The Impossible Language
How did Hebrew return to being spoken after being dead for almost 1300 years?
It is not humanly possible for a language to not be spoken natively for over 1600 years, not spoken at all for almost 1300 years, and then become a language spoken again by millions of people, with some of them speaking the original dialect, in the land where it was originally spoken, by the descendants of those who originally spoke it. No ancient language has ever been revived after its last native speaker has died. Yet that is exactly what happened with Hebrew. That is why I call Hebrew the Impossible Language.
Jerusalem was the largest city in Judaea, the de facto capital of Judaea, the center of education and religion in Judaea, when the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD. As a result, not only did a great number of native Hebrew speakers die in 70 AD, but also more than half of the Hebrew documents on Earth was destroyed as well.
When the Romans destroyed all fifty walled cities that remained in Judaea, along with 985 unwalled villages in the Bar Kochba revolt that ended in 135 AD, even more native speakers of Hebrew died and most of the remaining Hebrew documents.
As Jews continued to be scattered from the land of Israel over the next few generations, Hebrew began to fall out of practical use, since another language was always needed to conduct business outside of the ever shrinking Jewish community in the land of Israel. In fact, the last known native speaker of Hebrew died around 220 AD.
Still, Hebrew remained as a second language that Jews spoke among each other in the land of Israel, even as they became an ever smaller minority in the land of Israel. When Jews who moved back to the land of Israel due to the efforts of the Byzantine Empire after 390 AD, they continued to carry out their business in Greek, and rarely bothered to learn how to speak Hebrew, since those who spoke Hebrew, also spoke Greek as their primary language.
So by 500 AD, it was apparent that even the pronunciation of Hebrew words would soon be lost. Hebrew had only seventeen consonants, two non-specific vowel indicators (to remove ambiguity), and three consonantal specific vowels (consonants that might also indicate certain vowel sounds instead the consonant sound, like the letter "Y" in English). It was completely lacking in true vowels, because like the ancient Phoenician alphabet that it originally used, the assumption was that the speaker knew the vowels and did not need them. (This was a reasonable shortcut when everything was written by carving in wood or stone.)
Realizing that the Greeks were on to something when they later added vowels, various Jewish religious professionals, saw the need to add vowels as well. However, they also realized that they could not possibly insert new vowel characters between existing characters in the surviving Hebrew documents. So they came up with various systems of small diacritical markings that they could place beneath existing characters to indicate the vowels, so the pronunciation could be preserved. Various groups worked independently to come up with competing diacritical systems, because they were raising against the clock to capture the correct pronunciation while there was still someone alive to ask.
By the time that the the last known speaker of Hebrew as a second language died in 586 AD, these groups had collectively captured the pronunciation of every written Hebrew word, except for one. The Rabbis had ruled that no one should pronounce the name of the Father of Truth (YHVH aka God aka THE LORD) over 600 years earlier. They figured if no one pronounced His name, then no one could use His name carelessly. So after 600 years of not being pronounced by those who followed their teachings, none of their followers who worked to capture the pronunciation of Hebrew words, knew how to pronounce His name. They had to make guesses about the vowels to add to the four Hebrew letters that make up His name. (To make matters even more confusing, His name consists of all three consonantal specific vowels, and it is possible that it has no consonant sounds, only vowel sounds.)
The most prominent of these groups to work to preserve the Hebrew language was a group of scholars known as the Masoretes. The various schools of Masoretes primarily worked in Jerusalem (after the Arab Caliphates took over in 636 AD), Tiberias, and Babylon, often years at a time without contact between the various schools. Eventually, all schools merged into one school in Tiberias, and began to work on creating a standard set of diacritical markings that would be universally used.
A complete copy of the Original Covenant (Tanakh aka The Old Testament) written using Masoretic markings (niqqud), is called a Masoretic Text. It appears from other documents that the first Masoretic Text was completed sometime around 850 AD.
In 895 AD, Moses Ben Asher, completed the Codex of the Prophets in Tiberias using the diacritical system that he had completed at the time. This was later called the Codex Cairensis, because it was recovered in Cairo, Egypt. This is the oldest surviving document that contains diacritical markings.
