The Torah has been translated by Jewish scholars into most of the major European languages, including English, German, Russian, French, Spanish and others. The most well-known German-language translation was produced by Samson Raphael Hirsch. A number of Jewish English Bible translations have been published, for example by Artscroll publications
Jewish translations
Torah
Torah | Jewish translations
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who is the prophet who was thrown into the sea and swallowed by the whale
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Jonah
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which sea was he swallowed in ?
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who is he ?
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A prophet in the Hebrew Bible of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BCE.
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where was he born ?
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the book you mentioned above what is it ?
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The canonical collection of Hebrew scriptures, including the Torah.
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what is the second thing you have mentioned ?
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It can most specifically mean the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
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in which language was it written in ?
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It can even mean the totality of Jewish teaching, culture, and practice, whether derived from biblical texts or later rabbinic writings.
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was it translated into jewish ?
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. A number of Jewish English Bible translations have been published, for example by Artscroll publications
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this language is spoken in which country ?
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The Torah has been translated by Jewish scholars into most of the major European languages, including English, German, Russian, French, Spanish and others. The most well-known German-language translation was produced by Samson Raphael Hirsch. A number of Jewish English Bible translations have been published, for example by Artscroll publications
Torah | Jewish translations
Many translated Bibles and prayer books from before the Holocaust were still in Yiddish, even those published in countries like the United States. A further reason is that often those Jews who study the Bible regularly still do so, to a greater or lesser extent, in its original language, as it is read in the synagogue. Even those who require translations often prefer a bilingual edition. Nevertheless, Jewish translations of the Bible to English have become far more widespread, especially since the 1980s, and have been made available in numerous complementary versions and styles.
Jewish English Bible translations | Background
Because the Torah is read in a yearly cycle in the synagogue, there are many Jewish translations of the Torah only (without Nevi'im and Ketuvim). Such a translation is sometimes called a "chumash", particularly when it is published in a bilingual Hebrew–English edition.
Jewish English Bible translations | Torah translations
For centuries Jews worldwide spoke the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branching off as independent languages. The usual course of development for these languages was through the addition of Hebrew words and phrases used to express uniquely Jewish concepts and concerns. Often they were written in Hebrew letters, including the block letters used in Hebrew today and Rashi script. Conversely, Ladino, formerly written in Rashi script or Solitreo, since the 1920s is usually written in Turkey in the Latin alphabet with a spelling similar to that of Turkish, and has been occasionally printed in the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets.
Jewish languages | Alphabets
English Bible translation has been common among Christians, particularly since the 16th-century Reformation, producing dozens of modern translations and versions in English. But equivalent translation efforts have been less widespread among Jews. This is partially due to the fact that English became a major spoken language among Jews only in the era since the Holocaust. Before then, even Jews in English-speaking countries were still part of an immigrant culture to a large extent, which meant that they could either understand the Hebrew Bible in its original language to a certain degree or, if they required a translation, were still not fully comfortable in English.
Jewish English Bible translations | Background
From the eighth century CE, the cultural language of Jews living under Islamic rule became Arabic rather than Aramaic. "Around that time, both scholars and lay people started producing translations of the Bible into Judeo-Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet." Later, by the 10th century, it became essential for a standard version of the Bible in Judeo-Arabic. The best known was produced by Saadiah (the Saadia Gaon, aka the Rasag), and continues to be in use today, "in particular among Yemenite Jewry". Rav Sa'adia produced an Arabic translation of the Torah known as "Targum Tafsir" and offered comments on Rasag's work.
Torah | Arabic
In Constantinople and Salonica Bibles were printed in Hebrew, flanked by translations into Ladino and Judaeo-Greek in Hebrew characters, for the use of the Sephardi Jews. Some later prints contained the Ladino text alone.
Bible translations into Spanish | Jewish translations
Jewish English Bible translations are English translations of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) according to the Masoretic Text, in the traditional division and order of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim. Most Jewish translations appear in bilingual editions (Hebrew–English). Jewish translations often reflect traditional Jewish exegesis of the Bible; all such translations eschew the Christological interpretations present in many non-Jewish translations. Jewish translations contain neither the books of the apocrypha nor the Christian New Testament.
Jewish English Bible translations | Introduction
Following upon the Leeser translation, and partially simultaneously with it, was the Anglo-Jewish translation by Abraham Benisch: "Jewish School and Family Bible", which was published in England in four sequential volumes from 1851 to 1861. Benisch's translation of the Torah was published in five volumes, with the Hebrew and English on facing pages. In each volume the text of the Torah is followed by "haftarot" and the Sabbath prayers.
Jewish English Bible translations | Abraham Benisch translation
Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed "lashon ha-kodesh", "the holy tongue"), the language in which most of the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the 5th century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea. By the 3rd century BCE, some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek. Others, such as in the Jewish communities of Babylonia, were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages of the Babylonian Talmud. These languages were also used by the Jews of Israel at that time. For centuries, Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to, often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages.
