A Brill Calendar: June 20

Few traditions in scholarship cover a longer period than study of Hebrew and its literature.

While most languages under steady decline end in oblivion – especially in absence of a written form – Hebrew has survived such an ordeal, despite a hiatus in general, codified use that started in the 9th century AD, and continued until the 18th . Rabbinic, ‘Mishnaic’, Hebrew (namely the learning and studying the textual corpus of Jewish conventions and traditions) was never spoken by common folk since its birth around the beginning of the 3rd century.

As a living language since the early Middle Ages, Hebrew is by and large an Iberian phenomenon, liberally borrowing words and idioms from Arabic, Spanish, Italian and Greek sources. The expulsion of Jews in January 1492 from the Realm of Their Catholic Majesties, and the rise of Zionism in Europe’s heartland half-way the 19th century, add to the list of contingency. The campaign to revive Hebrew as spoken language, initiated by Eliezer ben Yehuda, became an unique success. It is seldom, that the genealogy, ramification and vicissitude of a linguistic pedigree can act as summary and abstract of European civilization since the days of the ‘Pax Romana’.

On this long road of both a literary and an oral tradition, Leyden is also a stage-post; with a significance hard to assess. The first milestone there was erected June 20 1586, when the Board of Directors of the Academy appointed its Printer, Raphelengius (Plantijn’s son-in-law), as an ‘Extraordinarius’ in teaching the Hebrew language, an indispensable vehicle to fathom the depths of God’s Own Word at its source.