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186-513: Gog and Magog ( / ˈ ɡ ɒ ɡ  ...   ˈ m eɪ ɡ ɒ ɡ / ; Hebrew : גּוֹג וּמָגוֹג , romanized :  Gōg ū-Māgōg ) or Ya'juj and Ma'juj ( Arabic : يَأْجُوجُ وَمَأْجُوجُ , romanized :  Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj ) are a pair of names that appear in the Bible and the Qur'an , variously ascribed to individuals, tribes, or lands. In Ezekiel 38 , Gog is an individual and Magog

372-469: A tzadik like Abraham , he would not be considered so righteous. They point out that Noah did not pray to God on behalf of those about to be destroyed, as Abraham prayed for the wicked of Sodom and Gomorrah . In fact, Noah is never seen to speak; he simply listens to God and acts on his orders. This led some commentators to offer the figure of Noah as "the righteous man in a fur coat," who ensured his own comfort while ignoring his neighbour. Others, such as

558-706: A Christian based in Mesopotamia, the Legend is considered the first work to connect the Gates with the idea that Gog and Magog are destined to play a role in the apocalypse. The legend claims that Alexander carved prophecies on the face of the Gate, marking a date for when these Huns, consisting of 24 nations, will breach the Gate and subjugate the greater part of the world. The Pseudo-Methodius , written originally in Syriac,

744-685: 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

930-598: A Mesopotamian account." What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives. The earliest written flood myth is found in the Mesopotamian Epic of Atrahasis and Epic of Gilgamesh texts. The Encyclopædia Britannica says "These mythologies are the source of such features of

1116-595: 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

1302-661: 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

1488-698: A derivative work, the Middle English King Alisaunder (vv. 5938–6287). In the 13th-century French Roman d'Alexandre en prose , Alexander has an encounter with cannibals who have taken over the role of Gog and Magog. This is a case of imperfect transmission, since the prose Alexander' s source, the Latin work by Archpriest Leo of Naples known as Historia de Preliis , does mention "Gogh et Macgogh", at least in some manuscripts. The Gog and Magog are not only human flesh-eaters, but illustrated as men "a notably beaked nose" in examples such as

1674-579: 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

1860-594: 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

2046-443: A king of Lydia in the early 7th century BC, but many scholars do not believe he is related to any historical person. In Genesis 10 Magog is described as a son of Japheth , and a grandson of Noah , although there is no mention there of a person named Gog. The name Magog itself is of obscure origin. It is often associated with Assyrian mat-Gugu , "Land of Gyges", i.e., Lydia. Alternatively, Gog may be derived from Magog rather than

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2232-468: 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

2418-552: A location to the north of Israel, but the great Jewish scholar Rashi identified the Christians as their allies and said God would thwart their plan to kill all Israel. The "Fruit of the Righteous" or "Pri Tzaddik" on the weekly portion Nasso, connects Gog uMagog with Amalek . In this work from Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin it can be read in chapter 15:2: "And after all of this, there still will be war of Gog uMagog upon

2604-544: A mere human messenger and not an angel ( 10:72-74 ). Moreover, the people mock Noah's words and call him a liar ( 7:62 ), and they even suggest that Noah is possessed by a devil when the prophet ceases to preach ( 54:9 ). Only the lowest of classes in the community join Noah in believing in God's message ( 11:29 ), and Noah's narrative further describes him preaching both in private and public. The Quran narrates that Noah received

2790-742: 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

2976-531: A new era of prosperity, when there was an easing (in Hebrew, naħah נחה) of the curse from Adam's time, when the Earth produced thorns and thistles even where men sowed wheat. It is said that Noah introduced the plow, symbolizing this relief. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia , "The Book of Genesis contains two accounts of Noah." In the first, Noah is the hero of the flood, and in the second, he

3162-623: A pre-flood tradition. Chen provides evidence that the sections of the Sumerian King List that mention references to the flood were all later additions added during the Old Babylonian Period through later updates and edits. The Flood as a watershed in early history of the world was probably a new historiographical concept emerging in the Mesopotamian literary traditions during the Old Babylonian Period, as evident by

3348-644: A product of "cosmic conflict" described in the immediately preceding Gog chapters. The Septuagint reads "Gog" instead of "Agag" in Numbers 24:7. Over the next few centuries Jewish tradition changed Ezekiel's Gog from Magog into Gog and Magog. The process, and the shifting geography of Gog and Magog, can be traced through the literature of the period. The 3rd book of the Sibylline Oracles , for example, which originated in Egyptian Judaism in

3534-556: A revelation to build an Ark , after his people refused to believe in his message and hear the warning. The narrative goes on to describe that waters poured forth from both the earth and the Heavens, destroying all the sinners. Even one of his sons disbelieved him, stayed behind, and was drowned. After the Flood ended, the Ark rested atop Mount Judi (Quran 11:44 ). Also, Islamic beliefs deny

3720-534: A series of visions received by the prophet Ezekiel , a priest of Solomon's Temple , who was among the captives during the Babylonian exile . The exile, he tells his fellow captives, is God 's punishment on Israel for turning away, but God will restore his people to Jerusalem when they return to him. After this message of reassurance, chapters 38–39 , the Gog oracle, tell how Gog of Magog and his hordes will threaten

3906-548: 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

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4092-668: 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

4278-551: A thousand years, and how, on his release, he will rally "the nations in the four corners of the Earth, Gog and Magog", to a final battle with Christ and his saints: When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the Earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. The Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes describes gates constructed by Alexander