The son of Moses Ben Asher, Aaron Ben Asher, then became the first scholar to give serious study of the grammar of Hebrew, as well as the pronunciation of Hebrew. He created the diacritical system that is still in use today. He also created the cantillation notation that adds even more precision to the pronunciation. His cantillation notation is still used by cantors in synagogues today.
The oldest surviving Masoretic Text, the Aleppo Codex, has been dated to about 928 AD, even though some pages have been lost. The Aleppo Codex was corrected by Aaron Ben Asher himself, to use his system. By the time Aaron Ben Asher died in 960 AD, his system had became the universally accepted standard, despite the fact that he appears to have been a Karaite, and not a follower of the Rabbis.
The oldest surviving complete Masoretic Text, the Leningrad Codex, has been dated to 1008 AD. There were undoubtedly many more Masoretic Texts, but most did not survive the arrival of the Crusaders in 1099 AD. The Crusaders burned down every synagogue (also mosques, and even most churches) that they encountered when they invaded the land of Israel. Naturally, most of the Hebrew documents were kept in these synagogues, so most of them did not survive. If the Jews had not managed to hide or smuggle out a small percentage of the Hebrew documents that they had retrofitted with vowel pointers, then Hebrew would have been lost as a written language as well. In some cases, some Hebrew documents like the Codex Cairensis, were captured as booty by some Crusaders, and later ransomed by Jews.
There appears to have been no Hebrew documents in use in the land of Israel by the time that the Ayyubid Empire took control in 1187 AD. Any that might have been brought back into the land of Israel during this period, were undoubtedly removed after the Mamluk Empire started waging a thirty one year war in 1260 AD to take control of the land of Israel. Rambam did not find any in use when he arrived in the land of Israel in 1267 AD.
During this time, the written Hebrew documents, particularly Masoretic Text, moved further and further to the north and west of the land of Israel. Most of them ended up in the lands where the Ashkenazi Jews lived, where they were meticulous replicated by hand for hundreds of years.
Then the Gutenberg printing press was invented and a Latin translation of the Masoretic Text was included in volume 1 of the first printing of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 AD. Then in 1517 AD, the same year that the Ottoman Empire took control of the land of Israel, an early Restorationist (Christian Zionist) named Daniel Bomberg worked with Rabbis, Jewish Hebrew scholars, and Jewish Children of Truth (those who obey The Father of Truth because they love Him) in Venice (Italy) to produce the first printed version of the Masoretic Text. He then worked with Jewish experts to clean up errors in the diacritical markings and cantillation marks that had been made in the first edition to produce the second edition 1525 AD. He also introduced the numbering of chapters and verses in his printed version o the Masoretic Text. His second edition of the Masoretic Text became the standard for all printed versions of the Masoretic Text, including those in use today.
Not long after that, Ashkenazi Jews made efforts to publish the Masoretic Text in ever greater numbers using the printing press.
These efforts did not go unnoticed by other Christian Zionists. For example, the Pilgrims took a vote while on the Mayflower in 1621 AD about replacing English with Hebrew when they arrived in the New World. The proposal lost by one vote. Otherwise, Wampanoags and Pilgrims might have written their peace treaties in Hebrew.
This zeal for reviving Hebrew by Christian Zionists did not abate in what became the United States. Hebrew is found on the seals and standards of all of the original colonial universities like Yale. In fact, for the first fifty years after America formed its constitutional government in 1787 AD, every diplomat of the United States was required to be able to read and write Hebrew, even if they did not know what the words meant, or how to pronounce them. This desire to revive Hebrew among Christian Zionists, particularly in America, created even more demand for printings of the Masoretic Text.
Many of the Ashkenazi Jews had also became obsessed with preserving the Masoretic Text, because it preserved the pronunciation of Hebrew words that they no longer used. This fervor among Ashkenazi Jews for the Masoretic Text is particularly shown by the Leningrad Codex, that was first acquired in Odessa, Ukraine by an Ashkenazi Karaite Jew in 1838 AD, and then donated to the Imperial Library of Russia in 1863 AD to keep it safe from harm. It had been kept safe, in nearly pristine condition, for over eight hundred years.
