Currently Reading: In the Beginning

In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language, by Joel M. Hoffman.

From the book jacket…

In the Beginning follows and decodes the adventure that is the history of Hebrew, illuminating how the written record has survived, explaining the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient translations, and trying to determine how the ancient language actually sounded. Hoffman places 3,000 years of developments into a historical context, and shows their continuing impact on the modern world and on writing today.

This sweeping history traces Hebrew’s development as one of the first languages to make use of vowels and also covers the dramatic story of the rebirth of Hebrew as a modern, spoken language.

Easy to read and packed with scholarly insights, In the Beginning is essential reading for anyone interested in Hebrew, the Hebrew Bible, or languages and writing in general.

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