4464-472: 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

4650-558: 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

4836-518: 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

5022-413: Is a "splinter from a more substantial tale". A fuller account would explain what exactly Ham had done to his father, or why Noah directed a curse at Canaan for Ham's misdeed, or how Noah realised what had occurred. In the field of psychological biblical criticism , J. H. Ellens and W. G. Rollins have analysed the unconventional behavior that occurs between Noah and Ham as revolving around sexuality and

5208-576: Is also spoken of in the commentaries and in Islamic legends. Noah's narratives largely cover his preaching as well the story of the Deluge . Noah's narrative sets the prototype for many of the subsequent prophetic stories, which begin with the prophet warning his people and then the community rejecting the message and facing a punishment. Noah has several titles in Islam, based primarily on praise for him in

5394-482: 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

5580-494: Is believed to have been approximately 2700 BC, shortly before the earliest known written stories. The discovery of artifacts associated with Aga and Enmebaragesi of Kish , two other kings named in the stories, has lent credibility to the historical existence of Gilgamesh. The earliest Sumerian Gilgamesh poems date from as early as the Third dynasty of Ur (2100–2000 BC). One of these poems mentions Gilgamesh’s journey to meet

5766-464: Is considered an important prophet of God among Druze, being among the seven prophets who appeared in different periods of history. Noah is a highly important figure in Islam and he is seen as one of the most significant of all prophets . The Quran contains 43 references to Noah, or Nuḥ , in 28 chapters, and the seventy-first chapter, Sūrah Nūḥ ( Arabic : سورة نوح ), is named after him. His life

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5952-582: Is considered the source of the Gog and Magog tale incorporated into Western versions of the Alexander Romance. The earlier-dated Syriac Alexander Legend contains a somewhat different treatment of the Gog and Magog material, which passed into the lost Arabic version, or the Ethiopic and later Oriental versions of the Alexander romance. The Pseudo-Methodius (7th century) is the first source in

6138-595: 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

6324-612: 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

6510-567: 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

6696-543: Is his land. By the time of the New Testament 's Revelation 20 ( Revelation 20:8 ), Jewish tradition had long since changed Ezekiel's "Gog from Magog" into "Gog and Magog". The Gog prophecy is meant to be fulfilled at the approach of what is called the " end of days ", but not necessarily the end of the world. Jewish eschatology viewed Gog and Magog as enemies to be defeated by the Messiah , which would usher in

6882-542: Is less involved". In addition to the main story in Genesis, the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament ) also refers to Noah in the First Book of Chronicles , Isaiah and Ezekiel . References in the deuterocanonical books include the books of Tobit , Wisdom , Sirach , 2 Esdras and 4 Maccabees . New Testament references include the gospels of Matthew and Luke , and some of the epistles ( Epistle to

7068-459: Is named as Nuraita ( Classical Mandaic : ࡍࡅࡓࡀࡉࡕࡀ ), while his son is named as Shum (i.e., Shem ; [ࡔࡅࡌ] Error: {{Langx}}: invalid parameter: |transl= ( help ) ). 2 Peter 2:5 refers to Noah as a "preacher of righteousness". In the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, Jesus compares Noah's flood with the coming Day of Judgement : "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in

7254-402: Is no ark in this account. According to Elaine Pagels , "Rather, they hid in a particular place, not only Noah, but also many other people from the unshakable race. They entered that place and hid in a bright cloud." The Druze regard Noah as the second spokesman ( natiq ) after Adam , who helped transmit the foundational teachings of monotheism ( tawhid ) intended for the larger audience. He

7440-411: 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

7626-576: 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. Noah The Genesis flood narrative is among the best-known stories of the Bible . In this account, God "regrets" making mankind because they filled

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7812-694: Is rather vague, described as a 50-day march away northwards after Alexander put to flight his Belsyrian enemies (the Bebrykes , of Bithynia in modern-day North Turkey ). Christian texts following in the tradition of the Alexander Romance, such as the Syriac Alexander Legend (late 7th century) and the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius (7th century) would continue to identify Gog and Magog as among those barbarian groups encapsulated behind Alexander's walls, but they would also combine this with

7998-478: Is that the Gog alliance, a blend of the " Table of Nations " in Genesis 10 and Tyre 's trading partners in Ezekiel 27, with Persia added, was cast in the role of end-time enemies of Israel by means of Isaiah 66:19, which is another text of eschatological foretelling. Although the prophecy refers to Gog as an enemy in some future, it is not clear if the confrontation is meant to occur in a final " end of days " since

8184-748: 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"

8370-876: Is the belief of the overwhelming majority of Islamic scholars. The "Abbasid orthodoxy" believed the Ilkhanate Mongol invaders who laid siege to and then sacked Baghdad , were Gog and Magog. According to Sahih Muslim , Muhammad said: Then a people whom God had protected from him (dajjal) would come to Isa, son of Maryam , and he would wipe their faces and would inform them of their ranks in Paradise and it would be under such conditions that God would reveal to Isa (alaihis salam) these words: I have brought forth from amongst My servants such people against whom none would be able to fight; you take these people safely to Tur, and then God would send Gog and Magog and they would swarm down from every slope. The first of them would pass

8556-841: 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

8742-428: Is the father of mankind and a husbandman who planted the first vineyard. "The disparity of character between these two narratives has caused some critics to insist that the subject of the latter account was not the same as the subject of the former." The Encyclopedia Judaica notes that Noah's drunkenness is not presented as reprehensible behavior. Rather, "It is clear that ... Noah’s venture into viticulture provides

