Medieval Hebrew

Medieval Hebrew
עִבְרִית Ivrit
Excerpt from 13th-14th-century manuscript of the Hebrew translation of The Guide for the Perplexed
Region	Jewish diaspora
Era	Academic language used from the death of Hebrew as a spoken language in the 4th century until its revival as a spoken language in the 19th century
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic Northwest Semitic Canaanite Medieval Hebrew
Early forms	Biblical Hebrew Mishnaic Hebrew Medieval Hebrew
Writing system	Hebrew alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None

Medieval Hebrew was a literary and liturgical language that existed between the 4th and 18th century. It was not commonly used as a spoken language, but mainly in written form by rabbis, scholars and poets. Medieval Hebrew had many features that distinguished it from older forms of Hebrew. These affected grammar, syntax, sentence structure, and also included a wide variety of new lexical items, which were either based on older forms or borrowed from other languages, especially Aramaic, Greek and Latin.

In the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, important work was done by grammarians in explaining the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew; much of this was based on the work of the grammarians of Classical Arabic. Important Hebrew grammarians were Judah ben David Hayyuj and Jonah ibn Janah. A great deal of poetry was written, by poets such as Dunash ben Labrat, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah ha-Levi, David Hakohen and the two , in a "purified" Hebrew based on the work of these grammarians, and in Arabic quantitative metres (see piyyut). This literary Hebrew was later used by Italian Jewish poets.

The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts from Classical Greek and Medieval Arabic motivated Medieval Hebrew to borrow terminology and grammar from these other languages, or to coin equivalent terms from existing Hebrew roots, giving rise to a distinct style of philosophical Hebrew. Many have direct parallels in medieval Arabic. The Ibn Tibbon family, and especially Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon were personally responsible for the creation of much of this form of Hebrew, which they employed in their translations of scientific materials from the Arabic. At that time, original Jewish philosophical and theological works produced in Spain were usually written in Arabic, but as time went on, this form of Hebrew was used for many original compositions as well.