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Updated: 2024.07.20
While the roots of oral עִבְרִית trace back to עֵבֶר in the Early Bronze Age, c BCE 2393, and Av•rãmꞋ, c BCE 2039, the current terminus ante quem for written Hebrew is a BCE 10th century (the time of Dã•widꞋ ha-MëlꞋëkh) shard inscription from מִבְצָר הָאֵלָ֑ה in central Yi•sᵊr•ã•eilꞋ (adjoining Mōd•i•inꞋ to the west).
Conversational Hebrew was silenced, initially by the Roman destructions of 70 & 135 CE with the resulting exile, falling into disuse not long after the death of רַבַּן גַּמְלִיאֵל 
דְּיַבְנֶה (c. 115 CE), being displaced by various European languages of Diaspora Jews and dwindling to no more than a little-understood and evolving "sacred language".
By the 6th century CE, Hebrew had been relegated to extremely rare, written, literary circles and the beit kᵊnësꞋët—where the limited use of the limited Hebrew vocabulary in Ta•na"khꞋ (and Aramaic in Ta•lᵊmūdꞋ) was internalized as a sacred, holy, hence esoteric (i.e. mystical and angelic) tongue, prohibited in "profane" conversation.
Conversational Hebrew Extinct, Until The 19th Century CE
Hebrew remained practically extinct until the late 19th century CE when, in 1881, Russian-born Lithuanian Jew אֱלִיעֶזֶר בֵּן־יְהוּדָה, father & "reviver" of conversational Hebrew in the modern age, made a•liy•ãhꞋ. Relying heavily on Scripture and Yiddish, he developed the first Hebrew dictionary in modern times and, in 1884, began publishing 2 Hebrew-language newspapers in Yᵊru•shã•laꞋyim — despite fierce opposition from the (heavily German bastardized Aramaic-Hebrew) Yiddish-speaking Ultra-Orthodox, who felt they were chosen dictators over Hebrew as a "Holy Tongue".
As a result, Jews around the world annually celebrate the birthday of אֱלִיעֶזֶר בֵּן־יְהוּדָה (Tenthmonth 25) as "Hebrew Language Day".
Conventional answers: theories! Some theorists subscribe to the " Poof!" theory: one moment there was no language or writing, the next moment, Poof! (no reason needed?), there was. Some of these theorists say language came before writing, other theorists argue the converse.
Eschewing "Poof!" silliness, which contradicts any basis in DNA or science in general, it is perfectly clear that earliest cultural and social development over kiloyears (perhaps megayears, preceding the emergence of Homo sapiens), demonstrates that agreed conventions of communications—language—necessarily developed first. This was a prerequisite to the cooperative communal behavior essential to herding, farming, and (terrestrial and marine) architectural construction essential for communities to function effectively. This level of cooperation is evidenced by the evolution of nomadic village clans of hunter-gathers into cooperative communal ranchers and agricultural farmers, villages, citydoms and larger societies, which produced civilization's first advanced superpower (attributed by some theorists to "ancient aliens" from a distant galaxy 
)—the Anatolian (modern Turkey) Kᴴa•tᵊ•tūꞋsha.
It's elementary that hand signals and voice communication preceded written communication. The reverse would have required cooperating workers—unprompted—to divine when they needed to walk to the point where one individual had written a symbol on the ground to read, and then walk back to execute the agreed action; then repeat, until some undefined cooperative activity was completed. The ability to communicate quickly and effectively was driven by the increasingly urgent need to defend and progress relative to predators, weather and agricultural losses, rival communities (e.g., clans) competing for limited resources, etc.
No one today even knows how to reasonably estimate when the earliest oral communications began back in Gondwana, long before our simian ancestors emerged. Today we know that most, perhaps all, animals, from birds to meerkats, communicate primitive concepts of danger, all-clear, mating, etc. A peer-reviewed paper published just 12 days ago has demonstrated that elephants call each other individually, by name! 
That means they self-identify, recognizing their own individuality as distinguished from other individual elephants; rudimentary language. Other higher mammals, marine as well as terrestrial, have similar abilities (e.g., dolphins & parrots).
Only after a particular communication symbol or logogram had been agreed within a group (community) could any communal cooperation beyond personal observance and musings exist to store in writing. In turn, writing enabled the storing, and retrieval, of knowledge; rather than each person being limited to watching and imitating those nearby; and having to invent anything else on their own. This was prerequisite to the Neolithic Revolution specialization of labor, which led to civilization, culture and terrestrial and marine technoligies, resulting the rise of cities, citydoms, kingdoms, confederacies, long-distance efficient trade—along with resulting competitions, conflicts and far more devastating wars.
 0350x385.png "Crete-Turkey-Greece 260Ma (Stampfli)") |
 1200x1320.png "Click to enlarge"){kind=small} Crete-Turkey-Greece 260 Ma (graphic: Prof. Gérard Stampfli, Professeur Honoraire, Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Labels added.) |
Without a durable medium of storing knowledge, thereby enabling retrieval, however, human achievements were limited to campfire hand signals and rudimentary oral language: "Hi/friend" (open hand, no weapon—evolved into the modern military salute), "Bye"; maybe "hungry/eat" and "sleep"—what I like to call Meerkat (language). Without more sophisticated commun-cation, commun-al cooperation involving sharing of knowledge, was severely limited.
Inevitably, grunts and hand-signs would have been translated, during evening campfire meals with familiar faces, into grunts and gestures for emphasis. These would have been augmented by rudimentary logograms imitating hand signals: e.g., charades-style gesticulating: empty hands out, palms up as if full, rubbing tummy, licking lips and the like), aided by drawings on the ground to communicate their day's events. The most vital, ergo first, communications involved where they had gone, what they encountered, where they found (or failed to find) game, etc.
It requires little imagination to recognize that these concepts could be communicated via the world's first visual aids: crude stick figures drawn on the ground—even on cave walls—(logograms) clarified by symbols (arrows, x-marks and the like to depict topography, direction of travel, distances, types and numbers of game animals and predators, etc.)! However, these early logograms and symbols on the ground around campfires would have been evanescent—trampled underfoot or erased by rains, wind, etc.—and difficult to use in rocky terrain.
While this kind of early writing would eventually evolve into standardized logograms (Egyptian hieroglyphics) and symbols (acronymously representing phonetic sounds (as "Frank Ida Robert Edward" is known internationally to spell "fire" phonetically in the international language). The ancient logograms and symbols were organized into written ãlꞋëphbeits) to communicate the most crucial knowledge, their impermanence precluded any capacity for storing (or retrieving and studying) that knowledge. Unless the individual was physically present at the presentation and memorized the information by rote, that knowledge was lost and could not be retrieved, duplicated or learned by others.
Loss of learned information when sages died resulted in return to interminable reinventions from scratch! Only when humans began to accumulate knowledge exceeding their memorization capacities was language forced to develop standardized symbols and simple drawings (logograms) to preserve and reproduce information—like I'm feverishly doing now. This not only preserved knowledge from being lost, retrieval enabled study and learning to avoid known bad experiences as well as to enhance good experiences. The capabilities afforded by these symbols and logograms in preventing this loss of information would have been sacred—and would lead to the development of rudimentary language, alphabets and writing!
At roughly the same that evanescent logograms and symbols were developing and being shared within clans around evening campfires, some early humans had long noticed that animals imprinted their tracks in wet mud around a drinking source. They further had long noticed that these animal tracks persisted when the mud dried. The eureka moment was likely when they further realized that the types and numbers of game animals frequenting the waterhole could be represented by punching a wedge-shaped stick into mud, then allowing it to dry: step 1 to a cuneiform ãlꞋëphbeit! In rocky terrain where drawing on rocks was not viable during a fast-moving hunt, a few clumps of dried mud, pre-imprinted with various animal track signs carefully carried in a pouch enabled a hunter to leave a selected sign to be left beside their trail, oriented to indicate direction—an invaluable aid to coordinate hunts. It wouldn't have taken long to choose (and improve) the grade and processing (baking) of clay that best endured travel and weather.
Inevitably, knowledge of these path-marking signs was picked-up and eventually figured-out by rival clans, who then began "stealing" the knowledge (and taking the game) for their own enrichment. There is little doubt that this led to the earliest encryptian: masquerading the path signs by devising arrangements of the markings in ways known only to the clan: chicken scratchings that developed into cuneiform!