So when Ashkenazi Jews began to stream back into the land of Israel in 1870 AD, they brought the Masoretic Text back into the land of Israel with them. They also brought many translations of the Original Covenant into other languages that were based on the Masoretic Text as well.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda, an Ashkenazi Jew, moved from Russia to Paris to study there in 1876 AD. While he was there, he met another Ashkenazi Jew from Jerusalem, who was visiting Paris, but who could not speak French, Russian, or Yiddish. So he and this other Jew talked as best as they could in the limited Hebrew that they had learned in their cheder (basic Hebrew and Judaism school) when they were children. This was the first known conversation in Hebrew in almost 1300 years. While their conversations were very simplistic and limited, like two Trekkies speaking to each other in Klingon, it convince Ben Yahuda that it was possible for Hebrew to be revived as a living language.
As the Ashkenazi Jews continued to stream into the land of Israel, Ben Yehuda, who had move to Jerusalem from Paris, began reviving the Hebrew language in 1881 AD. He used the Masoretic Text and the various translations based on it as his starting point. His son, Itamar Ben-Avi, was born in 1882 AD, and grew up as the first native Hebrew speaker since 220 AD. (Pure Hebrew had been lost to Hebrew hybrid languages like Yiddish, Ladino, and Yavanic, not long after the Jews were scattered by the Romans in 135 AD.) Ben Yehuda had his family commit to only speaking Hebrew in their home, and also convinced a few nearby families to do so as well.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda almost single-handedly brought about the revival of Hebrew. He founded schools for teaching Hebrew. He started the first Hebrew language newspaper, HaZvi in 1884 AD. He created the first Hebrew dictionary, in which he created over 2,000 Hebrew words for things that did not have Hebrew words, like the word "badura" for a tomato. He invented the teaching "Hebrew in Hebrew" method, and even used it to teach Hebrew in a school for a short while.
Yet, Hebrew was not rapidly accepted. Hebrew began to be taught in a limited basis in some rural schools, but mostly as a second language. Hebrew was largely criticized by the contemporaries of Ben Yehuda as being too clumsy for modern usage, and useless for higher education.
The most vocal opponents of Hebrew being revived as a language were many of the Rabbis. They called Hebrew, "Lashon HaQodesh", the Holy Tongue, and argued that it was too holy for people to use to buy bread and the like. Some even objected to Hebrew being spoken by anyone other than a trained cantor, because no one else could pronounce the words precisely as they had been preserved in the Masoretic Text. Since only men were allowed to become cantors, they also objected to women speaking Hebrew. They were so opposed to the revival of Hebrew that they even managed to get HaZvi shut down from publication for an entire year. The largest obstacle to the revival of Hebrew becoming the language of the people of Israel in the land of Israel was Rabbinic Distort.
Still, by 1886 AD the first school that taught everything in Hebrew was established in Rishon LeZion. Also in 1889 AD, the first Hebrew play was put on by classes in the few schools that taught in Hebrew. Ben Yehuda founded the Hebrew Language Committee in 1890 AD and was its first president.
So the adoption of Hebrew continued to slowly grow. In 1902 AD, the wife of Ben Yahuda baked a cake for the tenth family in his area to agree to speak only Hebrew in their home. In 1903 AD, sixty teachers formed the Union of Hebrew Teachers.
When a new surge of immigrants began arriving in 1904 AD, Hebrew began to really take off. These new immigrants needed a common language to speak to each other and to the Jews who had previously made aliyah. Hebrew was a natural choice since it was already being taught in many of the schools. In 1905 AD, the first Hebrew high school was established in Jaffa.
So by 1909 AD, Tel Aviv became the first city since 135 AD to be a Hebrew only city, with signs, business, government notices, and everything else written in only Hebrew, with a requirement for all residences to learn to speak Hebrew. In 1911 AD, the World Zionist Congress adopted Hebrew as its official language and conducted all of its business in Hebrew.
However, opposition to Hebrew continued to grow as well.
So in 1913 AD, there was a show down between those who supported Hebrew and those who supported German, to determine which would become the language of the land of Israel. This showdown is known as "The War of the Languages".
The proponents for German argued that Hebrew was not refined enough to teach technology classes. When the supporters of Hebrew were able to show that Hebrew could be used to teach technology classes, then Hebrew was voted in as the language that would be used in the Technion, the premier school of technology in the land of Israel to this day. The success of the Hebrew language curriculum in the Technion brought the war to an end with a decisive victory for Hebrew. Ben Yehuda, and the thousands who had joined him, had won the fight to make Hebrew a living language against all obstacles and opposition.
