Dear Peter:I repeat that it is highly improbable that Judah's maid was more highly educated in Hebrew than Judah was himself, and without Judah knowing it. In fact I think I would go so far as saying that this is impossible, given the status of women at the time, the lowly status of a maid, and Judah's probable status at the top of the educational elite.
On second thought, maybe Judah haNasi’s maid is a good story for evidence in this question after all: Judah haNasi himself did not expect that a common person had fluent knowledge of Hebrew. If there were a community of Jews for whom Hebrew was their mother tongue, Judah should have known about it and it would not have been a surprise that a maid from that community would know Hebrew. That Judah was surprised indicates that either Judah was ignorant of Jewish society (which I think is highly improbable) or that this is evidence that such a community did not exist. (If the maid knew Hebrew better than Judah haNasi, the question remains, where did she learn her Hebrew? But there are answers that do not require a living community of Hebrew speakers, such as being herself from an educated home.)
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