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J. The Meaning of Hebrew Words.
Christians have studied the Hebrew language
with varying degrees of intensity as long as the church has existed. During the apostolic
and early church age (A.D. 40-150), Christians had a great deal of interest in the Hebrew
language. Eventually, they depended more heavily upon the Greek Septuagint for reading
the Old Testament. In the early Middle Ages, Jerome had to employ Jewish scholars to
help him in translating the official Latin Vulgate version of the Old Testament. There was
little Christian interest in the Hebrew language in medieval times.
In the sixteenth century, a German Roman Catholic scholar named Johannes Reuchlin
studied Hebrew with a Jewish rabbi and began to write introductory books in Latin about
Hebrew for Christian students. He also compiled a small Hebrew-Latin dictionary.
Reuchlin’s work awakened an interest in Hebrew among Christian scholars that has
continued to our own day. (The Jewish synagogues had passed on the meaning of the text
for centuries, giving little attention to the mechanics of the Hebrew language itself. These
traditional meanings are reflected in the King James Version, published after Reuchlin’s
studies.)
By comparing Akkadian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, and Hebrew languages, modern scholars
have been able to understand the meaning of Hebrew words. Here are some of the keys
that they have discovered:
1. Cognate Words.
Foreign words that have sounds or constructions similar to
Hebrew words are called
cognates.
Because words of different Semitic languages are
based upon the same three-consonant root, cognates abound. In times past, these cognates
gave rise to "folk etymology"-an unscholarly interpretation of words based upon folklore
and tradition. Often these folk etymologies were used in interpreting the Old Testament.
However, words that are
philological cognates
(form-related) are not necessarily