This topic discusses languages of the Bronze Age (approximately 3300–1200 BC) in the Ancient Near East (ANE), relative to the time of the Biblical patriarchs.
We don’t know what the language of Adam was (cf. Ge.2:19-20). Many historians think Sumérian is the oldest written language. Sumerian is called an isolated language, with no ancestor tongue. But loan words have been identified in Sumerian writings. So Sumerian as the first language is questioned. Encyclopaedia Brittanica “The Sumerian language…first attested about 3100 BC in S. Mesopotamia.”
Wikipedia: Writing System “The Sumerian archaic cúneiform script closely followed by the Egyptian híeroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC.”
Dating from pre-3000 BC Súmer, pictograph was pictures that represent a word or idea. Cuneiform script was wedge-shaped marks or symbols, on clay tablets. Cuneiform was adapted from pictograph.
The sons of the patriarch Noah were Shem, Ham and Jápheth (Ge.9:18). The family survived the Flood. The Septúagint/LXX dates Noah’s Flood circa (c) 3200 BC. After the Flood, his descendants migrated from old Armenia (Ge.8:4), to Shinár (Ge.10:10), and so on. The Ge.10–11 account, with the tower of Babél zíggurat, coincides with the development of language families from a primitive root language.
Post-Flood, Ge.11:1-9 “The whole earth was of one language [lip, shore, Strongs h8193 Hebrew]. They found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said, ‘Let us build a city & tower whose top is in heaven.’ Its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language [lip/shore], and scattered them over the whole earth.” Wikipedia: Tower of Babel “The Akkadian name of the city was Babilim, meaning ‘gate of God.” Shinar (Sumer, or Sínjar?) was an area in Mesopotamia (Ac.2:9, 7:2; it included ancient Babylonia). Shinar means ‘two rivers’. Mesopotamia (Greek) means ‘land between the rivers’, the Tigris and Euphrates. Mankind spread out over the land; other languages emerged.
Language families developed through Noah’s descendants (ref Ge.10:1, 5, 20, 31). Carlos Quiles From Adamic or the Language of the Garden of Eden Until the Tower of Babel “The language spoken by Noah and his descendants, whether the original Adamic language or the derived Chaldáic [?], split into 70 or 72 languages, according to the different traditions.” People dispersed upon the earth through extended family lines, clans, languages. It is said that 14 major language families exist today (e.g. Indo-European, Áfro-Asiátic the oldest). Dialects developed within the major language groups/tree models as humanity spread geographically; numerous dialects of descent are within each.
Ge.10:6 “The sons of Ham were Cush, Mízraim [Egypt], Phut and Canáan.” The Egyptian people descended from Ham. Ge.10:22 “The sons of Shem were Elám, Asshúr, Arpachshad, Lud and Arám. These were grandsons of Noah. Semític languages are named from Shem. (The Aramaic language would be named from Aram.) Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 1:6:4 “Elam…the Elamites, ancestors of the Persians [Iranians]. Asshur lived at the city Nineveh, and named his subjects Assyrians. Arpachshad named…the Chaldéans. Aram…called Syrians. Lud…Lydians [W Turkey].” (see the topics “Aramaic in the Bible” and “Chronology: Septuagint versus Masoretic Text”.) Aram & Arpachshad were brothers.
Wikipedia: Arpachshad “Arpachshad was understood by many Jewish and Muslim scholars [pre-1920] to be an area in northern Mesopotamia. This led to the identification of Arpachshad with Urfa-Kasid, a land associated with the Khaldis.” Wikipedia: Chalybes “The Chalybes and Chaldoi were…peoples living in N. Anatolia [Turkey]. Their territory was known as Chaldia.” (Later they’d move south.)
Ge.10:24 LXX “Arphaxad begot Kaínan (not Canaan), Kainan begot Shélah, Shelah begot Éber.” (The Hebrew people would be named after Eber, Josephus ibid.) Eber was the great-grandson (or grandson) of Arphaxad.
