2 The Language of the Book of Jeremiah

Abstract

This chapter situates the language of the book of Jeremiah within the broader history of the Hebrew language. For the most part, the language of the book of Jeremiah exhibits a classical aspect. The book's language does, present a considerable number of cases of late Aramaic influence together with features especially characteristic of the latest phases of ancient Hebrew, such as Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH), Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) Hebrew, and Rabbinic Hebrew (RH). The majority of Jeremiah's linguistic elements, especially characteristic of post-exilic Hebrew, are found both in the LBH corpus proper and in non- Masoretic and post-biblical sources. The language of Jeremiah is characterized by a number of traits that indicate its status as a transitional phase between Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH) and LBH. According to the results of this study, Jeremiah contains no non-standard linguistic element that can be securely classified as dialectal.Keywords: Book of Jeremiah; classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH); Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) Hebrew; late Biblical Hebrew (LBH); Rabbinic Hebrew (RH)