10441 History of the Hebrew Language II: Medieval Hebrew

Credits: 3 intermediate credits in Hebrew Language

Prerequisites: none

Authors: Hanoch Gamliel, Gad Ben-Ami Zarfati, Ephraim Chazan, Zvi Betzer

The course is the second part of a series of three.1 It surveys a period of about seventeen centuries during which the Hebrew language served only for literary and liturgical purposes, and was not used for everyday communication.

Topics: Introduction; Language of the Piyyutim (liturgical hymns); Language of the translators (from Arabic); Language of the Hebrew poetry of Spain; Medieval rabbinical language (“Questions and Answers” literature) not influenced by Arabic.

---

1The other parts are described separately.