8928-405: 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

9114-547: 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

9300-650: 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

9486-530: The Ahmadiyya understanding of the Quran, the period described in the Quran is the age of his dispensation , which extended until the time of Ibrahim (Abraham, 950 years). The first 50 years were the years of spiritual progress, which were followed by 900 years of spiritual deterioration of the people of Noah. Indian and Greek flood-myths also exist, although there is little evidence that they were derived from

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9672-588: The Alexander Romances . According to one interpretation, "Goth and Magothy" are the kings of the Unclean Nations whom Alexander drove through a mountain pass and prevented from crossing his new wall. Gog and Magog are said to engage in human cannibalism in the romances and derived literature. They have also been depicted on Medieval cosmological maps, or mappae mundi , sometimes alongside Alexander's wall. The conflation of Gog and Magog with

9858-543: The Anglican rite of baptism, which asks God, "who of thy great mercy didst save Noah," to receive into the Church the infant about to be baptised. In medieval Christianity , Noah's three sons were generally considered as the founders of the populations of the three known continents , Japheth /Europe, Shem /Asia, and Ham /Africa, although a rarer variation held that they represented the three classes of medieval society –

10044-405: The Bible . The narrative indicates that God intended to return the Earth to its pre-Creation state of watery chaos by flooding the Earth because of humanity's misdeeds and then remake it using the microcosm of Noah's ark . Thus, the flood was no ordinary overflow but a reversal of Creation . The narrative discusses the evil of mankind that moved God to destroy the world by way of the flood,

10230-406: 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

10416-406: 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

10602-422: 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

10788-433: 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

10974-414: The Messiah son of Yoseph , for Gog uMagog is the seed of Amalek, and Amalek corresponds always to the opposite of the sanctity of Israel, deeply...". Similarly, in the Tanakh, book of Judges 5:14 (JPS 1985) it can be read: "From Ephraim came they whose roots are in Amalek". Chapters 19:11–21:8 of the Book of Revelation , dating from the end of the 1st century AD, tells how Satan is to be imprisoned for

11160-491: The Portuguese . Similarly, a poem originating in early 19th century Surakarta , a city located on the Indonesian island of Java , goes as far as to subvert Quranic teaching in order to use the story of Gog and Magog to vilify colonists from the Dutch colonial empire . Another text was the Hikayat Raja Iskandar ("Story of King Alexander"). This version argued, contrary to other traditions where both Gog and Magog variously descend from Adam, Noah, or Jesus, that Gog descended from

11346-422: 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

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11532-500: The Vikings as the emergence of Gog and Magog. —  Events  — —  Figures  — —  Events and terms  — —  Events  — The names are mentioned together in Ezekiel chapter 38 , where Gog is an individual and Magog is his land. The meaning of the name Gog remains uncertain, and in any case, the author of the Ezekiel prophecy seems to attach no particular importance to it. Efforts have been made to identify him with various individuals, notably Gyges ,

11718-602: The Watchers ". In 10:1–3 of the Book of Enoch (which is part of the Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon ) and canonical for Beta Israel , Uriel was dispatched by "the Most High" to inform Noah of the approaching "deluge". There are 20 or so fragments of the Dead Sea scrolls that appear to refer to Noah. Lawrence Schiffman writes, "Among the Dead Sea Scrolls at least three different versions of this legend are preserved." In particular, "The Genesis Apocryphon devotes considerable space to Noah." However, "The material seems to have little in common with Genesis 5 which reports

11904-399: 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

12090-408: 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

12276-410: The " Sawley map ", an important example of mappa mundi . Gog and Magog caricaturised as figures with hooked noses on a miniature depicting their attack of the Holy City, found in a manuscript of the Apocalypse in Anglo-Norman. Throughout classical and late antiquity , Christian and Jewish writers identified Gog and Magog with a wide diversity of groups: As one nomadic people followed another on

12462-440: The 10th century BC. Two of these, the Jahwist , composed in the 10th century BC, and the Priestly source , from the late 7th century BC, make up the chapters of Genesis which concern Noah. The attempt by the 5th-century editor to accommodate two independent and sometimes conflicting sources accounts for the confusion over such matters as how many of each animal Noah took, and how long the flood lasted. The Oxford Encyclopedia of

12648-454: 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,

12834-535: 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

13020-428: The 4th century that Noah's behavior is defensible: as the first human to taste wine, he would not know its effects: "Through ignorance and inexperience of the proper amount to drink, fell into a drunken stupor". Philo , a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, also excused Noah by noting that one can drink in two different manners: (1) to drink wine in excess, a peculiar sin to the vicious evil man or (2) to partake of wine as

13206-417: The 8th century. In the latest and longest Greek version are described the Unclean Nations, which include the Goth and Magoth as their kings, and whose people engage in the habit of eating worms, dogs, human cadavers and fetuses. They were allied to Belsyrians ( Bebrykes , of Bithynia in modern-day North Turkey ), and sealed beyond the "Breasts of the North", a pair of mountains fifty days' march away towards

13392-766: 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,

13578-409: The Ark and the Flood as symbolic. In Baháʼí belief, only Noah's followers were spiritually alive, preserved in the ark of his teachings, as others were spiritually dead. The Baháʼí scripture Kitáb-i-Íqán endorses the Islamic belief that Noah had a large number of companions, either 40 or 72, besides his family on the Ark, and that he taught for 950 (symbolic) years before the flood. According to

