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by Wisdom on July 28th, 2005

Wisdom

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When Moses first spoke with God on Mt Sinai after the Exodus, did the Jewish people speak Hebrew or did they still speak Egyptian?

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Answers. 9 helpful answers below.

  • by Encyclopedia_John on July 30th, 2005

    Encyclopedia_John

    They spoke the language that they had always spoken, which was Hebrew. Going down to Egypt didn't change their native tongue. Many of them probably spoke Egyptian also, but only as a second language.

    Edit: The Bible says that the 12 tribes of Israel descended from the 12 sons of Jacob, therefore they would have all spoken the same language. Please remember that this is the "Christian Beliefs" section, so I will answer questions based on what Christians believe, i.e. what is written in the Bible. Even if you don't believe the Bible, it is still a fact that most of the tribes were semitic and would have spoken related semitic languages like Akkadian or Amorite, not Egyptian.

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  • by Pan African Scholar on March 18th, 2008

    Pan African Scholar

    There are several sources that prove that neither Moses or the Hebrews, that you all call Jews, spoke a langague that is called Hebrew. From 8000 B.C.E. (before the common era) to approximately 1 A.D. there were five distinct langauge families that inter-connected. They are Hamito-Asiatic, Nilo-Sahara, Niger Congo, Khoisan, and later on the Semetic branch of the Hamito -Asiatic. These langauges were on the continent of Akebulan(Africa) proper, long before there was a Moses or anyone/thing called a Hebrew. The latest histo-genetic research places the oldest humans (homo-sapien spaien) to be approimately 200,000 years old and the peoples of present day South Africa, Tanzania and Congo are said to be current decendants.

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  • by Thom64 on August 14th, 2005

    Thom64

    I am not aware of any ancient document that directly addresses the question, so I guess the best answer is: we don't really know for certain. But I will give a little speculation and deduction...

    The Israelites had been in Egypt for generations (probably over 300 years), so it is not certain they kept their ancestral tongue as their first tongue. Many people of Jewish ancestry today living outside Israel do not know Hebrew, but only the language of their home country. Others learn it as a second language, still others as a primary language against the norm of their country of residence.

    According to Exodus in the Bible, the nation arrived at Sinai in the third month after leaving Egypt. This is unlikely to have been enough time to change the common language of all the people (short of a miracle of God, which is not even hinted in the text).

    It is reasonable to assume the Hebrew slaves in Egypt needed to understand and communicate with their Egyptian masters, so it is certainly likely most of them had some command of, if not fluency in, Egyptian.

    Since Moses is credited with writing several of the books in the Torah, it seems necessary that he was educated in the Hebrew language (but I suppose the possibility exists that he may have dictated in Egyptian to a Hebrew-literate scribe). Since so many ancient Hebrew manuscripts are in Hebrew, it is clear the language survived all that time in Egypt and became the common tongue (if it had not remained common). I am aware of no evidence that ALL the Israelites spoke it as a first language, but, once again, is seems reasonable (based on the use of Hebrew in ancient documents) that many had knowledge of the language - but it is also possible that only a certain class of people (scribes and their descendants?) read and wrote at all at the time.

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  • by The Galaxy Hitchhiker on January 10th, 2009

    The Galaxy Hitchhiker

    Abraham, the ancestor of Moses, did come from "Chaldee" where the Chaldeean language (or "Aramaic") was spoken. Both Aramaic and Hebrew are practically identical. They used the same script and the same root words. While Aramaic and Hebrew have some slight differences today, 3,500 years ago, the time of Abraham, the two languages were most likely identical.

    Abraham is called a Hebrew because his ancestor's name was Eber (see the geneology of Abraham in the Bible). The Hebrew spelling for Eber and Hebrew are identitcal except that Hebrew ends with a yud basically meaning "descendent of Eber." Moses of course is descended from Abraham through Isaac-Jacob-Levi-Kohath-Amram. Moses would have spoken the same language as his family which is descended from the Hebrew Abraham. Although some of the Jewish slaves may have learned some of the Egyptian language, I'm sure that they retained their own language during their years of slavery.

