So which one is it? Is Aramaic the root of Hebrew or did Aramaic develop from Hebrew? The answer, of course, is neither. Although they may be related by a shared lineage, there is not a direct genetic relationship between the two. That is to say, one did not derive from the other. (Pete Bekins irascibly assimilates these two absurd statements with the tongue-in-check proposal that “Classical Hebrew developed into Aramaic which then morphed back into Modern Hebrew and Arabic.”)

These languages are indeed quite similar—a reasonable modern analogy may be the modern Romance languages—but they are not genetically related. Like Italian and French which share a common progenitor in Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew are related to one another by shared heritage and not direct linage. Almost without exception in modern scholarship, this common progenitor of Aramaic and Hebrew (called [Proto ]Northwest Semitic) is agreed upon. (For an example of some of the difficulties of establishing direct relationships between languages, in particular modern Aramaic dialects, see here.)

For more discussion see any introduction to comparative Semitic grammar or one of many introductory articles/books to this topic. For example:

Faber, Alice. 1997. “Genetic Subgrouping of the Semitic Languages.” Pp. 3-15. In The Semitic Languages, edited by R. Hetzron, London: Routledge, 1997. (overview here)

Huehnergard, John. 2005. Features of Central Semitic. In Biblical and Oriental Essays in Memory of William L. Moran, edited by A. Gianto. Rome: Biblical Pontific Institute. (available online here)

Rubin, Aaron. 2010. A Brief Introduction to the Semitic Languages. Edited by G. A. Kiraz, Gorgias Handbooks 19. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. (available from Amazon)

Below is a short review of the Nook version without the glossary for those who may be interested.

Synopsis (from the book description):

Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is a complete Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in its original Hebrew and Aramaic shown in an aesthetically pleasing Hebrew/Aramaic script. It contains all of the consonants, vowels (nequddot), and cantillation marks.

This digital edition of the Hebrew Bible follows the text of the Leningrad Codex (Codex Leningradensis) as digitized by the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research, version 4.14. This is the same codex used in printing Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Biblia Hebraica Quinta.

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Overview:
One could not ask for a more visually pleasing text from which to read the Hebrew Bible. The few minor peccadilloes are overwhelmed by the tremendous quality and value of the book. This offering provides a giant leap forward for eReaders and a must have for everyone from the casual student to the serious scholar.

In the Beginning:
I purchased the book on BN.com. After an initial failed attempt, I was able to download the book over the Nook 3G network in about 3-4 mins. It opened quickly without difficulty thereafter. After a detailed description of the five different navigation methods for getting around the massive volume (4000 total pages!), the Hebrew text began as one would expect with the first chapter of Genesis as one would find in a standard printed edition but without Masoretic notes.

Font:
Overall one could not hope for a more aesthetically pleasing font type or size. The font-type is similar to that used in BHS and BHQ and the font-size is comparable to a large-print edition of BHS—easily readable when placed at arms distance. This is important as the font size cannot be varied dynamically.

The screen holds on average seven verses (approx. seven words across each line by fourteen lines), and each number is amply sized to find a specific verse when scanning down.

As claimed in the description, the consonants, vowels, and cantillation marks are all displayed. They are properly oriented on the screen in right-to-left fashion with each vowel and accent appropriately placed as one would find in a printed version. Overall the spacing is outstanding. An overly scrupulous reader may notice an ever so slight extra space with a very small number of character combinations; however, these minor variations do not detract at all from the pleasing format of the text.

Navigation:
The pages are ordered in a recto-verso orientation typical of an English book (so the right arrow navigates to the next page and the left arrow to the previous). This may at first bother some readers as being backwards from the typical printed Hebrew version which is verso-recto, but it follows the regular navigation orientation of the eReader format.

Possibly the main drawback to the volume is the time it takes to turn the pages or jump to a specific passage. A page turn between chapters is executed quickly in about a second, but when moving from one chapter to another it takes 3-4 seconds. Navigation back and skipping to a specific verse requires even longer. Page turning speed, of course, is a broader problem for eReaders, but hopefully continued software and hardware developments will decrease this issue in the near future.

See the following related news items:

–Martha Roth discussing “The Final Chapter” (video) and How we wrote the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (JNES article via JSTOR)

–Anna Steinhelper provides an apt portrayal of the feat in the most recent OI News & Notes (Winter 2011).

Seeing examples of early writing from these four areas together in one place, you can’t fail to be impressed by the wonder of human creativity in these independent inventions that fundamentally transformed the very nature of civilization

With more videos:

ז״ל May his memory be for a blessing.

The ability to represent language graphically, to make language visible, stands as one of humanity’s greatest intellectual and cultural achievements. Given in conjunction with the special exhibit, Visible Language, this lecture explores how and why humans first invented writing by comparing the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Mesoamerican inventions–the four instances in history when writing was invented–out of nothing. In this lecture, Christopher Woods discusses cultural contexts and structural features of each of these systems, focusing on important similarities and differences between them.

UPDATE: A recent article discusses the positives and some negatives of the new exhibit.

LiveScience posted a short Q&A with Gonzalo Rubio about working in dead languages. In response to a question about what it is like to study a dead langauge, Rubio said, “In many regards, we are resuscitating a dead civilization through the understanding of its dead languages.” He continued:

When one studies an economic document from ancient Mesopotamia, there are names of individuals entering a contract or making a purchase, normally in front of a number of named witnesses: These are all people who lived three or four thousand years ago, people whose names were forgotten and buried in the sand until modern scholars brought them back to a modicum of life in their articles and books. When an assyriologist holds a tablet inscribed with cuneiform characters, be it in Sumerian or in Akkadian, there is a chance that she or he may be the first person to read that text again after millennia of oblivion. Even if one is not the epigrapher who first looks at the tablets found at an archaeological site, even as a scholar reading texts at a museum, there is an overwhelming feeling of discovery and recovery, the excitement of bringing a civilization back to life by understanding it, text by text, tablet by tablet.

Finally, Pete Bekins has continued his helpful series of article/book summaries with a brief discussion of Blau’s Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew. Pete’s assessment of the book is spot on. I agree that it is good to have this title finally published in English, but it exposes the unfortunate state of affairs in the study of Biblical Hebrew phonology and morphology.