Buried treasures of Cairo Genizah

Nov 14, 2011 by

In earlier posts I’ve discussed a number of ancient manuscripts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and Novgorod birch bark documents. But it is scholars of Semitic languages that have been particularly blessed with a cornucopia of...

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Modern Hebrew: old or new? (Part 4: Conclusion)

May 23, 2011 by

In a recent series of postings, I have considered the question of whether Modern Hebrew is a modified, modernized version of the “old”, Biblical Hebrew, or a newly constructed language based more on such Indo-European...

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Modern Hebrew: old or new?

May 19, 2011 by

According to the official story, Hebrew has been “revived” in the late 19th century and early 20th century until it once again became the national language of Israel. But some scholars — such as Paul Wexler and...

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Silent no more

Nov 2, 2010 by

Isn’t it fun to listen to recordings of unfamiliar tongues? But I especially like hearing the sounds of languages long dead. More and more such recordings surface on the internet and most of them are of older forms of English...

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Lost Tribes in Africa — part 2

Jun 7, 2010 by

In the last posting, I discussed Ethiopian Jews; here we will look at two other groups in Africa that claim to be Jewish (and in some cases claim descent from one of the Ten Lost Tribes). First, let’s look at the Yemenite Jews....

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