Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ken Penner" <pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca>]

I'd also like to see evidence for both sides: Hebrew dying out and Hebrew
remaining an everyday spoken language.
I recently delivered a paper to the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies on
the question of whether the Greek words Hebrais/Hebraisti refer to Hebrew or
Aramaic, and necessarily had to touch on the likelihood of Hebrew surviving
as a spoken language.

I'd be interested to hear how put it all together:

Why are parts of Ezra and Daniel in Aramaic?
Why and when did the Targumim appear?
Why are there more Second Temple Aramaic inscriptions than Hebrew?
Why is so much early Second Temple religious literature in Aramaic (the
several parts of Enoch, Tobit, Genesis Apocryphon, New Jerusalem, etc.)?
Why do the Maccabean coins have Hebrew rather than Aramaic?
Why are so many more Semitic words (even those called Hebraisti) in the
Christian scriptures Aramaic rather than Hebrew?
Why do the Aramaic Bar Kokhba letters outnumber the Hebrew ones?
Why is the inscription on Jesus' cross said to have been in Roman, Greek,
and "Hebraisti", without mention of Aramaic?
Why does a Bar Kokhba letter-writer apologize for writing in Greek rather
than "ebraesti", without mentioning Aramaic?
Why does Philo say the Bible was written in "Chaldean"?
Do any ancient writers ever call Aramaic Hebrew?

I have some hypotheses, but I'd like to hear your views first.

Ken Penner, M.C.S. (Biblical Languages, Greek Focus), M.A. (Hebrew Poetry)
Ph.D. (cand.), McMaster University
pennerkm AT mcmaster.ca
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> While acknowledging that there came more concentrated
> Aramaic and Greek influences after the GALUT BAVEL,
> the evidence is pretty convincing that Hebrew remained
> an "everyday spoken language" in Judea and even among
> AM HA-ARETZ in Galilee until, maybe, the 2nd century
> C.E.  So why do you believe as you do?