13764-569: The Ark came to be compared to the Church : salvation was to be found only within Christ and his Lordship, as in Noah's time it had been found only within the Ark. St Augustine of Hippo (354–430), demonstrated in The City of God that the dimensions of the Ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which corresponds to the body of Christ ; the equation of Ark and Church is still found in

13950-612: The Bible, the lifespans "fall far short of the briefest reign mentioned in the related Mesopotamian texts." Also, the name of the hero differs between the traditions: "The earliest Mesopotamian flood account, written in the Sumerian language , calls the deluge hero Ziusudra ." However, Yi Samuel Chen writes that the oldest versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh never mentioned the flood, just mentioning that he went to talk to Utnapishtim to find

14136-520: The Black Sea, and Beth Togarmah was on the border of Tubal. The confederation thus represents a multinational alliance surrounding Israel. "Why the prophet's gaze should have focused on these particular nations is unclear", comments Biblical scholar Daniel I. Block , but their remoteness and reputation for violence and mystery possibly "made Gog and his confederates perfect symbols of the archetypal enemy, rising against God and his people". One explanation

14322-509: The Books of the Bible notes that this story echoes parts of the Garden of Eden story: Noah is the first vintner, while Adam is the first farmer; both have problems with their produce; both stories involve nakedness; and both involve a division between brothers leading to a curse. However, after the flood, the stories differ. It is Noah, not God, who plants the vineyard and utters the curse, so "God

14508-687: 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

14694-456: The Children of Adam (the human race). Al-Kafi, one of their primary collections of ahadith although by a non-Shia chain, states that it has been narrated from Ibn Abbas that when he asked Ali about the "creatures", he responded by saying God has created "1,200 species on the land, 1,200 species in the sea, 70 species from the Children of Adam and the people are the Children of Adam except for

14880-663: The Christian tradition for a new element: two mountains moving together to narrow the corridor, which was then sealed with a gate against Gog and Magog. This idea is also in the Quran (609–632 CE), and found its way in the Western Alexander Romance. This Gog and Magog legend is not found in earlier versions of the Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, whose oldest manuscript dates to the 3rd century, but an interpolation into recensions around

15066-692: The Cosmography and the Geography. Gog and Magog, he says, live near to the sea that encircles the Earth and can be counted only by God; this sea is claimed to be the Caspian sea , Black sea or the Sea of Azov . They are human, but only half the height of a normal man, with claws instead of nails, and a hairy tail and huge hairy ears which they use as mattress and cover for sleeping. They dig into their wall each day until they almost break through. They break for

15252-762: The Eurasian steppes, so the identification of Gog and Magog shifted. In the 9th and 10th centuries these kingdoms were identified by some with the lands of the Khazars , a Turkic people whose leaders had converted to Judaism and whose empire dominated Central Asia–the 9th-century monk Christian of Stavelot referred to Gazari, said of the Khazars that they were "living in the lands of Gog and Magog" and noted that they were "circumcised and observing all [the laws of] Judaism". Arab traveler ibn Fadlan also reported of this belief, writing around 921 he recorded that "Khazars are part of

15438-516: The Gog and Magog". 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 the Canaanite languages , it was natively spoken by

15624-672: The Great between two mountains called the "Breasts of the North" ( Greek : Μαζοί Βορρά ). The mountains are initially 18 feet apart and the pass is rather wide, but Alexander's prayers to God causes the mountains to draw nearer, thus narrowing the pass. There he builds the Caspian Gates out of bronze, coating them with fast-sticking oil. The gates enclosed twenty-two nations and their monarchs, including Gog and Magog (therein called "Goth and Magoth"). The geographic location of these mountains

15810-474: 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

15996-526: The Greek hero Deucalion , who, like Noah, is warned of a flood, builds an ark, and sends a bird to check on the flood's aftermath. Tenth and final of the pre-Flood ( antediluvian ) Patriarchs, son to Lamech and a mother whose name is unmentioned, Noah is 500 years old before his sons Shem , Ham and Japheth are born. The Genesis flood narrative is encompassed within chapters 6–9 in the Book of Genesis , in

16182-404: The Greek text into words, leading to different readings; one group of manuscripts ("group Y") links them with the " Marsians and Dacians ", in eastern Europe, amongst others. The Book of Jubilees , from about the same time, makes three references to either Gog or Magog: in the first, Magog is a descendant of Noah, as in Genesis 10; in the second, Gog is a region next to Japheth's borders; and in

16368-602: 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

16554-453: The Hebrew term aḥarit ha-yamim ( Hebrew : אחרית הימים ) may merely mean "latter days", and is open to interpretation. Twentieth-century scholars have used the term to denote the eschaton in a malleable sense, not necessarily meaning final days, or tied to the Apocalypse. Still, the Utopia of chapters 40–48 can be spoken of in the parlance of "true eschatological character, given that it is

16740-596: The Hebrews , 1 Peter and 2 Peter ). Noah became the subject of much elaboration in the literature of later Abrahamic religions, including Islam ( Surahs 71 , 7 , 11 , 54 , and 21 of the Quran) and the Baháʼí Faith ( Kitáb-i-Íqán and Gems of Divine Mysteries ). The Book of Jubilees refers to Noah and says that he was taught the arts of healing by an angel so that his children could overcome "the offspring of

16926-454: 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

17112-601: The Mesopotamian flood-myth that underlies the biblical account. The Noah story of the Pentateuch is quite similar to a flood story contained in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh , composed c.  1800 BCE . In the Gilgamesh version, the Mesopotamian gods decide to send a great flood to destroy mankind. Various correlations between the stories of Noah and Gilgamesh (the flood, the construction of