Together, these motivated an insatiable striving for ever greater efficiency, leading to the Semitic Kᴴa•tᵊ•tūꞋsha NëꞋshan cuneiform ãlꞋëphbeit: 𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 cuneiform! From this Semitic NëꞋshan ãlꞋëphbeit, also Semitic daughter dialects Akkadian and Sumerian evolved their respective cuneiform ãlꞋëphbeits.
qqThe ãlꞋëphbeit-based Semitic (NëꞋshan and daughter dialects) cuneiform, along with logogram-based Egyptian hieroglyphs, enabled, for the first time in the planet's entire history, the storage and communication of knowledge. This advantage sparked a giant leap forward in civilization, culture
catapulting both countries into a race of competing alphabets, with their respective competing technologies, cultures, civilizations and projections of their respective land and marine powers! The birth and conflict of Mediterranean trade and competing Mediterranean fleets had begun!
Practically simultaneously (according to their particular communicational efficiency), logogram-based hieroglyphs and ãlꞋëphbeit-based cuneiform enabled the sudden appearance of technology and resulting civilizations of Semitic (cuneiform) 𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 and Egyptian technologies, civilizations and their projection of power in their respective regions. In geophysical time, this was an almost overnight exponential growth of human knowledge: communication, coordination, community, cooperation, division of labor: i.e. the birth of the first 2 civilization-based cultures and the world's first, and second, world superpowers—Anatolia (Turkey) and Egypt, respectively.
Scientists tell us approximately when the explosion of knowledge began. "We find that archaeological technologies become significantly more complex than expected in the absence of cumulative culture only after ~600 kya [Ka]." This is the signal that storing of knowledge had begun. Overnight (in geological perspective), humans found that information could be learned in advance of need; and reasoning develop to theorize and experiment: the birth of science—and its eternal war with ignorant physicomorphism and all resulting Tōr•ãhꞋ-forbidden superstitions (wizardry, witchcraft, astrology, augury and all types of -mancies, sorcery, magic and supernaturalism)! Storing and sharing of knowledge resulted in an explosion of human progress—leading to the first known-world superpower, the Anatolian 𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 !
 hieroglyph prooto-sinaitic ugaritic cuneiform MidSem MH cropped 125x425.png "Abjads hieroglyph proto-Sinaitic Ugaritic cuneiform Middle Semitic, Modern Hebrew") |
 hieroglyph prooto-sinaitic ugaritic cuneiform MidSem MH cropped 452x1537.png "Click to enlarge"){kind=small} Evolution of Hebrew ÃlꞋëphbeit from 5 Ka (cBCE 3000) |
Thus, contrary to the "Poof!" theorists, tracking the origins and development of alphabets is clear evidence only of the terminus ante quem of any given language. Writing can thenceforth be understood as tracking the geographic differentiation of earliest peoples from a common source; the earliest form of which is cuneiform writing originating in NëꞋshan-speakers (more recently, Anatolians; modern Arabized Turkey) of Gonawandan descent.
There are innumerable examples of a clear evolution of language tokens that track from earliest cuneiform to earliest dialects (including Hebrew), paralleling the geological dispersion of peoples and resulting differentiations from Gondwanan NëꞋsha, via Avᵊrã•hãmꞋ (≈BCE 2 Ka) to A•dãm•ãhꞋ, where the dialect subsequently developed independently of Sumerian cuneiform. Thus, not only does the Hebrew alephbeit not date the origin of the Hebrew language, the Hebrew "language" itself was a dialet of earlier NëꞋshan! Today, scientists publish peer-reviewed papers on languages of lower animals, from simians to birds, and even dancing bee language and chemical languages of insects. The history of language dates all of the way back to trees and fungi, which scientists today have discovered communicate among themselves. Neither writing nor language dates a people, only their particular route of geographic dispersion from Pangea and subsequent dialectic differentiation.