Jews | Languages
This translation emerged from the collaborative efforts of an interdenominational team of Jewish scholars and rabbis working together over a thirty-year period. These translators based their translation on the Masoretic Hebrew Text, and consistently strove for a faithful, idiomatic rendering of the original scriptural languages.
New Jewish Publication Society of America Tanakh | Introduction
One writer cites these examples, emphasizing Kaplan's modern translation:
Jewish English Bible translations | Living Torah and Nach
Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian exile. Jewish languages feature a syncretism of indigenous Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic with the languages of the local non-Jewish population.
Jewish languages | Introduction
Kehot Publication Society has started a translation of the Torah, and as of March 2007 has completed the books of Shemot (Exodus) and Bamidbar (Numbers). The volumes, titled "Torah Chumash Shemos" and "Torah Chumash Bemidbar", are bilingual Hebrew–English translations that include a running commentary based on Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson's interpretation of Rashi's commentary. The project is supervised by editor-in-chief Moshe Wisnefsky.
Jewish English Bible translations | Kehot Publication Society
Yiddish is the Judaeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is the Judaeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian peninsula. Due to many factors, including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world, ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities, including Judaeo-Georgian, Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Berber, Krymchak, Judaeo-Malayalam and many others, have largely fallen out of use. For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language, and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism, with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath.
Jews | Languages
Most written Jewish languages are Hebraized, meaning they use a modified version of the Hebrew alphabet. These languages, unless they already have an accepted name (i.e. Yiddish, Ladino), are prefixed with "Judeo" (e.g. Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Aramaic, Judeo-Marathi, Judeo-Malayalam, etc). Bukharan Jews spoke Bukhori, a dialect of Tajik and Mountain Jews spoke Judeo-Tat. In the early 20th century, secularism among Jews and large population shifts prompted the beginning of a shift from Jewish to non-Jewish languages. Even so, the majority of Jews in Eurasia and Africa, and many immigrants in North America and Palestine, still spoke Jewish languages. However, the Holocaust brought about a significant drop in the use of Jewish languages, especially Yiddish although it has now begun to become more prevalent.
Jewish languages | Development of Jewish varieties of languages
The English translations, by Rosenberg, include a translation of the Biblical text, Rashi's commentary, and a summary of rabbinic and modern commentaries.
Jewish English Bible translations | Judaica Press
Jewish English Bible translations are modern English Bible translations that include the books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) according to the masoretic text, and according to the traditional division and order of Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim. Jewish translations often also reflect traditional Jewish interpretations of the Bible, as opposed to the Christian understanding that is often reflected in non-Jewish translations. For example, Jewish translations translate עלמה "‘almâh" in as "young woman", while many Christian translations render the word as "virgin". While modern biblical scholarship is similar for both Christians and Jews, there are distinctive features of Jewish translations, even those created by academic scholars.
Bible translations into English | Jewish translations
Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881. It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times. Modern Hebrew is designated as the "State language" of Israel. Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people, knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora. Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature, and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century, most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars.
Jews | Languages
As a part of the Christian biblical canons, the Torah has been translated into hundreds of languages.
Torah | Christian translations
Judaica Press, an Orthodox Jewish publisher, has published a multi-volume English translation. The Judaica Press "Complete Tanach with Rashi" is a bilingual Hebrew–English translation of the Bible that includes Rashi's commentary in both Hebrew and English. The English translations were made by A. J. Rosenberg. The "Complete Tanach with Rashi" is available online. Although the Pentateuch has not been fully published in hardcopy (Genesis [in three volumes] and Exodus [in two volumes] only), Judaica Press also published a set of 24 bilingual Hebrew–English volumes of "Mikraot Gedolot" for Nevi'im and Ketuvim, published as "Books of the Prophets and Writings". As in traditional "Mikraot Gedolot", the Hebrew text includes the masoretic text, the Aramaic Targum, and several classic rabbinic commentaries.
Jewish English Bible translations | Judaica Press
The core of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, referred to by some Jews as "Lashon Hakodesh" (, "Language of Holiness"). Hebrew (and in the case of a few texts such as the Kaddish, Aramaic) remains the traditional language of Jewish religious services. Rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic are used extensively by the Orthodox for writing religious texts. Among many segments of the Haredi, Yiddish, although not used in liturgy, is used for religious purposes, such as for Torah study. In contemporary Israel, where Yiddish has virtually disappeared as a spoken language among the general public, it is cultivated and extensively used by some Haredi groups - partly in protest against Hebrew, the traditional sacred language having been "profaned" by Zionism, making it the main language of modern secular Israeli society.
Sacred language | Judaism
Some of the first translations of the Torah began during the Babylonian exile, when Aramaic became the lingua franca of the Jews. With most people speaking only Aramaic and not understanding Hebrew, the Targums were created to allow the common person to understand the Torah as it was read in ancient synagogues.