Sumerian of Iraq is an extinct linguistic isolate. At Ur in S Mesopotamia, the writings on the mud-brick walls of the Great Ziggurat (2000–2100 BC) are Sumerian cuneiform. The ancient Elamite language of SW Iran, dating from c 2600 BC and now extinct, is also considered a language isolate. Although Elamite was named from Shem’s son Elam (Ge.10:22), it isn’t considered a Semitic language.
There were multilinguals in Mesopotamia, speaking Sumerian, Akkádian…then other dialects. Akkadian is an extinct E Semitic Afro-Asiatic language. Ge.10:10 Akkád was in or near the land of Shinar (the exact location hasn’t been discovered). Akkadian names are seen in Sumerian writings, dated c 2500 BC. Wikipedia: Akkadian Empire “Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around 2000 BC.” Near the commencement of the Middle Bronze Age.
Ge.11:10-27 Abrám descended from Arphaxad. v.31 Abraham (born c 2100 BC) likely came from Ur/Urfa/SanliUrfa/Edessa, or Urkesh, in N Mesopotamia. He migrated approx 25 miles S to Harrán (Akkadian ‘Harránu’, ‘crossroads’) in far S Turkey, 10 miles above the N Syrian border. The region of Aram in Upper Mesopotamia. Ancient Urkesh (Tel Mozan today) in NE Syria was 100+ miles E of Harran. Abram later would migrate SSW through Damascus; cf. Ge.15:2 his “Eliézer of Damascus”.
Ge.11:16-27 the names of early Hebrews (descendants of Eber and ancestors of Abraham) are seen in the names of towns located in the vicinity of Harran, Turkey. Péleg, the city of Paliga; Serúg, the city of Sarugi; Nahór, Nakhur in the valley; Abraham’s father Térah, Til-Turakhi (‘mound of Terah’).
Rudolph Klein Abraham’s Chaldean Origins and the Chaldee Language “He must have been literate & fluent in Sumerian, Akkadian, various other Semitic languages (e.g. Amorite), probably Egyptian as a trade language. His descendants would adopt the language of…Canaan [Phoenícian/old Hebrew].”
Mark D. Kaplan The Languages of the Bible “One of the earliest ancient cities was Akkad in Mesopotamia (Ge.10:10). Perhaps Abraham originally spoke an Akkadian dialect in Ur. Abraham went south to Canaan…the Canaanites were descendants of Ham [Ge.10:1, 6 Noah’s son]. In Canaan Abraham picked up the local language. His clan’s version of Canaanite became known as Hebrew [much later].” (Hebrew is classed as a Canaanite NW Semitic Afro-Asiatic language.)
Eblaite, named after the city Ebla (Tel Márdikh today] in N Syria, is an extinct E Semitic Afro-Asiatic language dating from the (latter) 2000s BC. Ebla was approx 90 miles SW of Harran & 190 miles N of Damascus. Wikipedia: Ebla [3000–1600 BC] “At its greatest extent, Ebla controlled an area half the size of modern Syria, from Ursaum in the north [S Turkey] to around Damascus in the south, and from Phoenícia and the coastal mountains in the west to Haddu in the east. It is probable the inhabitants of 3rd kingdom Ebla [2000–1600 BC] were predominantly Amorites, as was most of Syria at that time.”
Wikipedia: Eblaite Language “Similarity to Hebrew, Ugarític, or Phoenician.” Eblaite is an E Semitic sister language to Akkadian. Jeff Benner The Archives of Ebla and the Bible “The tablets were written [2300 BC at Ebla] with a cuneiform script, like Úgarit [N Syrian coastal city]. The Eblaite language shares many similarities to the Hebrew language.” Kevin Drendel The Ebla Tablets Confirm Biblical Accounts “The tablets include Sumerian Eblahite vocabularies with thousands of translated words. Also an ancient language…related to [the later] Hebrew and Phoenician.”
Abram was also probably familiar with Hurrian, an extinct N Mesopotamia language dating from 2300 BC. And Elamite (cuneiform). Ge.14:1-17 Abram defeated Chedorlaómer, the powerful king of Elam. Bible patriarchs knew Akkadian, some Eblaite & Hurrian. And Amorite too, an extinct NW Semitic Afro-Asiatic language (and an ancestor of Ugaritic?). Ge.10:15-16 the Amorites descended from Ham’s son Canaan. Abram dwelt in the plain of his ally Mamré the Amorite (Ge.14:13), near Hebron.
