An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

do the Tosefta and halakhic (legal) Midrashim. 24 Some of this material was
recorded during or reflects the age when Mishnaic Hebrew was a language spoken
in Palestine (up to 200 C.E.?), and some is later. Mishnaic Hebrew is not an
offspring of Biblical Hebrew, but a distinct dialect, with its own, largely unknown
prehistory. 25
d During the period from the early third century C.E. to the late nineteenth century,
Hebrew was in continuous use as a religious language, that is, as a language of
prayer and worship as well as religious-legal and scientific discussion. 26 All
educated Jews (viz., Jewish males) were familiar with it to some degree. The
language was used only in limited speech situations but extensively in writing; its
vocabulary was enlarged over earlier forms of the language, but its other resources
tended to be stable.
e This form of Medieval-Early Modern Hebrew was the basis for the modern
language, the spoken tongue of the emigrant Jewish community in late nineteenthcentury
Palestine. 27 This language has grown steadily since and is the official
language of the State of Israel. It is of interest to scholars of Biblical Hebrew as a
research language and as a source of information about change in phonology and
morphology. Many aspects of the syntax of the modern language show non-
Semitic influence. 28 The complexity of the interaction of various phases of
24 It may be possible to distinguish a midrashic form of the language which together
with Mishnaic Hebrew proper would compose Tannaitic or Rabbinic Hebrew. A
certain amount of traditional Jewish prayer is in Mishnaic (or Tannaitic) Hebrew.
25 See M. H. Segal, Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), on the
language. Some of the differences between Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew may reflect
the differences in the genres that the languages are used for. On Mishnaic Hebrew and
Late Biblical Hebrew, see R. Polzin, Late Biblical Hebrew: Toward an Historical
Typology of Biblical Hebrew Prose (Harvard Semitic Monographs 12; Missoula:
Scholars Press, 1976) 167–73; on Mishnaic features in the Song, see M. V. Fox, The
Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (Madison: University of
Wisconsin, 1985) 187–90.
26 Some of the most interesting material is the poetry, well represented in T. Carmi’s
The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (New York: Penguin, 1981).
27 Hebrew was spoken in Palestine with Sephardic pronunciation prior to the rise of
Zionism; see T. V. Parfitt, “The Use of Hebrew in Palestine, 1800–1882,” Journal of
Semitic Studies 17 (1972) 237–52.
28 Modern Hebrew “syntax is no longer Semitic, but is closer to the syntax of Indo-
German[ic] languages”; so N. Stern, “The Infinitive as a Complement of a Predicate
of Incomplete Predication,” Hebrew Annual Review 10 (1986) 337–49, at 347, based
on a review of infinitival use, much more frequent in Modern Hebrew than in any
earlier form of the language. For discussion of a variety of facets of Modern (and not
only Modern) Hebrew, see the papers in H. B. Rosén, East and West: Selected
Writings in Linguistics. 2. Hebrew and Semitic Linguistics (Munich: Fink, 1984). On
morphology, various papers by Ruth A. Berman are valuable: see, e.g., Eve V. Clark