Bible translations | Aramaic Targums
Other ancient Jewish translations, such as the Aramaic Targums, conform closely to the Masoretic Text, and all medieval and modern Jewish translations are based upon the same. Christian translations also tend to be based upon the Hebrew, though some denominations prefer the Septuagint (or may cite variant readings from both). Bible translations incorporating modern textual criticism usually begin with the Masoretic Text, but also take into account possible variants from all available ancient versions.
Biblical languages | Language of the Hebrew Bible
This began sometime in the 2nd or 3rd century BC, with the first portion of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, being translated into Koine Greek. Over the next century, other books were translated (or composed) as well. This translation became known as the Septuagint and was widely used by Greek-speaking Jews, and later by Christians. It differs somewhat from the later standardized Hebrew (Masoretic Text). This translation was promoted by way of a legend that seventy separate translators all produced identical texts. The Latin Vulgate by Jerome was based upon the Hebrew for those books of the Bible preserved in the Jewish canon (as reflected in the Masoretic Text), and on the Greek text for the rest.
Biblical languages | Language of the Hebrew Bible
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Jewish News One | Language
Bible in the Jewish Tradition: Other translations:
Jewish English Bible translations | See also
The 1917 translation was felt to be outdated by the 1950s, and a new effort developed that involved cooperation between numerous Jewish scholars from a variety of denominations. The translation of the Torah was started in 1955 and completed in 1962. Nevi'im was published in 1978 and Ketuvim in 1984. The entire Tanakh was revised and published in one volume in 1985, and a bilingual Hebrew–English version appeared in 1999 (also in one volume). The translation is usually referred to as the "New JPS version", abbreviated NJPS (it has also been called the "New Jewish Version" or NJV). The translators of the New JPS version were experts in both traditional Jewish exegesis of the Bible and modern biblical scholarship.
Jewish English Bible translations | New JPS (1985)
These include the avoidance of Christological interpretations, adherence to the Masoretic Text (at least in the main body of the text, as in the new Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation) and greater use of classical Jewish exegesis. Some translations prefer names transliterated from the Hebrew, though the majority of Jewish translations use the Anglicized forms of biblical names.
Bible translations into English | Jewish translations
This Bible's translation style is comparable to the 1917 JPS Tanakh.
Jewish English Bible translations | The Holy Scriptures
In the 10th century AD Saadia Gaon wrote a "Tafsir", an Arabic translation of the Torah and some other Biblical books with a commentary. These were written in Hebrew characters (Judaeo-Arabic). Much of the commentary is lost, but the translation of the Torah and several other books has survived intact, and even serves as part of the liturgy of Yemenite Jews, who read the Torah in the synagogue with each Hebrew verse translated twice: first to the Aramaic targum and then to Saadia's "Tafsir". As the language of Saadia Gaon's translation became archaic and remote from common speech, most Jewish communities of the Arab world evolved their own translations of the Torah into their local dialects of Judaeo-Arabic.
Bible translations into Arabic | Jewish
In 1976 Mesorah Publications, an Orthodox publisher, began publishing a series of bilingual Hebrew–English books of the Bible under its ArtScroll imprint. The "ArtScroll Tanach" series includes introductions to each book and a running commentary based on classic rabbinic interpretation. The Torah volumes were collected, revised, and published in a lone Hebrew–English bilingual volume as the "Stone Edition of the Chumash" (1993) with a short commentary in English. This "Chumash" also includes haftarot, Targum, and Rashi. The whole Tanach was published as the "Stone Edition of the Tanach" (1996). The English translation in the ArtScroll series relies heavily on the interpretation of Rashi and other traditional sources and religious law.
Jewish English Bible translations | ArtScroll Tanach series
In 2001 Richard Elliott Friedman released his "Commentary on the Torah", featuring a new translation intended to "reflect more closely the words of the Hebrew" rather than "the translators' judgments of what the original Hebrew says."
Jewish English Bible translations | Richard Elliott Friedman
This translation was superseded by the JPS "Tanakh" (NJPS), which appeared in a complete form in 1985. However, the 1917 version is still widely disseminated through its appearance in the commentaries of the Soncino Books of the Bible and the Torah commentary edited by Joseph H. Hertz. Further, it has influenced many subsequent 20th century translations by drawing attention to the Jewish view of many passages.
Jewish Publication Society of America Version | Later translation
The first American Jewish English translation of the Torah, and subsequently of the entire "Tanakh", was the 19th century effort by Isaac Leeser. Leeser began with a five-volume, bilingual Hebrew–English edition of the Torah and "haftarot", "The Law of God" (Philadelphia, 1845). His translation of the entire Bible into English was completed as "The Twenty-four books of the Holy Scriptures" in 1853 (commonly called "The Leeser Bible"). In 1857 he re-issued it in a second (folio-size) edition, with abridged notes. Until the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation, the Leeser translation was the most important Jewish English translation. It was widely used in North American synagogues and reprinted in England.