Ge.12:10-20 while in Egypt, Abram perhaps spoke Middle Egyptian (an Afro-Asiatic language) with Pharaoh. Ge.20:1-18 Abraham and an ancient Abimélech, king of Gerár (capital city), dialogued SE of Gaza (Ge.21:32-34). There they possibly spoke an early form of Proto-Sináitic? So-called “Philistine” territory was the SW coast of Canaan. Those Philistines descended from Mizraim/Egypt, son of Ham. Ge.10:13-14 “Mizraim begot Pathrúsim and Caslúhim, from whom came the Philistines, and Caphtorím.” Josephus op.cit. 1:6:2 “All the children of Mizraim, eight in number, possessed the country from Gaza to Egypt; though it retained the name of one only, the Philistim.” Ge.21:34 “Abraham sojourned in the land of the Philistines many days.” Gill Exposition “For many years.”
Later the Israelites would say of their ancestor in De.26:5, “My father was a wandering Araméan [Arammíy h761, Syrian]”. Referring to Abraham or Jacob. Ge.14:13 “Abram the Hebrew” (Ibríy h5680) and grandson Jacob were from Eber’s line. Abraham and Jacob (born c 1950 BC) had spent years in N Syria; both would have known Akkadian, Amorite, and Jacob the developing Proto-Aramaic.
Abraham told his servant, Ge.24:1-4 “Don’t take a wife for my son from the Canaanites, among whom I live; but go to my country to my relatives and take a wife for Isaac.” v.10 “He went to Arám-of-the-two-rivers, the city of Nahór.” Wikipedia: Aramaic “Ancient Aram…Syria”. The city of Abraham’s brother Nahor was in N Mesopotamia, Syria-Turkey, 400 miles distant. The servant brought back Rebekah for Isaac. Ge.25:20 “Isaac was 40 years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuél the Aramean of Paddán-Arám, the sister of Labán the Aramean [Arammiy].” Ge.22:20-23 Bethuel, the son of Nahor, was Abraham’s nephew. 90 years later, Ge.28:5 “Isaac sent Jacob to Paddan-Aram, to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean.” A form of primitive Aramaic was likely the dialect at the ‘plain of Aram’. Jacob brought his wives Leah & Rachel from the old country to the Land of Canaan.
Laban was an Aramean. Pre-Aramaic and pre-Hebrew are reflected in the same verse in Ge.31:43-48. “They took stones and made a heap, and ate there. Laban called it Jegár sahaduthá, but Jacob called it Galéed.” They made a “heap of witness” c 1865 BC at Mizpáh of Gilead, E of the Jordan River. Laban called the memorial by a proto-Aramaic name, but Jacob called it by a precursor of Hebrew. Barnes Notes “Here is the first specimen of Aramaic, as distinguished from Hebrew.” Jacob would’ve learned both dialects in Canaan, Proto-Canaanite pre-Hebrew and his mother’s primitive Paleo-Syrian.
Codex 99 Proto-Sinaitic “Around 1900 BC the Proto-Sinaitic script began to appear in Egypt, the Sinai and the Levánt. Associated with hieroglyphic or hierátic signs. It was adopted by the Canaanites (hence Proto-Canaanite) and later by the Phoenicians.” Omniglot: Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite “Proto-Canaanite is a version of the Proto-Sinaitic script as used in Canaan, modern Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and parts of western Syria. It is also used to refer to an early version of the Phoenician script as used before 1050 BC, or an ancestor of Phoenician.” Phoenicia was a 150-mile coastal region, Lebanon today. (cf. Mk.7:26 “The woman was a Syrian-Phoenician.”) Phoenicia included the cities of Tyre, Byblos, Sidon. Ge.10:15 Sidón was the firstborn son of Canaan.
