Talk:Mishnaic Hebrew

Type of Hebrew

Is this the same as Talmudic Hebrew? From what I've heard, the Mishna is PART of the Talmud, along with the Gemara. Gringo300 01:31, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It more encompasses that general time period of Hebrew shortly after the Second Temple Period, but before the later Tiberian Hebrew was codified in the Masoretic text. - Gilgamesh 05:28, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You've craftily, but unproductively, avoided addressing Gringo's POV-pushing point. The Mishna is, of course, the core of the Talmud. The mishna is written in post-Biblical Hebrew, hence its characterization as "Mishnaic Hebrew". Tiberian Hebrew has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Mishna nor its transmission. I don't want to impugn the motivations of Gilgamesh's reply, but the answer to your question, Gringo, is that Mishnaic Hebrew is the form of Hebrew found in the Mishna. It is, of course, found in other contemporaneous writings, but it should not be confused with later forms of Hebrew, some of which are found in the Gemara, but some of which long post-date the writing of the Gemara. Tomer ^TALK 06:47, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

The Mishna was written by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (the Prince), as a terse compilation of essential roots in the G-d-given Oral Law. It was written in Hebrew (Mishnaic, of course; the term comes from the source). The Gemara (both Babylonian and Jerusalem versions) was written as an expansion/commentary of the Mishna, mostly in Aramaic, but with plenty Hebrew mixed in. It contains quotes from other Mishnayot, Beraitot, and sayings of the Amora'im (sages of the Gemara period), as part of the main body of a probing, question-answer form of trying to understand the depths and intricacies of the Oral (and Written) Law, using the Mishnah text as a springboard: each chapter of Gemara (Talmud) is really that same chapter of the Mishnah, but after the text of the Mishnah comes the text of the Gemara, in its discussions on concepts of the Mishnah. Piano man 10:26, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Arguable descendant?

"Rabbinic Hebrew language is arguably the ancient descendant of Biblical Hebrew"

Just out of curiosity, why *arguably*? -- posted by [User:24.74.102.32] ([Special:Contributions/24.74.102.32|contribs])

The point is that scholarship doesn't see the languages' relationship as so simple. As such, this article needs a lot of work. Their relationship is questioned in order to justify many linguistic differences. Some theories as to the nature of their relationship include:

• Biblical Hebrew naturally developed into Rabbinic Hebrew as the spoken language of Judea
• Biblical Hebrew was a literary language, while Rabbinic Hebrew was a non-literary version (known as diglossia, such as in Arabic)
• Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew descend from different dialectal traditions, which varied based on region
• Hebrew was not usually spoken in Judea from the return from the Babylonian Exile till the destruction of the Second Temple (primarily Aramaic and maybe Greek); maybe it was revived for nationalistic reasons during the Bar Kokhba revolt, just as Modern Hebrew was 1850 years later.

Arguments for these hypotheses include reference to influencing languages, Dead Sea Scrolls, Cairo Geniza, "Late Biblical Hebrew", etc. But again, this is a current argument in circles of academia, and often has some ideological baggage attached. --jnothman ^talk 04:23, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Hebrew naming conventions

Urgent: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Hebrew) to add your opinions about this important matter. Thank you. IZAK 18:11, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Past habitual tense

Quote: Continuous past is expressed using <to be> + <present form>, unlike Biblical and Modern Hebrew. For example (Pirkei Avoth 1:2): "הוא היה אומר" ("He often said".)

It is true that Biblical Hebrew do not know this construction. But Modern Hebrew does. So I changed the sentence to "unlike Biblical but like Modern Hebrew"

Source:

Modern Hebrew: An Essential Grammar (Lewis Glinert) §82a:

Past habitual tense: "I used to..." One way of expressing "used to" (i.e. "to have been in the habit of doing something") is to add the past tense of היה "be" to the present tense of the verb in question. This is the compound tense: בּשׁבּת הייתי קם בּשׁמונה (On Shabbat I was in the habit of getting up at eight.)

Ingeborg, 15.01.09. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.59.81.24 (talk) 19:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The imperative

The imperfect (prefixed) form, which is used for the future in modern Hebrew, expresses an imperative (order), volition or similar meanings in Mishnaic Hebrew. For example, (Pirke Avoth 1:3): "הוא היה אומר, אל תהיו כעבדים המשמשין את הרב" ("He would say, don't be like slaves serving the master...", lit. "...you will not be...")

This example is problematic, standard modern Hebrew uses a unique imperative form in a "positive" imperative sentence and the prefixed (future) form in negative imperative sentence, since this sentence is negative it's actually not clear (to me as well) what happens in a positive imperative sentence in Mishnaic Hebrew. --Nngnna (talk) 09:08, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Mishnaic phonology

@GordonGlottal "Reverted good faith edits by Ogress (talk): Important to distinguish between the phonology used in the Mishnaic period for Biblical Hebrew and that used for their own dialect."

We don't have any evidence that a distinction was made when Hebrew was still spoken between "vernacular" and "biblical" pronunciations. In addition, these sources are Bible translations; Jews did the Hexapla's transliteration in Tiberias, and Origen merely added it to his translation. Finally, the Tiberian Hexapla text appears to match the Tiberian pronunciation recorded by the Masoretes, who were also in Tiberias! Ogress 13:43, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

@Ogress The point I was trying to make is that Jerome and Origen's transcriptions give us evidence for how Mishnaic-period people pronounced Biblical Hebrew, but they don't tell us about how Mishnaic Hebrew was pronounced. In general it is both possible and even characteristic for the tradents to preserve historical phonetics for historical texts without being conservative in their own speech. So (impressively) different eras of Biblical Hebrew can sometimes be identified within the MT by vocalization pattern, and vocalizers use slightly different rules for vocalizing Mishnaic Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew, even within the same manuscript.

Example: Pausal forms are never used for Mishnaic Hebrew, but are still found in Biblical verses quoted within the Mishnaic text in Mishnaic manuscripts. The application of which is, the fact that Jerome and Origen lived in the Mishnaic period and transcribe pausal forms in Biblical Hebrew shouldn't be taken as evidence that there were pausal forms in Mishnaic Hebrew, and likewise for each feature. GordonGlottal (talk) 14:39, 16 July 2024 (UTC)