Jewish English Bible translations | Isaac Leeser translation
Yemenite Jews and the Aramaic speaking Kurdish Jews are the only communities who maintain the tradition of reading the Torah in the synagogue in both Hebrew and the Aramaic Targum ("translation"). Some non-Yemenite synagogues have a specified person called a Baal Koreh, who reads from the Torah scroll when congregants are called to the Torah scroll for an aliyah, yet in Yemenite communities each person called to the Torah scroll for an aliyah reads for himself. In contrast, in Habban, children under the age of Bar Mitzvah were often given either the fifth or the sixth aliyah. Each verse of the Torah read in Hebrew is followed by the Aramaic, and sometimes an additional Arabic translation, usually chanted by a child.
Habbani Jews | Torah reading and Targum
Thus, the standard vowel marks that accompany pointed versions of the Tanakh may be more representative of the pronunciation of Middle Galilean Aramaic than of the Hebrew of earlier periods. As the Jewish diaspora was spread more thinly, Aramaic began to give way to other languages as the first language of widespread Jewish communities. Like Hebrew before it, Aramaic eventually became the language of religious scholars. The 13th-century Zohar, published in Spain, and the popular 16th-century Passover song Chad Gadya, published in Bohemia, testify to the continued importance of the language of the Talmud long after it had ceased to be the language of the people.
Judeo-Aramaic languages | Diaspora
In 1957 Joseph Gaer produced an abridged translation called "The Jewish Bible for Family Reading". Influenced by biblical source criticism and the documentary hypothesis, Gaer moved all "duplications, specifications, detailed descriptions of rituals and genealogies" to a summary in an appendix; made a separate appendix summary of the Torah's "principal laws;" and omitted "all obvious redundancies." Intended for the English reader with little or no knowledge of Hebrew, the text of "The Jewish Bible for Family Reading" is organized in brief sections with descriptive titles (such as "The Story of Creation" and "Isaac Takes a Bride") without the verse numbers that are typical of Bible translations.
Jewish English Bible translations | The Jewish Bible for Family Reading
Modern Hebrew is spoken by Israeli immigrants. Liturgical Hebrew is used as a religious or liturgical language by many of the United States' approximately 7 million Jews.
Languages of the United States | Hebrew
Jewish translations follow the Masoretic Text, and are usually published in bilingual editions with the Hebrew text facing the English translation. The translations often reflect traditional Jewish exegesis of the Bible. As translations of the Masoretic Text, Jewish translations contain neither the apocrypha nor the Christian New Testament.
Modern English Bible translations | Masoretic Text / Jewish translations
The Book of Ezra refers to translations and commentaries of the Hebrew text into Aramaic, the more commonly understood language of the time. These translations would seem to date to the 6th century BCE. The Aramaic term for "translation" is "Targum". The Encyclopedia Judaica has: At an early period, it was customary to translate the Hebrew text into the vernacular at the time of the reading (e.g., in Palestine and Babylon the translation was into Aramaic). The targum ("translation") was done by a special synagogue official, called the meturgeman ... Eventually, the practice of translating into the vernacular was discontinued.
Torah | Aramaic
The New Jewish Publication Society translation of the Hebrew Bible is the second translation published by the Jewish Publication Society (JPS), superseding its 1917 translation. It is a completely fresh translation into modern English, independent of the earlier translation or any other existing one. Current editions of this version refer to it as "The Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation." Originally known by the abbreviation “NJV” (New Jewish Version), it is now styled as “NJPS.” The translation follows the Hebrew or Masoretic text scrupulously, taking a conservative approach regarding conjectural emendations: It avoids them completely for the Torah, but mentions them occasionally in footnotes for Nevi'im and Ketuvim.
New Jewish Publication Society of America Tanakh | History
Even though the majority of Israeli Jews are native Hebrew speakers, many Jewish immigrants still continue to speak their former languages—many immigrants from the Soviet Union continue to speak primarily Russian at home and many immigrants from Ethiopia continue to speak primarily Amharic at home.
Israeli Jews | Language
Moses Mendelssohn (a.k.a. Moses ben Menahem-Mendel and Moses Dessau; 1729–86) translated part of the Torah into German, which was published in Amsterdam in 1778. The translation was honored by some Jews and Protestants, while some Jews banned it. The whole Pentateuch and Psalms was published in 1783, and was appreciated even in Christian circles. His version of the Song of Solomon was posthumously published in 1788.
Bible translations into German | Mendelssohn
Many ancient and distinct Jewish languages, including Judaeo-Georgian, Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Berber, Krymchak , Judeo-Italian, Judeo-Malayalam have largely fallen out of use due to the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry, the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, the assimilation policies of Israel in its early days and other factors. Yiddish was the language spoken by the largest number of Jews in the 1850s, but today the three most commonly spoken languages among Jews are English, modern Hebrew, and Russian—in that order.. Yiddish, as well as several other Jewish languages, has contributed to the vocabulary of coterritorial non-Jewish languages, such as English or French.
