Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi,

recent discussions have caused me a lot of confusion. There have been  
a lot of references to 'Mishnaic Hebrew' with no-one actually  
providing a definition of the term. My logical assumption was that  
people were talking about the Hebrew of the Mishnah which summarises  
Rabbinic debates from 70-200 i.e. a period which is post second temple  
period. However, the term has been used in debates to refer to Hebrew  
of the second temple period. This is quite confusing.

While we can look to MSS of the Mishnah to understand the Hebrew used  
to compose it is there anything at all written in Hebrew from the  
second temple period that we can use to define the form of second  
temple period Hebrew?

James Christian

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