17298-477: 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

17484-531: The Patriarch Abraham had his roots. The Hurrians inherited the Flood story from Babylonia". The encyclopedia mentions another similarity between the stories: Noah is the tenth patriarch and Berossus notes that "the hero of the great flood was Babylonia's tenth antediluvian king." However, there is a discrepancy in the ages of the heroes. For the Mesopotamian antecedents, "the reigns of the antediluvian kings range from 18,600 to nearly 65,000 years." In

17670-417: The Quran, including "Trustworthy Messenger of God" ( 26:107 ) and "Grateful Servant of God" ( 17:3 ). The Quran focuses on several instances from Noah's life more than others, and one of the most significant events is the Flood. God makes a covenant with Noah just as he did with Abraham, Moses , Jesus and Muhammad later on ( 33:7 ). Noah is later reviled by his people and reproached by them for being

17856-621: 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

18042-460: 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

18228-519: The Yajooj and Majooj". Al-Majlisi, an influential Shia scholar, quotes another tradition linking them to Chinese, Slavs, and Turkic people, and saying they are from the children of Adam, then saying that it is stronger than the former tradition and takes priority. Sunni sources, including those in Sahih Al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim , indicate that they are from the Children of Adam, and this

18414-533: The Zemarites, and the Hamathites ;– spread out from Sidon as far as Gerar , near Gaza , and as far as Sodom and Gomorrah (10:15–19). Among Shem's descendants was Eber (10:21). These genealogies differ structurally from those set out in Genesis 5 and 11. It has a segmented or treelike structure, going from one father to many offspring. It is strange that the table, which assumes that

18600-488: 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

18786-478: 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

18972-642: The age of the Messiah. One view within Christianity is more starkly apocalyptic , making Gog and Magog allies of Satan against God at the end of the millennium , as described in the Book of Revelation . A legend was attached to Gog and Magog by the time of the Roman period , that the Gates of Alexander were erected by Alexander the Great to repel the tribe. Romanized Jewish historian Josephus knew them as

19158-528: The apocalyptic motif of Revelation and assert that the end of the world would also involve the barbarian groups penetrating through the wall and bringing about the apocalypse. Two chapters of the Qur'an , Al Kahf (Chapter 18) and Al-Anbiya (Chapter 21), discuss Gog and Magog. In the Qur'an, Ya'juj and Ma'juj (Gog and Magog) are suppressed by Dhu al-Qarnayn ( Arabic : ذو القرنين , lit.   'the two-horned one'). Dhul-Qarnayn, having journeyed to

19344-461: The ark, the salvation of animals, and the release of birds following the flood) have led to this story being seen as the source for the story of Noah. The few variations include the number of days of the deluge, the order of the birds, and the name of the mountain on which the ark rests. The flood story in Genesis 6–8 matches the Gilgamesh flood myth so closely that "few doubt that [it] derives from

19530-455: 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

19716-547: 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,

19902-458: The biblical Flood story as the building and provisioning of the ark, its flotation, and the subsidence of the waters, as well as the part played by the human protagonist." The Encyclopedia Judaica adds that there is a strong suggestion that "an intermediate agent was active. The people most likely to have fulfilled this role are the Hurrians , whose territory included the city of Harran , where

20088-464: The birth of Noah." Also, Noah's father is reported as worrying that his son was actually fathered by one of the Watchers . The righteousness of Noah is the subject of much discussion among rabbis. The description of Noah as "righteous in his generation" implied to some that his perfection was only relative: In his generation of wicked people, he could be considered righteous, but in the generation of

20274-576: 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

20460-602: 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

20646-559: The days of the coming of the Son of Man . For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man." The First Epistle of Peter compares the power of baptism with the Ark saving those who were in it. In later Christian thought,

20832-568: 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;

21018-513: 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

21204-584: 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

21390-403: The earth". As a pledge of this gracious covenant with man and beast the rainbow was set in the clouds (ib. viii. 15–22, ix. 8–17). Two injunctions were laid upon Noah: While the eating of animal food was permitted, abstinence from blood was strictly enjoined; and the shedding of the blood of man by man was made a crime punishable by death at the hands of man (ib. ix. 3–6). Noah, as the last of

21576-422: The ends of the world, meets "a people who scarcely understood a word" who seek his help in building a barrier that will separate them from the people of Ya'juj and Ma'juj who "do great mischief on earth". He agrees to build it for them, but warns that when the time comes (Last Age), God will remove the barrier. The early Muslim traditions were summarised by Zakariya al-Qazwini (d. 1283) in two popular works called

21762-541: The exposure of genitalia as compared with other Hebrew Bible texts, such as Habakkuk 2:15 and Lamentations 4:21. Other commentaries mention that "uncovering someone's nakedness" could mean having sexual intercourse with that person or that person's spouse, as quoted in Leviticus 18:7–8 and 20. From this interpretation comes the speculation that Ham was guilty of engaging in incest and raping Noah or his own mother. The latter interpretation would clarify why Canaan, as

21948-469: The extremely long-lived Antediluvian patriarchs, died 350 years after the flood, at the age of 950, when Terah was 128. The maximum human lifespan, as depicted by the Bible, gradually diminishes thereafter, from almost 1,000 years to the 120 years of Moses . After the flood, the Bible says that Noah became a farmer and he planted a vineyard . He drank wine made from this vineyard, and got drunk ; and lay "uncovered" within his tent. Noah's son Ham,

