Hebrew

I love languages. Being religious, I have long had an interest in Hebrew and Greek because of their connection to the Bible. Having learned German and a little Spanish, I am really interested in Latin as I've come to see the relationships between the three languages I speak (caveat: my Spanish is really bad) and I understand the power of knowing the language that influenced all of them heavily.

I won't claim any significant expertise in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, but I've dabbled a bit in studying them to help me understand the Bible better and for other purposes. I thought I'd share a couple of interesting things I've learned about Hebrew.

As I understand it, ancient Hebrew had no markings for vowel sounds and the pronunciation of Hebrew words was largely transmitted orally through the years. Modern Hebrew now has such markings. The ancient Hebrews had a word for God that they wrote as JHWH (transliterated to Latin letters), but they considered the name of God too sacred to utter, so they never spoke it out loud. Consequently, we don't know how they pronounced JHWH. Two variants on the pronunciation are commonly used today: 1) Jahweh, where the w is pronounced like a v; and 2) Jehovah. The former seems more likely to be correct on the first syllable, but the second is more commonly used today. No one knows for sure how JHWH was pronounced, so both versions seem to be acceptable. The translators of the King James version of the Bible often translated JHWH as 'Lord', though a few instances of Jehovah can be found.

This leads to a lot of interesting insights on names and words found in our Bible. For example, Hallelujah is a combination of two words 'Hallelu' or a form of 'Hallel' meaning 'praise' and 'jah' or a shortened form of JHWH (Jahweh or Jehovah). So Hallelujah = Praise Jehovah or Praise God.

Names like Isaiah and Jeremiah and any names ending in -iah, -jah, or -ia (all versions of 'Jah') contain a shortened form of the name of God (JHWH). For example, Isaiah means 'salvation of God' where I presume Isa = salvation.

Another name for God found in the Hebrew is Elohim. This is really interesting because the 'im' suffix indicates the plural form of a noun. The singular form is never used, but is thought to be Eloah. Much like JHWH is shortened to Jah for creating other words, the name Elohim is often shortened to El to create names like Samu-el, Ezeki-el, Dani-el, Isra-el, etc. Israel, for example, was the name given to Jacob after he wrestled with an angel and means 'God prevails' or 'one who prevails with God'.

I love languages. I think it's fascinating to learn things like this about Hebrew because of the knowledge that opens up about so many things in the Bible. But it's also just fun for me to learn about languages for the joy of learning. I don't know why, but I get a kick out of it. I think maybe I'll spend some time studying languages after I retire.

Another cool little Hebrew factoid: much like our word for the family of letters we use to make words derives from the first two Greek letters (alpha + beta => alphabet), the name for the Hebrew family of letters is a combination of the names of the first two Hebrew letters (alef + bet => alefbet). I can pronounce the names of the Hebrew letters, but I can't write them. In fact, some of them look so similar, I wonder how people can distinguish them quickly while reading! I suppose you get used to it like anything else.

I think it's fascinating to compare the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin letters and see similarities in names, sounds, and letter shapes. Like Latin has influenced so many of the modern Romance and Germanic languages, there were older languages and dialects that influenced these ancient languages and account for their similarities. But that's about as far as my knowledge goes right now. I would love to learn more about the origins of these ancient languages someday.