Jewish languages | Status
Many Israeli immigrants and expatriates have at least some understanding of the language in addition to Hebrew, and many of the descendants of the great migration of Ashkenazi Jews of the past century pepper their mostly English vocabulary with some loan words. Furthermore, it is a lingua franca among Orthodox Jewry (particularly Hasidic Jewry), concentrated in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York.
Languages of the United States | Yiddish
There are numerous Biblical translations in Yiddish because it constituted the very beginning of its literature along with other the religious texts such as the Talmud. Scholars explained that this can be attributed to the fact that the Bible is a popular book among the Jewish communities in Germany and surrounding European countries and it was also a reference for the early education of young Jews there. There were different translation style such as the so-called Ashkenazi literary tradition, more popularly known as "taytsh-khumesh", which translated the Bible literally. Here, the words in the Hebrew original were translated into their Yiddish counterparts.
Bible translations into Yiddish | Translations
Jewish languages are generally defined as the unique linguistic varieties of Jewish communities in the diaspora in their contact with surrounding non-Jewish languages. Languages vary in their distance and divergence from their non-Jewish sister languages. For example, Judeo-Yemeni Arabic is quite similar to some non-Jewish varieties of Yemeni Arabic, while Yiddish, a Germanic language, shows a high degree of dissimilarity to modern German dialects. Due to continued liturgical and literary use of Hebrew and Aramaic, Jewish communities were naturally in a state of diglossia. Along with their vernacular Jewish language, most Jews could read and write in Hebrew, which was necessary to fulfill the religious commandment to learn Torah and teach it.
Jewish languages | Classification
Some critics have said that this approach sometimes results in an English rendering that is as much an explanation as it is a translation. In this regard, one critic likened the ArtScroll volumes to "non-literal" targumim, which interpreted as well as translated the Bible.
Jewish English Bible translations | ArtScroll Tanach series
A small number of Israeli Jews, particularly those originating from Iraq and, to a lesser degree, Iran and eastern Turkey, still speak Eastern Aramaic, but it is largely being eroded by Hebrew, especially within the Israeli-born generations.
Arameans | Language
This development was furthered by the fact that the largest Jewish community of the world lived in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Many of these diaspora Jews would have Greek as their first language, and first the Torah and then other Jewish scriptures (later the Christian "Old Testament") were therefore translated into standard Koine Greek, i.e. the Septuagint. Currently, 1,600 Jewish epitaphs (funerary inscriptions) are extant from ancient Palestine dating from 300 B.C. to 500 A.D. Approximately 70 percent are in Greek, about 12 percent are in Latin, and only 18 percent are in Hebrew or Aramaic. "In Jerusalem itself about 40 percent of the Jewish inscriptions from the first century period (before 70 C.E.) are in Greek.
Language of the New Testament | Languages used in ancient Judea
Those languages were Jewish dialects of local languages, including Judaeo-Spanish (also called "Judezmo" and "Ladino"), Yiddish, Judeo-Arabic and Bukhori (Tajiki), or local languages spoken in the Jewish diaspora such as Russian, Persian and Arabic. The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals along the 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New words and expressions were adapted as neologisms from the large corpus of Hebrew writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda) and older Aramaic and Latin. Many new words were either borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially English, Russian, German, and French.
Hebrew language | Revival
After the 2nd century CE when the Roman Empire exiled most of the Jewish population of Jerusalem following the Bar Kokhba revolt, they adapted to the societies in which they found themselves, yet letters, contracts, commerce, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry and laws continued to be written mostly in Hebrew, which adapted by borrowing and inventing terms.
Hebrew language | Mishnah and Talmud
As part of the Christian mission to Jews the Greek New Testament has been translated into Hebrew several times since the 19th century. These versions sometimes exist in bilingual editions. These Christian versions generally use the Hebrew word "Meshiẖiyyim" ("Messianics") for Greek , "Khristianoi" ("Christians") in the text in preference to the Talmudic term , "Notsrim" ("Nazarenes"). The majority of these versions use the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) when citing quotations from the Hebrew Bible, although this does not mean that Hebrew-speaking Christians necessarily pronounce aloud the name as "Yahweh", any more than Hebrew-speaking Jews, and may read as "Adonai" or "HaShem."
Bible translations into Hebrew | Christian translations
A traditional translation of this kind is known as a "sharħ" (plural "shurūħ"), from the Arabic word for "explanation". These translations were generally used for teaching purposes rather than in the synagogue, and many of them were printed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Bible translations into Arabic | Jewish
Aramaic is a Semitic language subfamily. Specific varieties of Aramaic are identified as "Jewish languages" since they are the languages of major Jewish texts such as the Talmud and "Zohar", and many ritual recitations such as the Kaddish. Traditionally, Aramaic has been a language of Talmudic debate in yeshivot, as many rabbinic texts are written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. The current Hebrew alphabet, known as "Assyrian lettering" or "the square script", was in fact borrowed from Aramaic. In Kurdistan, the language of the Mizrahim is a variant of Aramaic. As spoken by the Kurdish Jews, Judeo-Aramaic languages are Neo-Aramaic languages descended from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic.
