Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Sarah J. Blake" <sarah AT growingstrong.org>]

LOL, George... When in formal classes I am quite an early riser. Last night 
I was cat-napping and rising--now awake for the day.

I did some poking around on Google with the phrase "holy language" and the 
word Hebrew. Fascinating things to ponder... More questions... Is the 
concept of ""holy language" about the way that a language is used or about 
the way that it is not used? Some of the articles I read point to 
Maimonides' claim that Hebrew has no direct words for sexual acts or 
profanity. Other articles claim that Hebrew was (at some point or in some 
place--I did not read thoroughly) used for sacred texts while another 
language was used for legal documents. This does not imply that "holy 
language" is the language spoken by God but rather the language used to 
speak of God. However, we humans do like to think of God in our likeness; so 
in this mindset surely God speaks Hebrew. It is also a convenient 
empowerment mechanism for an oppressed people whose language might be 
endangered (my theory).

My first reading about general topics regarding Hebrew language outside of 
grammar or works in Hebrew was a book called Hebrew in the Church: The 
Foundations of Jewish-Christian Dialogue (Pinchas E. Lapide and Helmut 
Gollwitzer, English ed. published 1984 by Eerdmans). It discusses the 
attempts of Christian scholars to learn Hebrew following the Jewish-Gentile 
split, when Christian-Jewish relations were oftenforbidden. It also talks 
about the various attitudes toward Hebrew over time: it was considered 
everything from sacred to the devil's language. Fascinating reading. What I 
don't like about this book is that most of the Hebrew is transliterated, 
though this makes it possible for lay readers to deal with it without 
learning Hebrew script since the Hebrew meanings are defined.

Enough for now...

Sarah J. Blake
Personal email: sjblake AT growingstrong.org
http://www.growingstrong.org 


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