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  • by iwnit on May 18th, 2008

    iwnit

    1) According to the Bible, they spoke Hebrew:
    "10. Then Moshe said to YAHWEH, "Oh, my Master! I am not a man of words, neither from yesterday nor the day before, nor since you have spoken to Your servant, because I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue."

    [He was slow at speaking Hebrew, since he was a young child when he began living in places where he would speak Egyptian all the time, and he has spent 40 more years with the Midyanites.]

    11. But YAHWEH said to him, "Who has made a mouth for human beings? And who decides [whether someone will be] mute or deaf, clear-sighted or blind? Isn't it I, YAHWEH?"

    [He is in control of all that happens, even what seems bad to us. (Yeshayahu/Isa. 45:7)]

    12. "So now go, and I will be with your mouth, and will teach you what to say."
    13. But he said, "Excuse me, Master. Please send by the hand [that] you want to send!"

    14. Then YAHWEH' became angry at Moshe, and said, "Isn't Aharon the Levite your brother? Certainly he can speak the language! And besides, look! He's even coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.

    [Talk the talk: i.e., speak the Hebrew language. The rabbis say that YAHWEH called Aharon "the Levite" here because Moshe was originally to have been the high priest, but because of his unbelief and unwillingness, he was made the Levite and Aharon the high priest.]

    15. "Moreover, you will speak to him, and put the words in his mouth. In addition, I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will give you instructions about what you shall do.
    16. "And he will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were a mouth for you, and you will be like an Elohim to him."
    Source and further information:
    http://www.1bread.org/scripture/children/Exodus.html


    2) Remark that we don't have any historical proofs about this whole story:
    "Academic view
    The German scholar Martin Noth:

    Accepts that Moses may have had some connection with the preparations for the conquest of Canaan
    Recognizes a historical core "beneath" the Exodus and Sinai traditions
    But on the other hand, Noth holds that:

    Two different groups experienced the Exodus and Sinai events and each group transmitted its own stories independently of the other one.
    "The biblical story tracing the Hebrews from Egypt to Canaan resulted from an editor's weaving separate themes and traditions around a main character Moses, actually an obscure person from Moab."
    Other scholars such as William Foxwell Albright have a more favorable view towards the traditional views regarding Moses and accept the essence of the biblical story, as narrated between Exodus 1:8 and Deuteronomy 34:12, but recognize that impact the centuries of oral and written transmission had on the account causing it to acquire layers of accretions."
    Source and further information:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses#Academic_view

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  • by AB is an asylum run by the inmates, ciao! on October 28th, 2010

    AB is an asylum run by the inmates, ciao!

    Hebrew did not develop until about 1000 BCE. Before that is was Canaanite, which evolved from Phoenician.

    The Canaanite Language, also know as Phoenician is a branch of the West Semitic languages that include Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic and others. Where Hebrew and Aramaic are closely related to the Canaanite language in vocabulary and grammar, Arabic is a little further off from grammatical proximity, but still retains much common vocabulary. Canaanite was spoken in Lebanon for thousands of years, and most of its lexicon is retained within the Lebanese colloquial dialect.

    That is one of the many reasons that most scholars are convinced that the entire Exodus story is a literary fabrication, and that Moses never really existed as described in the Old Testament of the library known as the Bible.

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  • by Yetzchaq_E on March 28th, 2011

    Yetzchaq_E

    Sorry to bust your bubble but modern human teeth were found in Canaan dating to 400,000 years ago so the origins of human as I always said is still volitile...

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  • by Yetzchaq_E on March 28th, 2011

    Yetzchaq_E

    Hebrew is to Aramaic (in lettering) as English is to Latin; and was an adaption from it. Canaanite language is related more to Egyptian metuneta writtings as they used a phonetic and symbolic writting system as Priest had to learn up to 700 signs which all meant a different action word. Symbolism and noun-markings were of the norm and the first be used to represent things and/or non-vocal speech.

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  • by Parlezvous on October 28th, 2010

    Parlezvous

    There's no such language as Egyptian. They speak Arabic in Egypt.

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