So when the British Empire took control of the land of Israel in 1918 AD, Hebrew was already the de facto language of the land of Israel. The British recognized Hebrew as the official language of the land of Israel on November 29th, 1922 AD, just one month before Ben Yehuda died. (English and Arabic were also recognized as official second languages, with a requirement that signs, and the like be written in all three languages, as is still the policy of Israel today.)
As Hebrew gained more speakers, particularly native speakers, it became more refined, so it would be better suited for modern usage. By the time that Israel became a state in 1948 AD, it was refined enough that David Ben-Gurion was able to announce the formation of the state of Israel in Hebrew.
In 1953 AD, the government of Israel has made the Hebrew Language Committee, that Ben Yehuda started, into the official authority for continuing to refine Hebrew, and renamed it as the Academy of Hebrew Language. This education institution is devoted to refining Hebrew by replacing foreign words with ancient Hebrew words, and creating new Hebrew words as needed. For example, the Hebrew word for "tank" used to be "tank", but now it is "merkava", the ancient Hebrew word for "chariot". Its decisions are binding on all government entities including schools.
Today, Hebrew is the national language of Israel, where it is the unifying language that Jews who immigrate from every country learn to speak, so they can all communicate with each other. There are four major dialects of Hebrew spoken in Israel. There is the Ashkenazi, the Sephardic, and the Mizrahi dialects, that are spoken according to where different Jews immigrated from.
However, the native born Israelis have developed a completely different dialect, called the Sabra dialect, that has came from native born Jews, whose parents spoke one of the other three major dialects, speaking to each other. So not only has Hebrew been revived, by quite possibly the exact same dialect of Hebrew that was spoken in ancient times has been revived.
In fact, among Sabras the diacritical markings used in the Masoretic Text for vowels, as well as the cantillation markings, have fallen out of use. They have found that they no longer need anything other than the seventeen consonants, two non-specific vowel indicators, and three consonantal specific vowels that their ancestors used to be able to pronounce Hebrew words in the same way as their ancestors. The language of the people of Israel is being spoken in the land of Israel once again.
So a language that had zero speakers for almost 1300 years, now has five million living in Israel, and four million living outside of Israel. Hebrew is one of the most wide spread languages on Earth, with people who speak it found in every country on Earth. It is popular enough that most translation apps and services include it as part of their standard list of supported languages.
The impossible has happened.
How could have all of this happened?
This is the work of the Greatest Zionist.
The Father of Truth has been restoring the Hebrew language back to the Jews, starting with the Ashkenazi Jews, so that Jews from all over the world, even south of Ethiopia, could call upon His name together (Zephaniah 3:9-10). He has been causing the people of Israel to hear the language of Israel in the land of Israel, instead of another language (Isaiah 33:19-20).
The Father of Truth has been causing the people of Israel to no longer speak languages like Yiddish, that are half the language of the people that they were scattered among, and half the language of the people of Israel (Nehemiah 13:23-24). He has caused the people of Israel to no longer need to struggle to maintain the language of Israel, while living outside of the land of Israel (Esther 8:9).
The Father of Truth has been causing the same language of Canaan that is spoken in the land of Israel, Hebrew, to also be spoken outside of the land of Israel (Isaiah 19:17-18). He has once again been sending Jewish Children of Truth to speak His words to the people of Israel, in the language of Israel (Ezekiel 3:4-6).
The Father of Truth does not just want to make the impossible happen concerning the language of Israel, but He wants to make the impossible happen concerning your life. He wants you to come into the House of Truth and produce the sound of power.
It is not humanly possible for a language to not be spoken natively for over 1600 years, not spoken at all for almost 1300 years, and then become a language spoken again by millions of people, with some of them speaking the original dialect, in the land where it was originally spoken, by the descendants of those who originally spoke it. No ancient language has ever been revived after its last native speaker has died. Yet that is exactly what happened with Hebrew. That is why I call Hebrew the Impossible Language.
Jerusalem was the largest city in Judaea, the de facto capital of Judaea, the center of education and religion in Judaea, when the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD. As a result, not only did a great number of native Hebrew speakers die in 70 AD, but also more than half of the Hebrew documents on Earth was destroyed as well.
