Hebrew names are extremely frequent amongst a wide span of cultures since it is the founding language of the world's most popular monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
This revered language has been spoken in Palestine from approximately the 13th century BC until the second century CE, and Hebraic literature has been produced at least since the 12th century BCE. However, since this influential language belongs to the larger Hamito-Semitic language family, its origins are much more ancient: this family developed between 8000 and 600 BCE.
One reason that Hebrew has had such a long life span is because it is the language that the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament, was originally written in. Therefore, Hebrew has been regarded by many as a sacred language and as such canonized.
From 200 to about 1880 CE, Hebrew was only a literary language, but with the reestablishment of the Jewish state in Israel in 1948 Hebrew has once again become a spoken language.
This page was last modified on 16 May 2003.
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