Ge.40:15 Jacob’s son Joseph was from the “land of the Hebrews”, peoples racially disliked by the Egyptians (Ge.43:32). Descendants of Eber lived in N Syria and then Canaan. After Pharaoh made Joseph a ruler in Egypt, Jacob/Israel and his sons’ families moved from Canaan to Egypt c 1827 BC. see “Chronology: Abraham to the Exodus”. Ge.42:23 an interpreter was necessary, since the Middle Egyptian language and the Proto-Canaanite (and the Akkadian of the Old Assyrian period) differed.
Joseph died in Egypt c 1757 BC. The Amorite Hammurabi (1810-1750 BC) wrote his famous law Code between 1755–1750 BC in Akkadian cuneiform text at the ancient Babylon city-state. He was the 6th king of the First Babylonian Empire (1894-1595 BC), ruling Mesopotamia. (Later, after Israel exited Egypt, two Amorite kings in NE Canaan c 1575 BC were Sihon and Og. ref De.31:4.)
While in Egypt, the descendants of Jacob/Israel became slaves and learned Middle Egyptian. Ac.7:22 “Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians; he was mighty in words and deeds.” Ex.2:16-19 Reuél’s daughters (1600s BC) in the land of Midián thought Moses was Egyptian, from his speech & dress. Moses spent years in Midian near Mt Sinai, where he was called by God (Ex.3:1-ff).
Ex.31:18 after the Israelite exodus from Egypt, the Decalogue at Mt Sinai was written by the finger of God. In Canaano-Akkadian, Proto-Sinaitic/Canaanite script, Eblaite, hieroglyphic or hieratic scripts? The Lord’s Old Covenant too. F.F. Bruce Who Wrote Genesis? “A man [Moses] ‘learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians’ would have been conversant with the Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic.”
John C Lennox Seven Days That Divide the World, p.126 “The scribal use of cuneiform script spread from Mesopotamia as far as Canaan, Hazor [in Upper Galilee], and even Hebron [between Jerusalem and Beershéba] by the 17th century BC.”
In the Land of Canaan after 215 years in Egypt, the Israelites/‘mixed multitude’ (Ex.12:37-38) of 1550 BC likely took on Proto-Canaanite.
Andre H. Roosma The Written Language of Abraham, Moses and David “The Paleo-Hebrew script developed from a script that was used in the W Semitic area during the 2nd millennium BC. It is often referred to as Proto-Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic script.” The Israelites would then use the developing Old/Paleo Hebrew (and Phoenician) in the Land of Canaan.
The Amarna Letters (1360-1332 BC) are 382 tablets found in Upper Egypt, but written in Akkadian cuneiform script (not in Egyptian). They’re correspondence between the kings of Canaanite cities and Pharaoh. Wikipedia: Amarna Letters “The letters, though written in Akkadian, are heavily colored by the mother tongue of their writers, who probably spoke an early form of Proto-Canaanite.” Not long before the time of Gideon in the book of Judges (6:11-ff). see “Chronology: the Exodus to Samuel”.
There’s no indication that Paleo-Hebrew was spoken in Mesopotamia. Cambridge Bible Ge.11:1 “That Hebrew was the primitive language….has been disproved by the scientific comparative study of languages, and of Hebrew and the Semitic languages in particular.” Wikipedia: Canaanite Languages “Hebrew, Phoenician…derived from the Proto-Canaanite alphabet to record their writings.”
That brings us to the approaching end of the ANE Bronze Age, c 1200 BC. Further archaeological findings may bring to light other ancient dialects and/or revisions to those discussed here in this topic.
The Paleo-Hebrew (Old Hebrew alphabet) script would become the language of south Canaan. Is.19:18 “language of Canaan”. Language historians say the Phoenician language was spoken in NW Canaan. Old Hebrew and Phoenician were very similar; both contained the same 22 letters. (Aramaic too has 22.) Wikipedia: Paleo-Hebrew Alphabet “Like the Phoenician alphabet, it is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script, which was used throughout Canaan in the Late Bronze Age. There is no difference in Paleo-Hebrew vs Phoenician letter shapes.”
For more on Aramaic & Hebrew in the ensuing centuries of the Iron Age, see “Aramaic in the Bible”.
Bible Topic Exposition 