When the Romans destroyed all fifty walled cities that remained in Judaea, along with 985 unwalled villages in the Bar Kochba revolt that ended in 135 AD, even more native speakers of Hebrew died and most of the remaining Hebrew documents.
As Jews continued to be scattered from the land of Israel over the next few generations, Hebrew began to fall out of practical use, since another language was always needed to conduct business outside of the ever shrinking Jewish community in the land of Israel. In fact, the last known native speaker of Hebrew died around 220 AD.
Still, Hebrew remained as a second language that Jews spoke among each other in the land of Israel, even as they became an ever smaller minority in the land of Israel. When Jews who moved back to the land of Israel due to the efforts of the Byzantine Empire after 390 AD, they continued to carry out their business in Greek, and rarely bothered to learn how to speak Hebrew, since those who spoke Hebrew, also spoke Greek as their primary language.
So by 500 AD, it was apparent that even the pronunciation of Hebrew words would soon be lost. Hebrew had only seventeen consonants, two non-specific vowel indicators (to remove ambiguity), and three consonantal specific vowels (consonants that might also indicate certain vowel sounds instead the consonant sound, like the letter "Y" in English). It was completely lacking in true vowels, because like the ancient Phoenician alphabet that it originally used, the assumption was that the speaker knew the vowels and did not need them. (This was a reasonable shortcut when everything was written by carving in wood or stone.)
Realizing that the Greeks were on to something when they later added vowels, various Jewish religious professionals, saw the need to add vowels as well. However, they also realized that they could not possibly insert new vowel characters between existing characters in the surviving Hebrew documents. So they came up with various systems of small diacritical markings that they could place beneath existing characters to indicate the vowels, so the pronunciation could be preserved. Various groups worked independently to come up with competing diacritical systems, because they were raising against the clock to capture the correct pronunciation while there was still someone alive to ask.
By the time that the the last known speaker of Hebrew as a second language died in 586 AD, these groups had collectively captured the pronunciation of every written Hebrew word, except for one. The Rabbis had ruled that no one should pronounce the name of the Father of Truth (YHVH aka God aka THE LORD) over 600 years earlier. They figured if no one pronounced His name, then no one could use His name carelessly. So after 600 years of not being pronounced by those who followed their teachings, none of their followers who worked to capture the pronunciation of Hebrew words, knew how to pronounce His name. They had to make guesses about the vowels to add to the four Hebrew letters that make up His name. (To make matters even more confusing, His name consists of all three consonantal specific vowels, and it is possible that it has no consonant sounds, only vowel sounds.)
The most prominent of these groups to work to preserve the Hebrew language was a group of scholars known as the Masoretes. The various schools of Masoretes primarily worked in Jerusalem (after the Arab Caliphates took over in 636 AD), Tiberias, and Babylon, often years at a time without contact between the various schools. Eventually, all schools merged into one school in Tiberias, and began to work on creating a standard set of diacritical markings that would be universally used.
A complete copy of the Original Covenant (Tanakh aka The Old Testament) written using Masoretic markings (niqqud), is called a Masoretic Text. It appears from other documents that the first Masoretic Text was completed sometime around 850 AD.
In 895 AD, Moses Ben Asher, completed the Codex of the Prophets in Tiberias using the diacritical system that he had completed at the time. This was later called the Codex Cairensis, because it was recovered in Cairo, Egypt. This is the oldest surviving document that contains diacritical markings.
The son of Moses Ben Asher, Aaron Ben Asher, then became the first scholar to give serious study of the grammar of Hebrew, as well as the pronunciation of Hebrew. He created the diacritical system that is still in use today. He also created the cantillation notation that adds even more precision to the pronunciation. His cantillation notation is still used by cantors in synagogues today.
The oldest surviving Masoretic Text, the Aleppo Codex, has been dated to about 928 AD, even though some pages have been lost. The Aleppo Codex was corrected by Aaron Ben Asher himself, to use his system. By the time Aaron Ben Asher died in 960 AD, his system had became the universally accepted standard, despite the fact that he appears to have been a Karaite, and not a follower of the Rabbis.