22134-628: The fact that the flood motif didn't show up in the Ur III copy and that the earliest chronographical sources related to the flood show up in the Old Babylonian Period. Chen concludes that the name of Ziusudra as a flood hero, as well as any hinted references of a flood, in the Old Babylonian Version of the Instructions of Shuruppak were later developments during the Old Babylonian Period, originating from updated information added to

22320-457: The far north with all its troops—the many nations with you." Internal evidence indicates that the Gog oracle was composed substantially later than the chapters around it. Of Gog's allies, Meshech and Tubal were 7th-century BC kingdoms in central Anatolia north of Israel, Persia towards the east, Cush (Ethiopia) and Put (Libya) to the south; Gomer is the Cimmerians , a nomadic people north of

22506-473: The father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his brothers, which led to Ham's son Canaan being cursed by Noah. As early as the Classical era , commentators on Genesis 9:20–21 have excused Noah's excessive drinking because he was considered to be the first wine drinker; the first person to discover the effects of wine. John Chrysostom , Archbishop of Constantinople , and a Church Father , wrote in

22692-549: The father of the Turks, one of the sons of Noah". In Malaysian - Indonesian tradition, stories about Gog and Magog were introduced by way of translation from Abbasid -era Arabic texts by religious authorities. They increasingly became prominent during the 16th century, a period of heightened political rivalry and conflict. For example, a text known as the Hikayat Ya’juj wa-Ma’juj was read by some Malay warriors fighting against

22878-436: 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

23064-659: 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

23250-423: The flood hero, as well as a short version of the flood story, although Chen writes that his was included in texts written during the Old Babylonian Period. The earliest Akkadian versions of the unified epic are dated to c. 2000–1700 BC. Due to the fragmentary nature of these Old Babylonian versions, it is unclear whether they included an expanded account of the flood myth; although one fragment definitely includes

23436-490: The flood, God commands Noah and his sons to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth". The story of Noah in the Pentateuch is similar to the flood narrative in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh , composed around 1800 BC, where a hero builds an ark to survive a divinely sent flood. Scholars suggest that the biblical account was influenced by earlier Mesopotamian traditions, with notable parallels in plot elements and structure. Comparisons are also drawn between Noah and

23622-406: 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

23808-440: 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

23994-589: The hostile nations of the world. Gog the Reubenite occurs in 1 Chronicles 5:4 , but he has no connection with the Gog of Ezekiel or Magog of Genesis. The Biblical "Gog and Magog" possibly gave derivation of the name Gogmagog , a legendary British giant. A later corrupted folk rendition in print altered the tradition around Gogmagog and Corineus with two giants Gog and Magog, with whom the Guildhall statues came to be identified. The Book of Ezekiel records

24180-414: The idea of Noah being the first person to drink wine and experience the aftereffects of doing so. Quran 29:14 states that Noah had been living among the people who he was sent to for 950 years when the flood started. Indeed, We sent Noah to his people, and he remained among them for a thousand years, less fifty. Then the Flood overtook them, while they persisted in wrongdoing. The Baháʼí Faith regards

24366-663: The lake of Tiberias and drink out of it. And when the last of them would pass, he would say: There was once water there. The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus equated Magog with the Scythians in Antiquities of the Jews , but he never mentioned Gog. In another work , Josephus recounts that the Alans (whom he calls a Scythian tribe) were given passage by the Hyrcanian king, a warder of an iron gate built by Alexander. By

24552-587: 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

24738-465: 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

24924-471: 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

25110-499: 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

25296-672: The languages, behaviors and sexual activities of the tribes of Gog and Magog with those of Vikings. Some scholars further attempt to relate Yajuj and Majuj to the Lake of Tiberias, currently known as the Sea of Galilee , the Earth 's lowest freshwater lake, and the Dead Sea. Historian and exegete Ibn Kathir mentioned similar theories in his book Al-Bidaya wa'l-Nihaya and mentions "Gog and Magog are two groups of Turks, descended from Yafith (Japheth),

25482-457: The legend of Alexander and the Iron Gates was disseminated throughout the Near East in the early centuries of the Christian and Islamic era. They appear in the Quran in chapter Al-Kahf as Yajuj and Majuj , primitive and immoral tribes that were separated and barriered off by Dhu al-Qarnayn ("He of the Two Horns") who is mentioned in the Quran as a great righteous ruler and conqueror. Some contemporary Muslim historians and geographers regarded

25668-404: The maritime nations (10:2–5). Ham's son Cush had a son named Nimrod , who became the first man of might on earth, a mighty hunter, king in Babylon and the land of Shinar (10:6–10). From there Ashur went and built Nineveh . (10:11–12) Canaan's descendants – Sidon, Heth , the Jebusites , the Amorites , the Girgashites, the Hivites , the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites,

25854-456: The medieval commentator Rashi , held on the contrary that the building of the Ark was stretched over 120 years, deliberately in order to give sinners time to repent. Rashi interprets his father's statement of the naming of Noah (in Hebrew – Noaħ נֹחַ). "This one will comfort us (in Hebrew– yeNaĦamenu יְנַחֲמֵנו) in our work and in the toil of our hands, which come from the ground that the Lord had cursed" Some interpret this as meaning Noah heralded

26040-408: The middle of the 2nd century BC, changes Ezekiel's "Gog from Magog" to "Gog and Magog", links their fate with up to eleven other nations, and places them "in the midst of Aethiopian rivers"; this seems a strange location, but ancient geography did sometimes place Ethiopia next to Persia or even India. The passage has a highly uncertain text, with manuscripts varying in their groupings of the letters of

