Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics
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Subject: Language And Linguistics
Edited by: Geoffrey Khan
Associate editors: Shmuel Bolozky, Steven Fassberg, Gary A. Rendsburg, Aaron D. Rubin, Ora R. Schwarzwald, Tamar Zewi
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online offers a systematic and comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the history and study of the Hebrew language from its earliest attested form to the present day.
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online features advanced search options, as well as extensive cross-references and full-text search functionality using the Hebrew character set. With over 850 entries and approximately 400 contributing scholars, the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online is the authoritative reference work for students and researchers in the fields of Hebrew linguistics, general linguistics, Biblical studies, Hebrew and Jewish literature, and related fields.
Subscriptions: Brill.com
Associate editors: Shmuel Bolozky, Steven Fassberg, Gary A. Rendsburg, Aaron D. Rubin, Ora R. Schwarzwald, Tamar Zewi
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The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online offers a systematic and comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the history and study of the Hebrew language from its earliest attested form to the present day.
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online features advanced search options, as well as extensive cross-references and full-text search functionality using the Hebrew character set. With over 850 entries and approximately 400 contributing scholars, the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online is the authoritative reference work for students and researchers in the fields of Hebrew linguistics, general linguistics, Biblical studies, Hebrew and Jewish literature, and related fields.
Subscriptions: Brill.com
Toponyms: in the Land of Israel
(6,524 words)
1. Introduction The place names of the Land of Israel constitute an independent linguistic corpus that has evolved for millennia along a path of its own. Consider, for example, the place name הָם
hå̄m (Gen. 14.5), mentioned in the earliest description of a war in the Bible in connection with a people, the זוּזִים
zūzīm, who already in the most ancient of biblical periods were considered prehistoric and had long since disappeared. The place name has survived in Transjordan to this day (map ref. 226 213), although in the meantime the nationality and l…
Toponyms outside of the Land of Israel
(2,299 words)
1. Short History Hebrew versions of place names outside of the Land of Israel were recorded in Hebrew documents since as early as biblical times, e.g., דַּמֶּ֥שֶׂק
dammεśεq ‘Damascus’ (Gen. 15.2), and continued to be documented in Hebrew throughout the generations during which post-biblical literature was composed, e.g., the names of the Babylonian cities of נהרדעא
nehardəʿa and סורא
sura (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 6), and into the Middle Ages and beyond, as in the name ביניטיקא
veneṭiqa ‘Venice’, first recorded before 953 C.E. (Flusser 1978:6, 8) and שאלוניקייה
śaloniqiya ‘Thessalon…
Tosefta, Hebrew of
(549 words)
Since the Tosefta is a component of Tannaitic literature, the general description of its language is to be sought under Tannaitic (or Mishnaic) Hebrew. Tannaitic literature, for our purposes, consists of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Halakhic Midrashim. It may be noted that research on Tannaitic Hebrew has focused disproportionately on the language of the Mishna, and in recent decades has been based on reliable MS texts of the Mishna (e.g., Codex Kaufmann, etc.). The unique linguistic qualities of t…
Transcription into Arabic Script: Medieval Muslim Sources
(1,369 words)
A number of transcriptions of Hebrew words into Arabic script are found in medieval Muslim Arabic sources. These are mainly, but not exclusively, proper names. The Hebrew words occur in works relating to Jewish history, chronology, and scripture (usually in polemical contexts). The authors referred to in this entry are al-Yaʿqūbī (d. 897/8), al-Kirmānī (d. 1021), al-Bīrūnī (d. 1048), Saʿīd ibn Ḥasan (an Egyptian Jew who converted to Islam in 1298) and Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406). Some transcriptions of proper names that are found in the sources appear to be based closely on t…
Transcription into Arabic Script: Modern Period
(1,050 words)
