# Two examples of modern hebrew



## Eddie

I have a different question now. The two sentences below express the same idea, as you undoubtedly can see, with two different forms of syntax and vocabulary. Both are given as examples of modern Hebrew.

As limited as my knowledge of Hebrew is, I feel that the first example is more modern than the second. What do you think?

Here are both sentences:

אֲבָל לְאֵלֶּה אֲשֶׁר קִבְּלוּ אוֹתוֹ, הַמַּאֲמִינִים בִּשְׁמוֹ, נָתַן תֹּקֶף לִהְיוֹת בָּנִים לֵאלֹהִים. 

 והמקבלים אתו נתן עז למו להיות בנים לאלהים המאמינים בשמו׃​


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## Ensign_Sulu

It's easier to isolate the lexical features distinguishing those two passages than the syntactic ones.

The word
למו
in the second passage, for example, is a patent archaism.

The word
עוז
in the second passage, as against
תוקף
in the first, is similarly suggestive of an earlier authorship.

At the morphological level, use of the letter
ו"ו (waw)
to introduce the second passage, as opposed to the conjunctive
אבל
used to introduce the first passage, corresponds to an earlier layer of the language.

Intuitively, the syntax of the first passage does strike me as more modern. Maybe it's the use of the relative clause. Maybe it's the overall structure that's more coherent.


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## Eddie

Thank you, Ensign Sulu (my favorite TV series, all of them).

Your informed comments make me feel as if I've really learned something.


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## origumi

Ensign_Sulu said:


> The word
> למו
> in the second passage, for example, is a patent archaism.


I suspect that עז למו follows Psalms 28:8 יְהוָה עֹז לָמוֹ וּמָעוֹז יְשׁוּעוֹת מְשִׁיחוֹ הוּא. See the reference to the Messiah.


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## Eddie

Thank you, Origumi. That would mean that the second sentence is closer to biblical Hebrew than modern Hebrew.


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## jdotjdot89

The punctuation is also a dead giveaway.  The colon ending the second sentence is typical of earlier texts (especially the Tanach), whereas the first sentence uses modern punctuation.


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## Eddie

Hi, jdotjdot. I sort of got the same feeling. What confused me is that the text is listed as modern Hebrew. I guess "modern" is in the eye of the beholder.


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## Nunty

The sentences are two different translations of John 1:12. The first is the translation of the Bible Society in Israel, first published in 1976, whereas the second is the Delitsch translation, which is much older (though still "modern", probably the 1930s but I couldn't find the date) and consciously used a more biblical grammar and syntax.

It would have saved me a few minutes of going through my bookshelf if you had cited your sources.


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## origumi

Nunty said:


> the second is the Delitsch translation, which is much older (though still "modern", probably the 1930s but I couldn't find the date)


Hasn't Franz Delitzsch passed away at 1890?


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## dinji

The year of the translation is 1878 (http://www.trinitarianbiblesociety.org/site/articles/heb.asp) and thus anticipated the modern revival of Hebrew. Yet, the translation is in this light amazingly close to (archaic) Modern Hebrew: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Delitzsch​


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## Nunty

Excellent. Thank you. That is why I couldn't find a publication date; back then it wasn't the custom always to print it. Thanks for doing my research for me.


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