26226-480: The name of Gog where the Hebrew original has something else, or use Magog where the Hebrew has Gog, indicating that the names were interchangeable. The anti-Roman Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century AD looked to a human leader as the promised messiah , but after its failure Jews began to conceive of the messianic age in supernatural terms: first would come a forerunner, the Messiah ben Joseph , who would defeat Israel's enemies, identified as Gog and Magog, to prepare

26412-421: The nation descended from Magog the Japhetite , as in Genesis , and explained them to be the Scythians . In the hands of Early Christian writers they became apocalyptic hordes. Throughout the Middle Ages , they were variously identified as the Vikings , Huns , Khazars , Mongols or other nomads , or even the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel . The legend of Gog and Magog and the gates were also interpolated into

26598-664: 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

26784-408: The night saying, "Tomorrow we will finish", but each night God restores it. Then one day, as they stop digging for the night, one will say, "Tomorrow we will finish, God Willing", and in the morning, it is not restored as with every night. When they do break through, they will be so numerous that, "Their vanguard is in Syria and their rear in Khorasan ". The wall dividing them from civilized peoples

26970-410: The north. Gog and Magog appear in somewhat later Old French versions of the romance. In the verse Roman d'Alexandre , Branch III, of Lambert le Tort (c. 1170), Gog and Magog ("Gos et Margos", "Got et Margot") were vassals to Porus , king of India, providing an auxiliary force of 400,000 men. Routed by Alexander, they escaped through a defile in the mountains of Tus (or Turs), and were sealed by

27156-471: 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.   '

27342-445: The other way around, and "Magog" may be code for Babylon . The form "Gog and Magog" may have emerged as shorthand for "Gog and/of the land of Magog", based on their usage in the Septuagint , the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. An example of this combined form in Hebrew ( Gog u-Magog ) has been found, but its context is unclear, being preserved only in a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls . In Revelation, Gog and Magog together are

27528-423: The population is distributed about the Earth, precedes the account of the Tower of Babel , which says that all the population is in one place before it is dispersed. Genesis 5:1–32 transmits a genealogy of the Sethites down to Noah, which is taken from the priestly tradition. A genealogy of the Canites from the Jawhistic tradition is found in Genesis 4:17–26. Biblical scholars see these as variants on one and

27714-410: The portions of the Sumerian King List which mention the time before the flood are stylistically different from the King List Proper. Chen writes that Old Babylonian copies tend to show a separate pre-flood tradition which is apart from the King List. Further, the Ur III copy of the King List as well as similar documents indicate that the King List Proper once existed independent of a flood narrative or

27900-525: The preparation of the ark for certain animals, Noah, and his family, and God's guarantee (the Noahic Covenant ) for the continued existence of life under the promise that he would never send another flood. After the flood, Noah offered burnt offerings to God. God accepted the sacrifice, and made a covenant with Noah, and through him with all mankind, that he would not waste the earth or destroy man by another deluge. "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish

28086-484: 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

28272-410: The priests (Shem), the warriors (Japheth), and the peasants (Ham). In medieval Christian thought, Ham was considered to be the ancestor of the people of black Africa. So, in racialist arguments, the curse of Ham became a justification for the slavery of the black races. Isaac Newton , in his religious works on the development of religion, wrote about Noah and his offspring. In Newton's view, while Noah

28458-503: 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

28644-434: The product of this illicit union, was cursed by Noah. Alternatively, Canaan could be the perpetrator himself as the Bible describes the illicit deed being committed by Noah's "youngest son", with Ham being consistently described as the middle son in other verses. Genesis 10 sets forth the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, from whom the nations branched out over the Earth after the flood. Among Japheth's descendants were

28830-451: 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

29016-431: 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

29202-498: 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

29388-516: The restored Israel but will be destroyed, after which God will establish a new Temple and dwell with his people for a period of lasting peace (chapters 40–48). "Son of man, direct your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince, leader of Meshech and Tubal , and prophesy concerning him. Say: Thus said the Lord: Behold, I am against you, Gog, the prince, leader of Meshech and Tubal ... Persia , Cush and Put will be with you ... also Gomer with all its troops, and Beth Togarmah from

29574-433: The same list. However, if we take the merged text of Genesis as a single account, we can construct the following family tree, which has come down in this form into the Jewish and Christian traditions. According to the documentary hypothesis , the first five books of the Bible ( Pentateuch / Torah ), including Genesis, were collated during the 5th century BC from four main sources, which themselves date from no earlier than

29760-447: The secret of immortality. Starting with the Old Babylonian Period , there were attempts to syncretize Utnapishtim with Ziusudra, even though they were previously seen as different figures. Gilgamesh meeting the flood hero was first alluded to in the Old Babylonian Period in "The Death of Gilgamesh" and eventually was imported and standardized in the Epic of Gilgamesh probably in the Middle Babylonian Period. Gilgamesh 's historical reign

29946-422: The semen Adam produced while he dreamt of intercourse with Eve, and that Magog descended from the menstrual blood of Eve. Alexander ("Iskandar") is taught this story by the prophet Khidr . Nūr ad-Dīn ar-Ranīrī (d. 1658), a Gujariti scholar, depicted Gog and Magog as infidel tribes that eat dogs, descendants of Noah, and originally from Turkey. According to a tradition in Shia sources, Yajooj and Majooj are not from