In modern times the transcription of Hebrew words into Arabic characters is used mainly in the Arab press, in order to refer to Hebrew place names and personal names, and also in road signs, street names, and the like in Israel. The Arab press uses various transcription methods, which will not be discussed in the present entry. Here we will describe the official transcription of the State of Israel, as used in official maps and signposts. In the year 2000 the Center for the Mapping of Israel (the government body responsible for mapping the country) published a booklet w…
Transcription into Greek and Latin Script: Pre-Masoretic Period
(13,270 words)
1. Introduction The traditions of Greek and Latin transcriptions of Biblical Hebrew are of great importance for linguistic study, because of both their relatively early origins and the record of vocalic quality and, sometimes, length (for instance, in Greek). Modern scholarship has, therefore, from the very beginning utilized these transcriptions in the research of Hebrew (see Luzzatto 1894; Böttcher 1866–1868; König 1881, etc.). Before 1894, available sources of the Greek and Latin transcriptions were Greek transcriptions of proper names found in the Septu…
Transcription into Latin Script: Jerome
(793 words)
St. Jerome (
Hieronymus in Latin) spent the last thirty-four years of his life, until his death in 419/420 C.E., in Palestine (specifically, Bethlehem), where he was occupied with translating the Hebrew Bible into Latin; later this translation came to be known as the Vulgate (
Vulgata). Jerome also wrote a great number of commentaries and other writings related to his translation work, in which he discussed the relation between the Hebrew source text and his renderings. In these writings he deals with biblical proper nouns, but also often r…
Transcription into Latin Script: Latin Inscriptions of the Roman Period
(691 words)
When the Latin epigraphic alphabet was used for writing Hebrew words in Latin inscriptions, problems arose because some Hebrew letters and sounds had no Latin equivalent. Latin did have some advantages over Greek in the transliteration of Hebrew (e.g., it was able to represent the sound
h) but also disadvantages (e.g., long and short vowels are not distinguished in Latin). In Jewish inscriptions of the Roman period Hebrew words are almost never found in transliteration. In an environment where Latin was the dominant written language, Hebrew words were in…
Transcription into Latin Script: Modern Hebrew
(2,240 words)
In the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel Hebrew attained the status of an official national language. The new status required the introduction of a standardized method for writing Modern Hebrew words in Roman letters. Previously a commission appointed by the British mandatory authorities had formulated rules of transcription for Hebrew (and Arabic) which, however, were associated specifically with English usage. Latin transcriptions of Hebrew have quite a long history, of course. Already in the first centuries C.E. proper names and other nouns…
Transcription into Latin Script: Polish Coronation Sword
(1,003 words)
The present entry deals with the problem of a presumably Hebrew inscription on the royal Polish coronation sword called ‘Szczerbiec’ [ʃtʃerbjets] stored in the Treasury of the Wawel Museum in Cracow. The theories concerning the etymology of the name vary. The oldest explanation links the name ‘Sczirbecz’ [stʃirbetʃ] with ‘a notch’, in accordance with the meaning of the Polish root word
szczerba [ʃtʃerbjets]. Although many tales and historical sources link the sword with the Polish king Bolesław Chrobry (ruled ca. 995–1025), it seems certain that the item st…
Transcription into Latin Script: Pre-Modern England
(1,436 words)
Works of Christian Hebraists in 12th- and 13th-century England are interspersed with Hebrew words transcribed into the Latin alphabet (Christian Hebraists: Medieval Period). The reason for such transcriptions was two-fold: on the one hand, it was a pedagogical device for teaching Hebrew, and on the other, it gave a certain minimal access to the Hebrew language to those who had not mastered it but wanted to use it (for example, in anti-Jewish polemics). It is often difficult to ascertain whether …
Transcription into Latin Script: Pre-Modern Spain
(969 words)
As is well known, the long and continuous presence of Jewish communities in the lands of the Iberian Peninsula—today the kingdom of Spain, the republic of Portugal, the principate of Andorra, and the British colony of Gibraltar—from early Roman-Visigoth times in Hispania, in Islamic Alandalus or
Sefarad, in the northern Christian states of Castilla, Navarra, Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, until the last expulsions in 1492–1498, is attested by archaeological remains (including epigraphic sources from cemeteries and synagogues) and thousand…
