Hebrew (Ancient)

Hebrew (Ancient)

Hebrew is the language of the Jews and is written in its own script, which is written right to left. Hebrew is similar to Arabic and Aramaic. The Jewish Scriptures, or Tanakh, were written mainly in biblical Hebrew, with some small parts in Aramaic.

The standard Jewish text is called the Masoretic text, which is equivalent to the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament. Biblical Hebrew is still used as the liturgical language of Orthodox Jewish synagogues. The Masoretic text is the usual text used for translating the Old Testament, especially in the Protestant tradition. The Masoretic text does not include any of the deuterocanonical books found in the Septuagint, although some of them have been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran.

Critical editions of Hebrew manuscripts have been published by scholars to help translators and Bible students. Between 1906 and 1955 Rudolf Kittel published nine editions. In 1966 the German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft) published the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia in six editions. Since 2004 they publish the Biblia Hebraica Quinta including all variants of the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the Masorah Magna. Another edition produced by Snaith is based upon the Ben Asher text and Sephardic manuscripts. Some critical texts also print the Masorah.