Myths About The Hebrew Language

In a previous article, we looked at several facts about the Hebrew language. This article addresses several myths regarding the Hebrew language.

Myth #1: Hebrew was a special, holy language.

That is not possible, given the history and development of the Hebrew langauge: Which stage of Hebrew should be considered “holy”—Archaic Hebrew, Standard Biblical Hebrew, or Late Biblical Hebrew? Which dialect of Hebrew should be considered “holy”—Northern Hebrew or Southern Hebrew?

Hebrew was a common Canaanite language. The Israelites never thought of the Hebrew language as anything special or holy until many years after the time of Jesus, when Jewish leaders began teaching that Hebrew was the holy language of the Jewish religion. Before that time, Jews had no qualms about using other languages even for the composition of sacred texts.

Within the Jewish Scriptures themselves, large sections of the books of Daniel and Ezra were written in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew. Even for religious purposes, Jews living in the land of Israel during the time of Jesus had no qualms about using languages other than Hebrew. When reciting the Book of Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus recited from a Greek translation of the Book of Isaiah rather than from the original Hebrew text (Luke 4:16–19).

Myth #2: The New Testament was originally written in Hebrew.

This myth is usually based on the previously addressed myth that Hebrew is the holy language of the Jewish people and of the one true God. The hypothesis is that most if not all of the New Testament books were originally written in Hebrew, and so the Greek texts of the New Testament which we have today are merely translations, and not the original texts which God inspired.

In reality, there is no evidence at all that any of the New Testament books were originally written in Hebrew. Contrarily, a close analysis of the Greek texts of the New Testament books prove them to be original compositions rather than translations from Hebrew. Even the Greek text of the Book of Hebrews, which was written to people who probably knew Hebrew, features one of the most polished and classical style of Greek among the New Testament books. This makes it highly unlikely to be a translation of an original Hebrew text.

Moreover, we have many Greek manuscripts of the New Testament dating from before the fifth century CE, but we do not have even one Hebrew manuscript of the New Testament. If the books of the New Testament were originally written in Hebrew, then it is as if the earliest Christians did not care to preserve the original Hebrew texts of the New Testament books, but yet bothered to preserve the Greek translations in copy after copy for generation after generation. This does not make sense.

Myth #3: Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has meaning.

Hebrew letters do not have meaning any more than English letters have meaning.

The names of the Hebrew letters do have meaning, since they were directly derived from words. However, the Hebrew letters themselves do not have meaning. For example, the word aleph did mean “ox” and the word beth did mean “house”. However, the letters named “aleph” and “beth” themselves have no meaning. In order to understand how this is the case, we need to understand how the letters of the Hebrew alphabet came about.

The letters of the Hebrew alphabet were created using the rebus principle: Existing symbols were used purely for their sound without any regard at all for their meaning. For example, in order to express the “b” sound in writing as a letter, the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for a house was used because a common Semitic word for “house” was beth, which started with the “b” sound. Accordingly, this letter was named “beth”. However, the meaning of the word beth, “house”, was completely irrelevant.