Mizrahi Jews | Aramaic
In Rabbi Culi's time, many individuals in Turkey were not sufficiently fluent in the Hebrew language to study the Torah and its commentaries in the original. Rabbi Culi thus undertook the "colossal task" of writing a compendium of the major fields of Torah study. The commentary was to be user-friendly and was thus written in Ladino or Judaeo-Spanish, the Jewish language spoken by the Sephardic Jews in Turkey. The book was divided according to the weekly Torah portion ("Parashat hashevua"); Rabbi Culi explains each chapter in detail according to the Midrash and Talmud, as well as discussing the relevant "Halacha" as based on the "Shulchan Aruch" and "Mishneh Torah".
Me'am Lo'ez | Content
In 1845, Leeser published his own Hebrew-English edition of the "Torah" in five volumes. It was the first such translation in the United States, and became the standard Bible for English-speaking Jews during the nineteenth century.
Isaac Leeser | Publisher
Medieval Spanish Jews had a tradition of oral translation of Biblical readings into Spanish, and several manuscript translations were made, either for Jewish use or for Christian patrons, for example the 1430 Alba Bible. However, restrictions were placed on the private ownership of Spanish translations of the Bible, partly as a measure against Protestantism and partly for fear that crypto-Jews would use them as a resource for learning Jewish practices. Following the expulsion of Jews from Spain, the refugees took these versions with them. In 1553 a printed version, known as the Ferrara Bible, was made in Latin characters for Duke Ercole II d'Este of Ferrara.
Bible translations into Spanish | Jewish translations
The Hebrew Bible comprises the Torah (the five books of Moses), the Neviim (the books of the Prophets), and the Ketuvim (the "Writings"). Judaism has traditionally held that, along with the Torah, referred to as the "Written Torah", God revealed a series of instructions on how to interpret and apply the Torah. The additional instructions were known as the Oral Torah. By the second century CE Jewish sages began writing down interpretations of the Bible; Orthodox Jews consider these writings to embody the "oral law." These writings take several forms:
Names for books of Judeo-Christian scripture | Judaism
This is used in the translations made by the Ibn Tibbon family. (Original Jewish philosophical works were usually written in Arabic.) Another important influence was Maimonides, who developed a simple style based on Mishnaic Hebrew for use in his law code, the Mishneh Torah. Subsequent rabbinic literature is written in a blend between this style and the Aramaized Rabbinic Hebrew of the Talmud.
Hebrew language | Medieval Hebrew
Among the most widely spoken Jewish languages to develop in the diaspora are Yiddish, Ladino, and the Judæo-Arabic group of languages. Yiddish is the Judeo-German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who lived in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Ladino, also called "Judezmo" and "Muestra Spanyol", is the Judeo-Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who lived in the Iberian peninsula before the Spanish inquisition. Judeo-Catalan (also called "Catalanic" or "Qatalanit"), was the Jewish language spoken by the Jewish communities in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. Judeo-Provençal (or "Shuadit") was the Occitan language as it was historically spoken by French Jews although it was not a distinct language, and was indistinguishable from the Occitan spoken by non-Jews.
Jewish languages | Status
Hebrew has always been used as the language of prayer and study, and the following pronunciation systems are found. Ashkenazi Hebrew, originating in Central and Eastern Europe, is still widely used in Ashkenazi Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad, particularly in the Haredi and other Orthodox communities. It was influenced by the Yiddish language. Sephardi Hebrew is the traditional pronunciation of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews and Sephardi Jews in the countries of the former Ottoman Empire, with the exception of Yemenite Hebrew. This pronunciation, in the form used by the Jerusalem Sephardic community, is the basis of the Hebrew phonology of Israeli native speakers.
Hebrew language | Liturgical use in Judaism
The large Jewish diaspora in the Second Temple period made use of vernacular translations of the Hebrew Bible; including the Aramaic Targum and Greek Septuagint. Though there is no certain evidence of a pre-Christian Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible, some scholars have suggested that Jewish congregations in Rome and the Western part of the Roman Empire may have used Latin translations of fragments of the Hebrew Bible.
Bible translations into Latin | Pre-Christian Latin translations
The kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BCE, and the kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, its higher classes exiled and the first Temple destroyed. Aramaic became the primary language of the Jews deported to Babylonia, with the first attestations of Jewish/Judean Aramaic found in scrolls from the 5th century BCE on the island of Elephantine. Later the Persians made Judah a province and permitted Jewish exiles to return and rebuild the Temple. Aramaic became the common language in the north of Israel, in Galilee and Samaria, though Hebrew remained in use in Judah with Aramaic influence.
