second and third years of the Jewish War, indicate that the site was still in use in 68 CE and only destroyed after 70, perhaps as late as 73. The coins from Qumran of this period end with a peculiar series of bronze coins minted in 72/73 at Ascalon, which sent auxiliary troops to assist the Roman army in the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73). In 73 the Romans stormed the mountain fortress of Masada, which also
21746-478: The settlement interpretations including the astronomical orientations of some structures at Qumran. A recent final publication of the French excavations by Jean-Baptist Humbert outlining evidence of a decorated frieze, opus sectile , fine columns etc., indicates a phase of a wealthier occupation, "une grande maison", at Qumran. The range of pottery, glass and high quantity of coins found at Qumran do not sit well in
21912-437: The settlement, there have been several excavations since de Vaux finished his work. As de Vaux left little of the settlement unexcavated, later archaeologists have often turned elsewhere to continue research, including dump sites from de Vaux's excavations. During the 1960s, according to Catherine Murphy, there were some unpublished excavations at Qumran by John Allegro and by Solomon Steckoll . Steckoll also carried out work in
22078-529: The silver coins could have been collected from single individuals, for instance, as tax payments, or that Qumran could have been a regional 'tax house'. The new 2007 analysis of the silver coinage contradicts the findings of de Vaux, Seyrig, and Spijkerman as well as the findings of Robert Donceel. Donceel was surprised to find in the Amman museum unrecorded coins, notably denarius coins of Trajan, that he claimed were intrusive. The original Amman Museum records of
22244-485: The site over a period of six seasons (1951–1956) under the direction of De Vaux. The most-prized find at Qumran up to this time were three small juglets containing over five-hundred silver coins, which were found in a room on the west side of the monastery. They consisted of tetradrachmae that had been minted in Tyre at various times in the first-century BCE. The Iron Age remains at the site, which were modest but included
22410-494: The site. This means that the site was highly monetized in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, i.e. that the occupants of Qumran were not a community of poor and isolated people. That the flow of cash at Qumran may have been large in the 1st century CE is hardly surprising given the archaeological evidence of trade at Qumran in luxury goods such as glass, which is specifically dated to this period. The coin profile of Qumran shows that there do not appear to have been any major changes in
22576-473: The size of the cemetery and average lifespan de Vaux calculated that the inhabitants "would not have numbered many more than 200 members". He noted that "[t]here is a manifest disproportion between the number of tombs and the number of inhabitants for whom there was room in the buildings". This led him to speculate whether the caves were used as lodgings for his estimated 200 inhabitants. J.T. Milik some years earlier provided an estimate of between 150 and 200 as
22742-493: 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
22908-474: 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
23074-470: 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 the Euphrates , Jordan or Litani ; or maybe the northern Arabian Desert between Babylonia and Canaan ). Compare
23240-508: The term "medieval midrashim", since the period of their production extended from the twilight of the rabbinic age to the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment . Generally speaking, rabbinic midrashim either focus on religious law and practice ( halakha ) or interpret biblical narrative in relation to non-legal ethics or theology, creating homilies and parables based on the text. In the latter case they are described as aggadic . Midrash halakha
23406-531: The text, and beyond the text, but also focuses on each letter, and the words left unsaid by each line". An example of a midrashic interpretation: "And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day." ( Genesis 1:31)—Midrash: Rabbi Nahman said in Rabbi Samuel's name: "Behold, it was very good" refers to the Good Desire; "AND behold, it
23572-472: The third century BCE and the second century CE. Kugel traces how and why biblical interpreters produced new meanings by the use of exegesis on ambiguities, syntactical details, unusual or awkward vocabulary, repetitions, etc. in the text. As an example, Kugel examines the different ways in which the biblical story that God's instructions are not to be found in heaven (Deuteronomy 30:12) has been interpreted. Baruch 3:29-4:1 states that this means that divine wisdom
23738-467: The three hoards post-date de Vaux's suggestion of a burial date after 9/8 BCE. The unusual and intensive die-linkage of the Qumran silver hoards suggest that the three hoards were buried at the same time, and this would mean at the earliest in 52/53 CE. According to Lönnqvist, a highly unusual type of coin hoard found at Ain Hanaziv in the Jordan Valley in the early 1960 and reported in
23904-580: 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
24070-431: The various collections of different schools of thought, each of which relied upon close study of the text, the growing difference between early biblical law and its later rabbinic interpretation could be reconciled. Midrashim that seek to explain the non-legal portions of the Hebrew Bible are sometimes referred to as aggadah or Haggadah . Aggadic discussions of the non-legal parts of Scripture are characterized by