The oldest surviving complete Masoretic Text, the Leningrad Codex, has been dated to 1008 AD. There were undoubtedly many more Masoretic Texts, but most did not survive the arrival of the Crusaders in 1099 AD. The Crusaders burned down every synagogue (also mosques, and even most churches) that they encountered when they invaded the land of Israel. Naturally, most of the Hebrew documents were kept in these synagogues, so most of them did not survive. If the Jews had not managed to hide or smuggle out a small percentage of the Hebrew documents that they had retrofitted with vowel pointers, then Hebrew would have been lost as a written language as well. In some cases, some Hebrew documents like the Codex Cairensis, were captured as booty by some Crusaders, and later ransomed by Jews.
There appears to have been no Hebrew documents in use in the land of Israel by the time that the Ayyubid Empire took control in 1187 AD. Any that might have been brought back into the land of Israel during this period, were undoubtedly removed after the Mamluk Empire started waging a thirty one year war in 1260 AD to take control of the land of Israel. Rambam did not find any in use when he arrived in the land of Israel in 1267 AD.
During this time, the written Hebrew documents, particularly Masoretic Text, moved further and further to the north and west of the land of Israel. Most of them ended up in the lands where the Ashkenazi Jews lived, where they were meticulous replicated by hand for hundreds of years.
Then the Gutenberg printing press was invented and a Latin translation of the Masoretic Text was included in volume 1 of the first printing of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 AD. Then in 1517 AD, the same year that the Ottoman Empire took control of the land of Israel, an early Restorationist (Christian Zionist) named Daniel Bomberg worked with Rabbis, Jewish Hebrew scholars, and Jewish Children of Truth (those who obey The Father of Truth because they love Him) in Venice (Italy) to produce the first printed version of the Masoretic Text. He then worked with Jewish experts to clean up errors in the diacritical markings and cantillation marks that had been made in the first edition to produce the second edition 1525 AD. He also introduced the numbering of chapters and verses in his printed version o the Masoretic Text. His second edition of the Masoretic Text became the standard for all printed versions of the Masoretic Text, including those in use today.
Not long after that, Ashkenazi Jews made efforts to publish the Masoretic Text in ever greater numbers using the printing press.
These efforts did not go unnoticed by other Christian Zionists. For example, the Pilgrims took a vote while on the Mayflower in 1621 AD about replacing English with Hebrew when they arrived in the New World. The proposal lost by one vote. Otherwise, Wampanoags and Pilgrims might have written their peace treaties in Hebrew.
This zeal for reviving Hebrew by Christian Zionists did not abate in what became the United States. Hebrew is found on the seals and standards of all of the original colonial universities like Yale. In fact, for the first fifty years after America formed its constitutional government in 1787 AD, every diplomat of the United States was required to be able to read and write Hebrew, even if they did not know what the words meant, or how to pronounce them. This desire to revive Hebrew among Christian Zionists, particularly in America, created even more demand for printings of the Masoretic Text.
Many of the Ashkenazi Jews had also became obsessed with preserving the Masoretic Text, because it preserved the pronunciation of Hebrew words that they no longer used. This fervor among Ashkenazi Jews for the Masoretic Text is particularly shown by the Leningrad Codex, that was first acquired in Odessa, Ukraine by an Ashkenazi Karaite Jew in 1838 AD, and then donated to the Imperial Library of Russia in 1863 AD to keep it safe from harm. It had been kept safe, in nearly pristine condition, for over eight hundred years.
So when Ashkenazi Jews began to stream back into the land of Israel in 1870 AD, they brought the Masoretic Text back into the land of Israel with them. They also brought many translations of the Original Covenant into other languages that were based on the Masoretic Text as well.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda, an Ashkenazi Jew, moved from Russia to Paris to study there in 1876 AD. While he was there, he met another Ashkenazi Jew from Jerusalem, who was visiting Paris, but who could not speak French, Russian, or Yiddish. So he and this other Jew talked as best as they could in the limited Hebrew that they had learned in their cheder (basic Hebrew and Judaism school) when they were children. This was the first known conversation in Hebrew in almost 1300 years. While their conversations were very simplistic and limited, like two Trekkies speaking to each other in Klingon, it convince Ben Yahuda that it was possible for Hebrew to be revived as a living language.