Jewish languages | Ancient history
Exodus 20:7–9a (8-10a): is variously translated:
Jewish English Bible translations | An example verse
Though an Ashkenazi Jew in the Russian Empire, the Zionist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda based his Standard Hebrew on Sephardi Hebrew, originally spoken in Spain, and therefore recommended an alveolar . However, just like him, the first waves of Jews to resettle in the Holy Land were Ashkenazi, and Standard Hebrew would come to be spoken with their native pronunciation. Consequently, by now nearly all Israeli Jews pronounce the consonant ר "rêš" as a uvular approximant ()., which also exists in Yiddish. Many Jewish immigrants to Israel spoke a variety of Arabic in their countries of origin, and pronounced the Hebrew rhotic consonant as an alveolar trill, identical to Arabic "", and which followed the conventions of old Hebrew.
Modern Hebrew phonology | Pronunciation of
Judeo-Tat or Juhuri ("çuhuri", , ) is the traditional language of the Mountain Jews of the eastern Caucasus Mountains, especially Azerbaijan and Dagestan, now mainly spoken in Israel. The language is a form of Persian which belongs to the southwestern group of the Iranian division of the Indo-European languages. The Tat language is spoken by the Muslim Tats of Azerbaijan, a group to which the Mountain Jews were mistakenly considered to belong during the era of Soviet historiography though the languages probably originated in the same region of the Persian empire. The words "Juvuri" and "Juvuro" literally translate as "Jewish" and "Jews".
Judeo-Tat | Introduction
The Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh in Judaism which forms the Christian Old Testament (although with order rearranged and some books split into two), was written in Biblical Hebrew, though a few chapters were written in Biblical Aramaic. Deuterocanonical books added to the Old Testament of some non-Protestant Christian Bibles are variously written in Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, with possible Aramaic undertones, as was the first translation of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint or Greek Old Testament. Therefore, Hebrew, Greek and sometimes Aramaic continue to be taught in most universities, colleges and seminaries with strong programs in biblical studies.
Biblical studies | Original languages
Inscriptions in Greek and Latin set up by Jews attest to Jewish bi- or multilingualism, and their distribution in the Empire reflects the Jewish diaspora. These may have the Hebrew tag "shalom" at the end. Evidence for Jews in Egypt is preserved by papyri until the Jewish revolt of 116–117. In the first half of the 5th century, Greek coexisted with Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic in the Jewish communities of Palaestina Prima and Secunda, and is found in mosaic inscriptions even in synagogues. Like the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that predated the Imperial era, Jewish literature in Greek under the Empire was written mainly for Jews who spoke Greek.
Languages of the Roman Empire | Jewish diaspora
The encoded message from the author is that a Jew never stops learning Torah — when one finishes, one must start anew again. This message was appropriately chosen for Shavuot, since this holiday commemorates the Jews accepting the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. The language of the poem is Aramaic, – "terse, difficult Aramaic" —or even "never intelligible". Some prayerbooks, especially those intended for use in Israel, provide a running translation from the now arcane Aramaic into Hebrew.
Akdamut | Structure
(Final is occasionally heard as "d".)
Spanish and Portuguese Jews | Hebrew
Secular literature and theater in Yiddish largely began in the 19th century and was in decline by the middle of the 20th century. The revival of Hebrew beyond its use in the liturgy is largely an early 20th-century phenomenon, and is closely associated with Zionism. Apart from the use of Hebrew in Israel, whether a Jewish community will speak a Jewish or non-Jewish language as its main vehicle of discourse is generally dependent on how isolated or assimilated that community is. For example, the Jews in the shtetls of Poland and the Lower East Side of New York during the early 20th century spoke Yiddish at most times, while assimilated Jews in 19th and early 20th-century Germany spoke German, and American-born Jews in the United States speak English.
Jewish culture | Literature and poetry
The Hebrew Bible is composed of three parts; the Torah (Instruction, the Septuagint translated the Hebrew to "nomos" or "Law"), the Nevi'im (Prophets) and the Ketuvim (Writings). Collectively, these are known as the Tanakh. According to Rabbinic Judaism the Torah was revealed by God to Moses; within it, Jews find 613 Mitzvot (commandments). Rabbinic tradition asserts that God revealed two Torahs to Moses, one that was written down, and one that was transmitted orally. Whereas the written Torah has a fixed form, the Oral Torah is a living tradition that includes not only specific supplements to the written Torah (for instance, what is the proper manner of "shechita" and what is meant by "Frontlets" in the Shema), but also procedures for understanding and talking about the written Torah (thus, the Oral Torah revealed at Sinai includes debates among rabbis who lived long after Moses).
