Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>]

Dear Trevor,
You wrote:
>
>
> You might want to do some reading on this subject. It has been
> extensively discussed, and I think there's quite a bit of evidence
> suggesting that Hebrew actually was a spoken language, side-by-side with
> Aramaic.

What seems to belie this are the Aramaic papyri from Elephantine.
I"ve been trying to understand why Jews writing private letters to each
other
would be in Aramaic. One reason may be that the scribes they used only wrote
Aramaic, not Hebrew. Another reason tho may be that the people themselves
did
not speak Hebrew. Would we be able to tell the difference do you think?

Liz