Hebrew in Exile
Hebrew in Exile
The Babylonian campaigns against Judah and Jerusalem severely undermined the scribal infrastructure of the Hebrew language. According to Babylonian documents, some of the Judean administration was taken captive to Babylon. These captive Judean officials likely were responsible for collecting, preserving, and transmitting literary traditions from the Judean monarchy. In general, however, the exile must have signaled the end to the literary tradition of Standard Biblical Hebrew. This chapter argues that literary traditions do not disappear overnight and suggests that the legacy of the Standard Biblical literary language lasted through the sixth century BCE. The Akkadian language might have come into more direct contact with Hebrew scribes during the Babylonian exile; however, it seems that Aramaic was the intermediary scribal tradition that served as a major conduit for Akkadian influence on Hebrew. The sixth century BCE was the end of the Standard Biblical Hebrew.
Keywords: Babylon, Akkadian, Exile, dispersion, Standard Biblical Hebrew
Yale Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