24236-455: 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 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
24402-508: The word as "story" in both instances; the Septuagint translates it as βιβλίον (book) in the first, as γραφή (writing) in the second. The meaning of the Hebrew word in these contexts is uncertain: it has been interpreted as referring to "a body of authoritative narratives, or interpretations thereof, concerning historically important figures" and seems to refer to a "book", perhaps even a "book of interpretation", which might make its use
24568-595: 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" is derived from Old French Ebrau , via Latin from
24734-421: 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
24900-514: Was also discovered in the remains of an upper story. De Vaux concluded that this was the area where the Essenes could have written some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. De Vaux also interpreted locus 77 as a "refectory", or a community dining hall, based on the discovery of numerous sets of bowls in the nearby "pantry" of locus 89. Additionally, de Vaux interpreted many of the numerous stepped cisterns as "miqva’ot", or Jewish ritual baths, due to their similarity to several stepped and partitioned ritual baths near
25066-457: 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 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
25232-408: Was easier there than in rockier surrounding areas. The scrolls were found in a series of eleven caves around the settlement, some accessible only through the settlement. Some scholars have claimed that the caves were the permanent libraries of the sect, due to the presence of the remains of a shelving system. Other scholars believe that some caves also served as domestic shelters for those living in
25398-407: Was formed to facilitate these reinterpretations of sacred texts. The institute hosted several week-long intensives between 1995 and 2004, and published eight issues of Living Text: The Journal of Contemporary Midrash from 1997 to 2000. According to Carol Bakhos, recent studies that use literary-critical tools to concentrate on the cultural and literary aspects of midrash have led to a rediscovery of
25564-459: Was later used by Jewish rebels during the Bar Kokhba revolt . Today, the Qumran site is best known as the settlement nearest to the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden, caves in the sheer desert cliffs and beneath, in the marl terrace. The principal excavations at Qumran were conducted by Roland de Vaux in the 1950s, and several later digs have been carried out. Since
25730-529: Was located on the western bank of the Dead Sea. It is more than likely that Qumran was destroyed this same time, as the coin finds from Qumran end with the same peculiar bronze coins minted at Ascalon. According to the publications prior to 2007, the most recent silver coin in the Qumran hoard(s) is a tetradrachm of Tyre from the year 9/8 BCE. The publication of the bulk of the silver coins by K. A. K. Lönnqvist, and his regional analysis, resulted, in 2007, in
25896-491: 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
26062-413: Was primarily logically oriented, making inferences based upon similarity of content and analogy. The second rested largely upon textual scrutiny, assuming that words and letters that seem superfluous teach something not openly stated in the text." Many different exegetical methods are employed to derive deeper meaning from a text. This is not limited to the traditional thirteen textual tools attributed to
26228-566: 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 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
26394-402: Was published by Marcia Sharabani in 1980. The last two hoards located in Amman, Jordan, were published by Kenneth Lönnqvist in 2007. De Vaux's excavations uncovered about 1250 coins (569 silver and 681 bronze coins) altogether from Qumran, though today some Qumran coins have been lost, some lots mixed-up, and records less accurate than ideal. There are a surprisingly high number of coins from
26560-508: Was published in 1994 in French, in German in 1996 and in English in 2003. The first reconstruction of the Qumran bronze coinage, including a complete coin catalogue with up-dated and cross-referenced coin identifications, was done by Kenneth Lönnqvist and Minna Lönnqvist in 2005. Also in 1955, three very important silver coin hoards were found at Qumran. The first lot of the Qumran silver coins
26726-629: 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
26892-531: 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
27058-551: 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
27224-408: 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
27390-570: Was very good" refers to the Evil Desire. Can then the Evil Desire be very good? That would be extraordinary! But without the Evil Desire, however, no man would build a house, take a wife and beget children; and thus said Solomon: "Again, I considered all labour and all excelling in work, that it is a man's rivalry with his neighbour." (Kohelet IV, 4) . The term Midrash is also used of a rabbinic work that interprets Scripture in that manner. Such works contain early interpretations and commentaries on
27556-570: 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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