Hebrew/Aramaic: LanguagesT. 
Lecture Six

AN INTRODUCTION 
Three links in the chain
•	“from God to us”
•	1. ___________________
•	2. ___________________
•	3. ___________________
Inspiration
•	__________gave the message to the men 
•	who _________________it
•	and ____________________it
Canonization
•	deals with the ___________________and
•	_______________________of the inspired writings
•	In effect, the objective disclosure was complete 
•	when the 66 books of the Bible were________________, and 
•	then ______________________by their original readers.
Transmission
•	why is this important?
•	How would the following generations know God without some form of record of God’s self-disclosure?
•	So, transmission involves the
•	1. ___________________of the records or manuscripts
•	2. ____________________them as needed
•	3. ____________________the _____________________manuscripts
•	4. The _____________________of the manuscripts
Questions to ponder
•	Why did God chose to use written languages to communicate his message from one generation to the next?
•	Could God have used some other means and still accomplished his goal of self-revelation?
•	What other alternatives could God have used rather than languages?
Other alternatives
•	1. ____________
•	2. ______________________
•	3. _____________________
•	4. _____________________
•	5. _____________________
What God Chose to Use
•	Hebrews 1:1 - it was good for God to speak to the prophets “in divers manners”,
•	but was that the best way to speak to the men of all ages?
•	The best way is the way the God chose
•	He chose to _________________the ____________________
The Problem with Language
•	____________________are not perfect means of communication
•	Sometimes people misunderstand one another
•	But, in comparison to the other means, _____________________are the time honored method that God chose to use
Advantages to Languages

1. ______________________
•	if a person can understand what is being said enough to put it into writing, the communication is usually very ____________
•	also, many people have more _____________vocabularies than ________________vocabularies, i.e. we can read and understand more words than we normally use
2. ____________________
•	It is easier to make more _______________copies of a written medium than an oral one
•	there is always a greater chance for error in an ______________transmission than a written one.
3. ____________________
•	failing memories often prove to be the undoing of certain historical events
•	why do we often say, “Let me ______________________of that”?
4. ______________________
•	notes aid in the _____________________of important information.

The Languages God Chose
•	Is it not natural to assume that the God who “accomplishes all things to the counsel of his will” (Eph 1:11) and who brought forth Christ “when the time had fully come” (Gal 4:4) would select ________________that would adequately express His__________?
Old Testament Languages
•	Genesis 10 -11 is a background for the study
•	These mention the sons of _____________who was a son to Noah
•	The genealogical tables denote the geographical relationships of the peoples from Shem’s loins
•	These people make up what is commonly referred to as the _______________languages
•	The Semitic languages can be divided into the following classifications:
1. The __________________Division
•	The _________________language is the major languages for this area
•	this was the common language during the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires
•	The _________________Letters give evidence of this fact
•	These Armana Letters were correspondence between petty kings in Syria and Palestine to the Pharoahs in Egypt around 1400-1360 BC
•	___________________was not used in the Old Testament
2. The _____________________Division
•	The major languages here are the ________________and _______________(Syriac)
A. ___________________
•	The Amorites lived in Palestine _____________and ______________Israel’s occupation
•	(Gen. 10:16; 15:16; Deut. 7:1; Joshua 10:6; 2 Choron 8:7)
•	The Amorite language was not used in the _________
B. _________________
•	Aramaic was the language of the Syrians
•	It was used in all _____________of the major divisions of the ________
•	either in ________________or in _______________names
•	(Gen 10:22; 31:47; 2 Kings 18:26; Jeremiah 10:11; Ezra 4:7-6:18; 7:12-26; Daniel 2:4-7:28)
The ___________________Division
•	These include the _________________subdivisions
•	Aramaic elements represented by _______dialects
•	1. __________________
•	2. __________________
•	3. __________________
•	4. __________________
______________Language
•	Ugarite is not used in the________, but has been helpful in further study of the OT Hebrew
•	This is the language of the ____________________Tablets
•	these tablets were found in Northern ______________in 1929
_____________________Language
•	Not used in the OT
•	Yet, these people are mentioned in the OT 
•	Gen 10:8-12; 1 Kings 5:6; Neh 13:16 Ezek 27:9
•	The major contribution of the Phoenicians is their introduction of the ________________to the other languages
•	and this made writing much less awkward than the ________________language
_____________________Dialects
•	Lot’s descendents developed two dialects of Hebrew:
•	1. _________________through his oldest daughter
•	2. _________________by way of the younger daughter
•	Neither were used in the OT
•	However these ______________________are repeatedly mentioned in the OT
The __________________Stone
•	The Moabite Stone (ca 850 BC) is the ____________really long inscription in any _________________language discovered (found in 1868 at Dibon)
•	it is the account of the Moabite King, _________________, concerning a revolt mentioned in 2 Kings 1:1; 3:4-27.
__________________
•	by far the most important language of the OT
•	Most of the _________was written in it
•	It is called the “language of__________________” (2 Kings 18:26, 28)
•	and the “language of_________________” (Isa 19:18)
•	except for the above mentioned portions in Aramaic, the OT was written in _______________
The Use of Hebrew
•	During its history, Hebrew has been used in the following historical periods:
•	1. ______________________
•	2. Mishnaic
•	3. ______________________
•	4. Medieval
•	5. ______________________
Why Did God Chose Aramaic and Hebrew?
_____________________
•	was the local language of __________________and much of Syria when Jesus and the apostles lived.
•	It was not doubt a language that Jesus used in day-to-day conversation
•	It had been the _____________________-in the Near East in the 6th to 4th centuries BC when Alexander the Great conquered the area
•	this was the language of ____________________documents, mostly papyri, 
•	left by the Jewish colony, at Elephantine, Egypt, during the 5th century BC
____________________
•	Too much to say that these language were used by God because they were the ones available when He decided to have something written down for mankind
•	Could it be that God planned on these language?
1. It has a _____________________suitability
•	The OT is primarily a biography of the OT _____________________and God’s dealings with them
•	There are two reasons for this biographical suitability:
•	1. It is a ____________________language
•	2. It is a _____________________language
The Pictorial Language
•	it provides a vivid, bold ___________________which dramatize the story.
•	It possess a means that allows it to present “___________________” of events that  are narrated
•	The Hebrews thought in pictures, and as a result,
•	the nouns used in Hebrew are all ___________________and vivid
•	There is no such thing as a ____________________gender, for to the Semite everything is alive
The Hebrew Language
•	there are no ________________words and not very many __________________
•	1 Corinthians 10:11 explains it very nicely:
2. It is a __________________Language
•	it addresses itself to the _______________and _______________
•	rather than to the mind or reason
•	Malachi 1:2-3 even gives __________________personalities
•	Hebrew always appeals to the concrete __________________of life, not to abstract theories
•	Hebrew allows the message to be _______________rather than just _________________
•	This allows the reader to _____________the presence of God, in contrast to merely _________________about God.
F. F. Bruce’s statement: 
•	page 45, paragraph 2: