Revelations Lexicon

Historians and linguists generally agree that Sumerian over 5100 years old; Akkadian 4000 years; and ancient Egyptian 6000 years, are the oldest Semitic languages with a clear written record. All three are extinct,

Of course, languages were spoken before being written, so languages we know at times like Minoan; Hattic; Hurrian; Canaanite, and Amorite were all spoken before Sumerian was first written, even if they were all documented after Sumerian.

According to the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures – West Asia & North Africa, Hittite (also known as Nesite) dating back 4700 years ago, is the oldest Indo-European language known to-date, even older than Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit. As an Indo-European language, it is related to modern-day languages like English: the Hittite word for “water” is watar!

Archibald Henry Sayce FRAS (1845–1933) a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist at University of Oxford, concluded that the Hittite hieroglyphic system was predominantly syllabary, that is, its symbols stood for a phonetic syllables.

Ancient Greek was spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since around 3400 years ago, or possibly earlier.

Aramaic is a language that is 3100 years old, or even more. Words are made up from the 22 characters of the Aramaic alphabet. It is part of the so called the Semitic languages encompassing, Hebrew; Arabic and many other languages. There is no evidence that the Semitic and Indo-european families are related.

The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back up to 4000 years. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around 3618 years ago, during the time of the Babylonian captivity.

3800 years ago Aramaic became accepted by the Assyrians as a second language.

Hebrew and Aramaic are not the same, though they are very closely related. Hebrew and Aramaic evolved around the same time and in the same region of the world, but Aramaic likely came first, and can be written in the Hebrew script but also has its own.

Except for a few passages in Aramaic, appearing mainly in the apocalyptic “Book of Daniel,” these scriptures were written originally in Paleo-Hebrew around 2700 years ago. Biblical Hebrew probably reached its current form about 1600 years ago.

Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages. Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Among the Jews, Aramaic was used by common people, while Hebrew remained the language of religion, government and of the upper class.

Ancient Egyptians spoke Egyptian, which is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Moses was educated in Egyptian but somehow was fluent in both Hebrew/Aramaic and Egyptian as allegedly was his brother Aaron.

Old Arabic was approximately 3000 years old, Nabatean Arabic around 2500 years ago. Historians believe that the Arabic language came from Arabian Peninsula. Old Arabic was the beginning of Arabic dialects. Safaitic dialect is the earliest dialect in old Arabic, which the Syro-Arabian desert nomadic tribes used.

According to Muslim tradition, revelations that form the Holy Quran scriptures of Islam were in classical Arabic, starting some 1600 years ago…

?

Food for thought!