Biblical Hebrew Forum

[<tladatsi AT charter.net>]

Herman et al.,

Whether Hebrew was dead, dying, or alive at any particular point between 500 
BCE and 100 CE  is really quite tangential to the to the point of my emails.  
Even if Hebrew were a living, vibrant language during the time of Herodotus, 
it would have been in a small and, from a Greek perspective, rather 
insignificant region of their world – an obscure province of the Persian 
Empire.   If the Greeks were deficient in a word for hemp, why use a Hebrew 
word?  Why not a Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, or Aramaic word?  There was not an 
extensive importation of Hebrew culture or language into the Greek world 
before the spread of Christianity.

That being said, Hebrew did die out as a living spoken language at some 
point.  It’s death was a process that lasted many centuries.  The conquest of 
Israel by Assyria and Judea by Babylon and the long dominance of Aramaic in 
the region were factors initiating this process.  Suffice it to say, it was 
in decline as a living language during the Hellenistic period (the necessity 
of the publication of the LXX and the adoption of the *Assyrian* alphabet for 
writing Hebrew are but two small examples).  To the extent that it was used 
on a day to day basis, it would have been in a very geographically limited 
area.

The extent to which Hebrew survived as spoken and / or written language at 
any given place or time is of course much debated, including here.

https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew/2003-June/015607.html

--
Jack Tladatsi