As the Ashkenazi Jews continued to stream into the land of Israel, Ben Yehuda, who had move to Jerusalem from Paris, began reviving the Hebrew language in 1881 AD. He used the Masoretic Text and the various translations based on it as his starting point. His son, Itamar Ben-Avi, was born in 1882 AD, and grew up as the first native Hebrew speaker since 220 AD. (Pure Hebrew had been lost to Hebrew hybrid languages like Yiddish, Ladino, and Yavanic, not long after the Jews were scattered by the Romans in 135 AD.) Ben Yehuda had his family commit to only speaking Hebrew in their home, and also convinced a few nearby families to do so as well.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda almost single-handedly brought about the revival of Hebrew. He founded schools for teaching Hebrew. He started the first Hebrew language newspaper, HaZvi in 1884 AD. He created the first Hebrew dictionary, in which he created over 2,000 Hebrew words for things that did not have Hebrew words, like the word "badura" for a tomato. He invented the teaching "Hebrew in Hebrew" method, and even used it to teach Hebrew in a school for a short while.
Yet, Hebrew was not rapidly accepted. Hebrew began to be taught in a limited basis in some rural schools, but mostly as a second language. Hebrew was largely criticized by the contemporaries of Ben Yehuda as being too clumsy for modern usage, and useless for higher education.
The most vocal opponents of Hebrew being revived as a language were many of the Rabbis. They called Hebrew, "Lashon HaQodesh", the Holy Tongue, and argued that it was too holy for people to use to buy bread and the like. Some even objected to Hebrew being spoken by anyone other than a trained cantor, because no one else could pronounce the words precisely as they had been preserved in the Masoretic Text. Since only men were allowed to become cantors, they also objected to women speaking Hebrew. They were so opposed to the revival of Hebrew that they even managed to get HaZvi shut down from publication for an entire year. The largest obstacle to the revival of Hebrew becoming the language of the people of Israel in the land of Israel was Rabbinic Distort.
Still, by 1886 AD the first school that taught everything in Hebrew was established in Rishon LeZion. Also in 1889 AD, the first Hebrew play was put on by classes in the few schools that taught in Hebrew. Ben Yehuda founded the Hebrew Language Committee in 1890 AD and was its first president.
So the adoption of Hebrew continued to slowly grow. In 1902 AD, the wife of Ben Yahuda baked a cake for the tenth family in his area to agree to speak only Hebrew in their home. In 1903 AD, sixty teachers formed the Union of Hebrew Teachers.
When a new surge of immigrants began arriving in 1904 AD, Hebrew began to really take off. These new immigrants needed a common language to speak to each other and to the Jews who had previously made aliyah. Hebrew was a natural choice since it was already being taught in many of the schools. In 1905 AD, the first Hebrew high school was established in Jaffa.
So by 1909 AD, Tel Aviv became the first city since 135 AD to be a Hebrew only city, with signs, business, government notices, and everything else written in only Hebrew, with a requirement for all residences to learn to speak Hebrew. In 1911 AD, the World Zionist Congress adopted Hebrew as its official language and conducted all of its business in Hebrew.
However, opposition to Hebrew continued to grow as well.
So in 1913 AD, there was a show down between those who supported Hebrew and those who supported German, to determine which would become the language of the land of Israel. This showdown is known as "The War of the Languages".
The proponents for German argued that Hebrew was not refined enough to teach technology classes. When the supporters of Hebrew were able to show that Hebrew could be used to teach technology classes, then Hebrew was voted in as the language that would be used in the Technion, the premier school of technology in the land of Israel to this day. The success of the Hebrew language curriculum in the Technion brought the war to an end with a decisive victory for Hebrew. Ben Yehuda, and the thousands who had joined him, had won the fight to make Hebrew a living language against all obstacles and opposition.
So when the British Empire took control of the land of Israel in 1918 AD, Hebrew was already the de facto language of the land of Israel. The British recognized Hebrew as the official language of the land of Israel on November 29th, 1922 AD, just one month before Ben Yehuda died. (English and Arabic were also recognized as official second languages, with a requirement that signs, and the like be written in all three languages, as is still the policy of Israel today.)
As Hebrew gained more speakers, particularly native speakers, it became more refined, so it would be better suited for modern usage. By the time that Israel became a state in 1948 AD, it was refined enough that David Ben-Gurion was able to announce the formation of the state of Israel in Hebrew.