Distinct Semitic-speakers predate Avᵊrã•hãmꞋ's migration from Ūr to Kᵊna•anꞋ—cBCE 2,004 (≈4.028 Ka). Chron
While storing and retrieving codified information via written languages (i.e. alphabets) are a comparatively recent event, merely ≈4 Ka (cBCE 2000), cave drawings, placing stone markers & designs on the ground and the like preceded alphabets by eons. The essentials of oral language; not only predated the emergence of mammals but stretch back to the emergence of the first birds and even insects (warning sounds & signals, etc.). Recently, scientists have found that even plants and fungi communicate in a chemical-exchange & reaction language. So earliest alphabets are not indicators of earliest language, which began gigaannia earlier!
(DNA, on the other hand, is a bio-chemical alphabet that traces back to the first emergence of life.)
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"Paleo-Hebrew" (& exonym "Phoenician script") are miso-Judaic cryptonyms Overlaid photos show that, following most academics, Wikipedia uses same ãlꞋëphbeit equating Paleo-Hebrew to ("Phoenician") 𐤑𐤓 and Tzi•yᵊd•ōnꞋ (modern Tyre & Sidon, Lebanon). Move cursor over pic & move away to see each overlaid over the other (notice titles). |
5.75+ Ka (prior to cBCE 3750)—Oral NëꞋshan-Semitic Language clearly had to have been spoken before the emergence of its daughters; so some time before the earliest attestation of 𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 (or subsequent Akkadian) cuneiform. Moreover, it had to have been sufficiently earlier for the changes leading from it to Akkadian to have taken place. This would place it in the BCE 4ᵗʰ millennium, and almost certainly far earlier. The speakers of NëꞋshan-Semitic were the 𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 —the ancient Anatolians (modern Turkey) whose linguistic (and African DNA) ancestry must trace back to the first basic hand and audible signals among simians (and lower animals) of Gondwana, in Pangea!
≈5.75 Ka (cBCE 3750)—NëꞋshan-Semitic Akkadian Cuneiform
≈5.5 Ka (cBCE 3100)—NëꞋshan-Semitic Sumerian Cuneiform
≈3.86 Ka (cBCE 19ᵗʰ century)—BH: (Mosaic/Biblical Hebrew, aka Proto-Sinaitic or Paleo-Hebrew).
As the NëꞋshan- 𒄩𒀜𒌅𒊭 superpower civilization flowered, displaying their advanced construction and marine architectural technology in Kᵊrē•të Ka•phᵊtōrꞋ & Qū•pᵊr•yꞋ, international Eastern Mediterranean merchant and marine trade expanded exponentially, the need for an international language and records evolved from the need for international business communications and documentation of the earlier Semitic oral & cuneiform language hybridized with Egyptian hieroglyphics. Biblical Hebrew was used by Semitic peoples from the Mediterranean Sea to ancient Mesopotamia and Persia.
The BH ãlꞋëphbeit: mapped the oral pronunciations of Proto-Sinaitic, Semitic-NëꞋshan cuneiform to a hybridization of the Egyptian combination of their hieratic alphabet and hieroglyphics to produce the earliest Hebrew ãlꞋëphbeit of the entire Semitic world in the Mediterranean Basin.
In the modern era, religious cryptonym lingo has proliferated among many miso-Judaic agenda of academics who regard references associated with the "Bible", Israel or Jews as a contradiction of their own religion or athiesm). This scholarly convention has displaced the historically-accurate designation of BH: ãlꞋëphbeit. This has resulted in a confusion of vanilla descriptions (e.g., Proto-Kᵊna•an•iꞋ Hebrew, Old Hebrew, etc.).
≈3.3 Ka (cBCE 12ᵗʰ century)—MSH (Middle Semitic Hebrew); label muddled with Middle Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, Old Hebrew, North Semitic Hebrew, Semitic Aramaic & Semitic Tzūr (Phoenician, after ≈2.9 Ka; see next entry).
≈2.9 Ka (cBCE 10ᵗʰ century), MSH is documented in use by 𐤑𐤓 (endonym Tzūr•inꞋ, also predecessor Tzi•yᵊd•ōnꞋ; each and together exonym "Phoenicians"). .
≈2.8 Ka (cBCE 800)—Aramaic, derived from MSH.