Transcription of Spoken Hebrew
(2,057 words)
The spoken medium is acoustic, linear, and temporally extended. Therefore, visual transmission is necessary in order to enable any research of speech, with the possible exception of that which focuses on small, individual units. Even in this latter case, however, one needs to transmit sound into the visual medium in order to publish the results. The linguist must therefore use a transcript of the spoken text. Transcript types range from texts written in the standard orthography using accepted punctuation to the narrowest phonetic transcription. In addition, pr…
Transcriptions into Arabic Script: Medieval Karaite Sources
(4,760 words)
In the 10th and 11th centuries C.E. many Karaite scribes in the Middle East used Arabic script not only to write the Arabic language but also to write the Hebrew language. Such Hebrew texts in Arabic transcription were predominantly Hebrew Bible texts. These were sometimes written as separate manuscripts containing continuous Bible texts. Some manuscripts in Arabic script contain collections of Biblical verses for liturgical purposes. Arabic transcriptions of verses from the Hebrew Bible or indi…
Transcriptions into Cuneiform
(5,144 words)
When Assyria expanded beyond the Euphrates in the mid-9th century B.C.E., she eventually faced forces from Israel and so she began to include Hebrew royal names and place names in her records. For almost two hundred years before that Assyria had been too weak to advance so far west, so no Hebrew names earlier than Omri’s occur in cuneiform texts. Only royal names and toponyms appear until later in the 8th century, because hardly any older administrative or legal documents survive in Assyria (Mil…
Transcription Tables
(593 words)
In EHLL articles Hebrew is written in Hebrew script followed by a transcription. A different type of transcription is used for the various periods of Hebrew. An attempt has been made to balance considerations of phonetic reality, language history, orthography and practicality. The transcription systems, therefore, are in many respects the result of compromise and inevitably are less than fully satisfactory from several points of view. No transcription system of Hebrew, however, can be fully satisfactory in all respects. The following principles of transcription have been f…
Translation of Hebrew in English Bible Versions
(2,126 words)
1. Early Translations from Hebrew Before the 16th century, English versions of the Bible were translated from the Latin Vulgate; the first translation from the Hebrew was completed in 1530 by William Tyndale, who was led by a faithful approach “to Hebraize his English rather than always to provide an idiomatic English version of the Scriptures” (Hammond 1980:354). Indeed, features of Hebrew syntax and style (repetition, redundant personal pronouns, extensive use of infinitive, and paratactic syntax l…
Translations: Medieval Period
(2,266 words)
In the 11th–15th centuries, more than 570 works about philosophy, science, and medicine were translated into Medieval Hebrew. Most of them (approximately 350) were translated from their original Arabic text; some others (approximately 220) were translated from Latin, especially from 1350 onwards. Most of these translations were made in various places in Spain, Provence, and Italy; they demonstrate the interest and ability of some Jewish scholars in diffusing the main contents of non-Jewish thoug…
Translations: Modern Hebrew
(2,133 words)
Following the traditional periodization of Hebrew literature, the history of modern translations into Hebrew should begin with the emergence of the enlightenment movement (
haskala) in Berlin, towards the end of the 18th century. However, some critics would position the starting point somewhat earlier, at the beginning of the 18th century. As in the case of original Modern Hebrew literature, translated literature emerged against a background of deficiency: apart from a few medieval and Renaissance translations of scatt…
T (t - Tzivoni, Lea)
(3,633 words)
t infixes Affixation: Pre-Modern Hebrew, Sibilant Consonants prefix Affixation: Pre-Modern Hebrew, Epigraphic Hebrew: Roman and Byzantine Period
taw accentuation sign Biblical Accents: Babylonian, Exceptive Construction, Tiberian Reading Tradition pronunciation of Italy, Pronunciation Traditions
ṭet accentuation sign Biblical Accents: Babylonian, Exceptive Construction pronunciation of Italy, Pronunciation Traditions, Kurdistan, Pronunciation Tradition, Tiberian Reading Tradition spelling in foreign words Orthography: Modern Hebrew
ṭa˓ame …