The Importance of the Bible for the Rebirth of Hebrew as a Native Lingua Franca

This paper focuses on the use of biblicisms in the literary language of the Revival period (second Revival), on their stylistic value, and on their relationship to the underlying ideology. The term biblicism as used here denotes a linguistic phenomenon specific to Biblical Hebrew whereby a word is used in a non-biblical context, while retaining its obvious archaic features, in order to produce unique stylistic results. A few examples from Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s, ׄ Hayyim Naׄhman Bialik’s and Ya ‘akov Kahan’s works are analyzed. At the time of the Mishnah the language variety that had become prevalent in spoken usage started to have a considerable influence on classical Hebrew, assuming a prominent role in shaping the literary language. In a similar fashion the prose of the authors who were active during the second Revival shows important transitional linguistic features as evidenced by the significant proportion of freely adapted biblical forms and structures.