≈2.7 Ka (cBCE 722)—YH Yᵊhūd•iꞋ Hebrew; post-722 (10 Tribes deracinated) Nᵊviy•imꞋ (1QIsa) Hebrew. (Same ãlꞋëphbeit, but language assimilates according to its speakers.)
≈2.6 Ka (cBCE 587)—PBDH (Post-Babylonian Denucleation Hebrew); i.e. post-BCE 587: i.e. post-Babylonian assimilation
≈0.175 Ka —HH (Hellenized Hebrew; i.e. Post-Biblical i.e. Rabbinic Hebrew): Beginning in BCE 175 when Yᵊhō•shūꞋa Bën-Shim•ōnꞋ-Jr., Bën-Tzã•dōqꞋ, the Hellenist Tzᵊdōq•iꞋ Kō•heinꞋ ha-RëshꞋa purchased the position of Kō•heinꞋ ha-Jã•dōlꞋ from Ἀντίοχος 4th ὁ Ἐπιφανής , ousting his own brother, Yᵊkhãn•yãhꞋ (aka Yᵊkhōn•yãhꞋ ) Bën-Shim•ōnꞋ Jr. Bën-Tzã•dōqꞋ ha-Kō•heinꞋ ha-Jã•dōlꞋ — the Mōr•æhꞋ ha-TzëdꞋëq! This irreversibly Hellenized the priesthood and resulting "Temple", eroded Hebrew definitions and severely assimilated post-Hi•lælꞋ (= post-Nᵊtzãr•imꞋ, which went dormant after the 15ᵗʰ Pã•qidꞋ in 135 CE). i.e. all streams of today's "Judaism"!
Extinction of spoken Hebrew from ≈200 CE.
The irresponsible assertion that the spoken Hebrew, Rabbinical or Mishnaic Hebrew, of the 1ˢᵗ century CE was "Biblical" Hebrew is comic-book silly. In the 1ˢᵗ century CE Yᵊhūd•imꞋ continued to speak HH as they had since soon after BCE 175. HH lasted until the close of the Tan•ã•imꞋ era, ≈200 CE, at which time Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language.
Of the two main surviving sects of Judaism after 200 CE, the Pᵊrush•imꞋ (Beit Hi•leilꞋ), having been at greatest enmity with Rome, was crushed into a minority of fleeing refugees. The Roman-collaborating Hellenist Tzᵊdōq•imꞋ (Beit Sha•maiꞋ), by contrast, enjoyed greater freedom under Roman rule. Thus, it is no accident that Beit Sha•maiꞋ overnight and otherwise inexplicably, descriptions of Beit Sha•maiꞋ changed dramatically from being under the death penalty of the Sanhedrin, issued by Pᵊrush•iꞋ ha-Nã•siꞋ Hi•lælꞋ, to being depicted as "Sages" ("rabbis" erroneously assumed) of the Mi•shᵊn•ãhꞋ and subsequent "rabbinic" literature.
Thus, Tzᵊdōq•imꞋ changed their coats to depict themselves as "the Sages", erroneously representing themselves to be Pᵊrush•imꞋ—specifically, "the earliest, most authoritative rabbis". Consequently, in various differences with the Pᵊrush•imꞋ, the Tzᵊdōq•imꞋ "Sages" pitted themselves against this or that specific Pᵊrush•imꞋ rabbi, thereby depicted as individuals dissenting from the consensus—"the law". Subsequent Judaic clergy (both muddled together now as "rabbis") remain befuddled, unable to harmonize the often intractably contradictory opinions, yet, mindlessly insisting that they are both right! The result is that today, Tzᵊdōq•imꞋ (Beit Sha•maiꞋ) "rabbis" (condemned to death by the last Sanhedrin) rule in Israel over Beit Hi•leilꞋ actual rabbis—both represented as Kha•reid•imꞋ, Ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox "rabbis". The Mi•shᵊn•ãhꞋ and Ta•lᵊmūdꞋ accordingly reflect a Tzᵊdōq•imꞋ POV, in stark contrast to the "rabbinic" work today's dominant "rabbis" portray it to be.
Hebrew was not spoken again communally until revived in modern times—the 1880s; after the invention of electricity and the electric light bulb. For the first time in the history of humankind, electricity enabled the eventual replacement of flint, firestone and primitive fire-making chores in order to stay warm, cook food and have firelight in the evening! Seeing the arrival of electrical power and light was roughly simultaneous with hearing the resurrection of MH—Modern Hebrew!