30132-398: The setting for the castigation of Israel’s Canaanite neighbors." It was Ham who committed an offense when he viewed his father's nakedness. Yet, "Noah’s curse, ... is strangely aimed at Canaan rather than the disrespectful Ham." In Mandaeism , Noah ([ࡍࡅ] Error: {{Langx}}: invalid parameter: |transl= ( help ) ) is mentioned in Book 18 of the Right Ginza . In the text, Noah's wife

30318-426: 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

30504-413: 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

30690-455: The story of Gilgamesh’s journey to meet Utnapishtim . The "standard" Akkadian version included a long version of the flood story and was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC. Yi Samuel Chen, analyzing various texts from the Early Dynastic III Period to the Old Babylonian Period, argues that the flood narrative was only added in texts written during the latter Old Babylonian Period. Observations by experts indicate that

30876-411: The text from the burgeoning Antediluvian Tradition. Noah has often been compared to Deucalion , the son of Prometheus and Hesinoe in Greek mythology . Like Noah, Deucalion is warned of the flood (by Zeus and Poseidon ); he builds an ark and staffs it with creatures – and when he completes his voyage, gives thanks and takes advice from the gods on how to repopulate the Earth. Deucalion also sends

31062-434: The third, a portion of Japheth's land is assigned to Magog. The 1st-century Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum , which retells Biblical history from Adam to Saul, is notable for listing and naming seven of Magog's sons, and mentions his "thousands" of descendants. The Samaritan Torah and the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made during the last few centuries of the pre-Christian era) occasionally introduce

31248-411: The time of Josephus, Alexander was already a Jewish folk hero. However, the earliest fusion of Alexander's gate and the apocalyptic nations of Gog and Magog is a product of late antiquity, in what is known as the Syriac Legend of Alexander . In the Syriac Alexander Legend dating to 629–630, Gog ( Syriac : ܓܘܓ , gwg) and Magog ( Syriac : ܡܓܘܓ ܵ, mgwg) appear as kings of Hunnish nations. Written by

31434-580: 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

31620-430: The wall erected there, to last until the advent of the Antichrist. Branch IV of the poetic cycle tells that the task of guarding Gog and Magog, as well as the rule of Syria and Persia was assigned to Antigonus , one of Alexander's successors. Gog and Magog also appear in Thomas de Kent 's Roman de toute chevalerie (c. 1180), where they are portrayed as cave-dwellers who consume human flesh. A condensed account occurs in

31806-424: The way for the Messiah ben David ; then the dead would rise, divine judgement would be handed out, and the righteous would be rewarded. The aggadah , homiletic and non-legalistic exegetical texts in the classical rabbinic literature of Judaism , treat Gog and Magog as two names for the same nation who will come against Israel in the final war. The rabbis associated no specific nation or territory with them beyond

31992-413: 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

32178-468: The wise man, Noah being the latter. In Jewish tradition and rabbinic literature on Noah , rabbis blame Satan for the intoxicating properties of the wine. In the context of Noah's drunkenness, relates two facts: (1) Noah became drunken and "he was uncovered within his tent", and (2) Ham "saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without". Because of its brevity and textual inconsistencies, it has been suggested that this narrative

32364-407: The world with evil. Noah then labors faithfully to build the Ark at God 's command, ultimately saving not only his own family, but mankind itself and all land animals, from extinction during the Flood . Afterwards, God makes a covenant with Noah and promises never again to destroy the earth with a flood. Noah is also portrayed as a "tiller of the soil" who is the first to cultivate the vine. After

32550-421: 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

32736-471: Was a monotheist, the gods of pagan antiquity are identified with Noah and his descendants. An important Gnostic text, the Apocryphon of John , reports that the chief archon caused the flood because he desired to destroy the world he had made, but the First Thought informed Noah of the chief archon's plans, and Noah informed the remainder of humanity. Unlike the account of Genesis, not only are Noah's family saved, but many others also heed Noah's call. There

32922-414: Was normally placed towards today's Armenia and Azerbaijan , but in the year 842 the Caliph Al-Wathiq had a dream in which he saw that it had been breached, and sent an official named Sallam to investigate (this may be related to Ergenekon ). Sallam returned a little over two years later and reported that he had seen the wall and also the tower where Dhul Qarnayn had left his building equipment, and all

33108-438: 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

33294-447: Was retaliation in response to the encroachment upon tribal lands by Christian missionaries , and perhaps by the Saxon Wars prosecuted by Charlemagne and his kin to the south. Researches of professors and philosophers such as Allama Muhammad Iqbal , Syeed Abul Ala Mawdudi , who played important roles in British and South Asian politics, and American academic Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi and Caribbean eschatologist Imran N. Hosein , compare

33480-470: 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

33666-555: Was still intact. It is not entirely clear what Sallam saw, but he may have reached Derbent in the Caucasus or the Jade Gate and the westernmost customs point on the border of China. Somewhat later the 14th-century traveller Ibn Battuta reported that the wall was sixty days' travel from the city of Zeitun , which is on the coast of China; the translator notes that Ibn Battuta has confused the Great Wall of China with that built by Dhul-Qarnayn . Various nations and peoples in history were identified as Ya'juj and Ma'juj. At one point, it

33852-479: 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

34038-496: Was the Turks, who threatened Baghdad and northern Iran; later, when the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258, it was they who were Gog and Magog. Others regarded the Vikings and their descendants as Gog and Magog, since the unknown group from Scandinavia had made their sudden and considerable entry into the history of Europe . Viking travelers and colonists were seen at many points in history as violent raiders. Many historical documents suggest that their conquests of other territories

34224-437: 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

34410-408: 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

34596-570: 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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