Language
Song of Songs for the first time gives literary representation to the everyday post-exilic vernacular. It contains loan words from languages with which Hebrew had contact in post-exilic times, such as Persian, Greek, and Aramaic, and contains numerous items of vocabulary that are otherwise unknown in Biblical Hebrew but are known from Rabbinic Hebrew, and these expressions give the impression of being part of a living language and not the result of an archaic or artificial style. There are longer phrases that are typical of Rabbinic Hebrew in word order and are different from Biblical Hebrew.
Read more about this topic: Song Of Songs
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“When a language creates—as it does—a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.”
—Christopher Ricks (b. 1933)
“Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)