Vowel-points for pronunciation were added by Masoretes, who, in the 7ᵗʰ-12ᵗʰ centuries CE, returned to TᵊvërꞋyãh & Yᵊrū•shã•laꞋyim (though the latter, under tight Christian rule, would have been very restrictive), in YᵊhūdꞋãh. They most likely returned from Neo-Bã•vëlꞋ, and had certainly assimilated. They knew and punctuated only Ta•na״khꞋ, and according to how the Hebrew was read, understood and interpreted in Neo-Bã•vëlꞋ—half a millennium after the exiles of 70 CE & 135 CE! Despite baseless claims of wishful thinking otherwise, there is no evidence that Masoretes had ever heard or understood Hebrew as it was spoken (pronounced) and understood (definitions) in YᵊhūdꞋãh a half millennium earlier in the 1ˢᵗ century CE!!! Thus, "Judaism", Helleniist-assimilated in BCE 175, was then left hanging by a thread (namely Hi•lælꞋ and his chief spokesman out among the people—no radio or TV in those days, Riyb"y ). Particularly from 135 CE, "Judaism" was left deficient in a number of areas, even more vulnerable to creeping Babylonian-assimilation!
Developing the diacritical symbols, the Masoretes anchored the pronunciations as best they knew in their time. Perhaps the most critical distinctions (whether pronunciations are right or wrong, the distinctions are critical):
The hardest "K" sound: was ק (qōph) ≈ Greek "κ"? Today, conventionally transliterated from Hebrew into English as "q" (not followed by a "u" as in English). I also subscribe to this convenient convention.
כָּ (kãph, with a dã•geishꞋ), sometimes Greek "κ", other times Greek "χ". I distinguish this by "k".
ח (kʰæt), confused ("κ" or "χ") in Greek. I distinguish this by "kʰ" (a soft hawking-up sound, more "k" than "h").
כַ (ᵏhaph), confused ("κ" or "χ") in Greek. I distinguish this by "ᵏh" as in "ankh" or German "Bach" (more "h" than "k").
The softest, ה (hæ), "h" in English, which has no simple counterpart in Greek. (An invisible "h" is implied by a "rough breathing mark" [῾] over either an α [alpha] or an η [ætꞋa].)
Succeeding religious languages (Greek, Latin & English) don't reproduce or communicate these pronunciations. Thus, confusion has multiplied in these transgarblations.
≈0.139 Ka (≈139 Ya in 2024)—MH Modern (spoken) Hebrew: revived only since the 1880s, after the 2ⁿᵈ–4ᵗʰ century CE extinction of the spoken Hebrew language (pronunciations & vowels). This extinction of spoken (oral) conversational Hebrew that spanned 1½ kiloannia of Dispersion, is glaringly apparent in the enormous variations of pronunciation among the numerous dialects of the many Jewish communities of the world.!
גּ — The most isolated & alienated group of Jews since the time of ShᵊlōmꞋōh ha-MëlꞋëkh — hence the least affected and assimilated by external societies — has been the Tei•mãn•imꞋ. Since at least the beginning of the Islamic era, their Arab overlords strictly segregated Jews as a subclass; for example, Jews were required to move off sidewalks for Arabs to pass . Not that they probably wanted to anyway, but Jews were strictly denied the Arab symbol of manhood (wearing a Janbiya dagger in their belt). Ergo, when seeking the most authentic ancient Jewish anything, the Tei•mãn•imꞋ Jews are the paradigm. And Tei•mãn•imꞋ differentiate their pronunciation of גּ with, and without (ג), a dã•geishꞋ (the dot accent in the letter). No other group of Jews differentiates this pronunciation.
How did חַסָּה come to mean "lettuce", no "refuge", no the "Mercy Seat"??? 
Pay it forward (Quote & Cite):
| Yirmeyahu Ben-David. Ivrit, (2024.07.04). Netzarim Jews Worldwide (Ra'anana, Israel). https://www.netzarim.co.il/ (Accessed: MM DD, YYYY). |
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