In 1953 AD, the government of Israel has made the Hebrew Language Committee, that Ben Yehuda started, into the official authority for continuing to refine Hebrew, and renamed it as the Academy of Hebrew Language. This education institution is devoted to refining Hebrew by replacing foreign words with ancient Hebrew words, and creating new Hebrew words as needed. For example, the Hebrew word for "tank" used to be "tank", but now it is "merkava", the ancient Hebrew word for "chariot". Its decisions are binding on all government entities including schools.
Today, Hebrew is the national language of Israel, where it is the unifying language that Jews who immigrate from every country learn to speak, so they can all communicate with each other. There are four major dialects of Hebrew spoken in Israel. There is the Ashkenazi, the Sephardic, and the Mizrahi dialects, that are spoken according to where different Jews immigrated from.
However, the native born Israelis have developed a completely different dialect, called the Sabra dialect, that has came from native born Jews, whose parents spoke one of the other three major dialects, speaking to each other. So not only has Hebrew been revived, by quite possibly the exact same dialect of Hebrew that was spoken in ancient times has been revived.
In fact, among Sabras the diacritical markings used in the Masoretic Text for vowels, as well as the cantillation markings, have fallen out of use. They have found that they no longer need anything other than the seventeen consonants, two non-specific vowel indicators, and three consonantal specific vowels that their ancestors used to be able to pronounce Hebrew words in the same way as their ancestors. The language of the people of Israel is being spoken in the land of Israel once again.
So a language that had zero speakers for almost 1300 years, now has five million living in Israel, and four million living outside of Israel. Hebrew is one of the most wide spread languages on Earth, with people who speak it found in every country on Earth. It is popular enough that most translation apps and services include it as part of their standard list of supported languages.
The impossible has happened.
How could have all of this happened?
This is the work of the Greatest Zionist.
The Father of Truth has been restoring the Hebrew language back to the Jews, starting with the Ashkenazi Jews, so that Jews from all over the world, even south of Ethiopia, could call upon His name together (Zephaniah 3:9-10). He has been causing the people of Israel to hear the language of Israel in the land of Israel, instead of another language (Isaiah 33:19-20).
The Father of Truth has been causing the people of Israel to no longer speak languages like Yiddish, that are half the language of the people that they were scattered among, and half the language of the people of Israel (Nehemiah 13:23-24). He has caused the people of Israel to no longer need to struggle to maintain the language of Israel, while living outside of the land of Israel (Esther 8:9).
The Father of Truth has been causing the same language of Canaan that is spoken in the land of Israel, Hebrew, to also be spoken outside of the land of Israel (Isaiah 19:17-18). He has once again been sending Jewish Children of Truth to speak His words to the people of Israel, in the language of Israel (Ezekiel 3:4-6).
The Father of Truth does not just want to make the impossible happen concerning the language of Israel, but He wants to make the impossible happen concerning your life. He wants you to come into the House of Truth and produce the sound of power.
Like the language of Israel, the Father of Truth wants to you to speak to Him in a pure language (Mark 16:17). He wants you to speak to Him in a language that only those who know Him can understand (1 Corinthians 14:2).
Like the language of Israel, the Father of Truth wants you to have a supernatural encounter with the Spirit of Truth (Ruach HaQodesh aka The Holy Spirit aka The Holy Ghost), so you can speak His words to other people (Acts 1:5-8). He wants you to be able to supernaturally speak His words to other people in their own language, instead of another language (Acts 2:4-11).
Like the language of Israel, the Father of Truth wants you to speak in a language that is impossible for you to speak without the Spirit of Truth (Acts 10:45-47). He wants you to do this as a sign to others that you are speaking a message from Him (1 Corinthians 14:21-22).
Like the language of Israel, the Father of Truth wants you to come into the House of Truth, so can speak His words in the other impossible language (Acts 19:4-6). He wants everyone to be able to speak His words in the other impossible language (1 Corinthians 14:5).
Like the language of Israel, the Father of Truth wants you to come into the House of Truth, so you can be baptized in the Spirit of Truth and speak in the other impossible language (Acts 2:33-38). You come into the House of Truth, when you confess in any language that the Man of Truth (Yeshua HaMashiach aka Jesus Christ) is your King, because you believe that the Father of Truth raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9-13).
Come into the House of Truth!
Labels: Hebrew, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, Israel, Language, Pentecost, Ruach HaQodesh, Shavuot, Tongues
posted by The House Of Truth @ June 04, 2017
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