Christianity and Judaism | Sacred texts
According to Jewish law, a Torah is invalid for public reading if even a single letter is incorrect or misplaced, for Jewish law considers each letter as indispensable. In 1525, in Venice, Jacob Ben-Hayim, editor of the second edition of the Mikraot Gedolot, took it upon himself to fix grammatical errors in the Hebrew Bible. Ben-Hayim's version unified Judaism's varying texts and commentaries on the Bible under one umbrella, and it is this version that has remained the standard version used by generations to this day. However, Ben-Hayim had to rely on inferior manuscripts and commentaries, which caused numerous inaccuracies to appear in his version, and these were only magnified in subsequent editions.
Menachem Cohen (scholar) | Background
Bible translations into Hebrew primarily refers to translations of the New Testament of the Christian Bible into the Hebrew language, from the original Koine Greek or an intermediate translation. There is less need to translate the Jewish Tanakh (or Christian Old Testament) from the original Biblical Hebrew, because it is closely intelligible to Modern Hebrew speakers. There are more translations of the small number of Tanakh passages preserved in the more distantly related biblical Aramaic language. There are also Hebrew translations of Biblical apocrypha.
Bible translations into Hebrew | Introduction
Most American Jews today are native English speakers. A variety of other languages are still spoken within some American Jewish communities, communities that are representative of the various Jewish ethnic divisions from around the world that have come together to make up America's Jewish population. Many of America's Hasidic Jews, being exclusively of Ashkenazi descent, are raised speaking Yiddish. Yiddish was once spoken as the primary language by most of the several million Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to the United States. It was, in fact, the original language in which "The Forward" was published. Yiddish has had an influence on American English, and words borrowed from it include "chutzpah" ("effrontery", "gall"), "nosh" ("snack"), "schlep" ("drag"), "schmuck" ("an obnoxious, contemptible person", euphemism for "penis"), and, depending on idiolect, hundreds of other terms.
American Jews | Language
The Jews who lived in Egypt had originally immigrated from the Southern Levant. The Jews absorbed Greek, the dominant language of Egypt at the time, and heavily mixed it with Hebrew. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures, appeared and was written by seventy Jewish Translators who were compelled to create the translation by Ptolemy II. That is confirmed by historian Flavius Josephus, who writes that Ptolemy, desirous to collect every book in the habitable earth, applied Demetrius Phalereus to the task of organizing an effort with the Jewish high priests to translate the Jewish books of the Law for his library.
Ptolemaic Kingdom | Jews
The main language used for communication among Israeli citizens and among the Israeli Jews is Modern Hebrew, a language that emerged in the late 19th century, based on different dialects of ancient Hebrew and influenced by Yiddish, Arabic, Slavic languages, and German. Hebrew and Arabic are currently official languages of Israel. Government ministries publish all material intended for the public in Hebrew, with selected material translated into Arabic, English, Russian, and other languages spoken in Israel. The country's laws are published in Hebrew, and eventually English and Arabic translations are published. Publishing the law in Hebrew in the official gazette ("Reshumot") is enough to make it valid.
Israeli Jews | Hebrew language in Israel
(This problem is illustrated in the list of English words of Yiddish origin.)
Jewish English languages | Introduction
Jews in Arabic, Muslim majority countries wrote—sometimes in their dialects, sometimes in a more classical style—in a mildly adapted Hebrew alphabet rather than using the Arabic script, often including consonant dots from the Arabic alphabet to accommodate phonemes that did not exist in the Hebrew alphabet. Some of the most important books of medieval Jewish thought were originally written in medieval Judeo-Arabic, as well as certain halakhic works and biblical commentaries. Later they were translated into medieval Hebrew so that they could be read by contemporaries elsewhere in the Jewish world, and by others who were literate in Hebrew. These include: Most communities also had a traditional translation of the Bible into Judeo-Arabic, known as a "sharḥ" ("explanation"): for more detail, see Bible translations into Arabic.
Judeo-Arabic dialects | History
Judæo-Golpaygani was a language spoken by the Jewish community living in Golpaygan, in western Isfahan, western Iran. The first records of Jewish communities in this region date to approximately 750 BC. Like most Jewish languages, Judæo-Golpaygani was written using Hebrew characters , and contained many Hebrew loanwords. Following the decline and consolidation of the Persian Jewish community in the mid-20th century, Judæo-Golpaygani fell into disuse, being replaced by Dzhidi, Judæo-Hamedani, and Persian, among those speakers remaining in Iran, and by English and Hebrew by those emigrating to the United States and Israel.
Judeo-Golpaygani language | Introduction
A small number of Romaniote Jews in the United States, Israel, Greece, and Turkey have some knowledge of the Judaeo-Greek language. The language is highly endangered and could completely die out. There are no preservation programs to promote or to revive the language. In 1987, there were 35 speakers left in Israel, the majority located in Jerusalem. This population may have died out. , a few elderly Jews in Ioannina, Greece still speak the language.
Yevanic language | Geographical distribution
The translation attempts in all cases to present the original meaning of the text in a highly aesthetic form. The translation is not a word-for-word translation and is described by its publisher as being "in the spirit of Saadia".
Jewish English Bible translations | New JPS (1985)
The Hebrew Bible was translated from Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic into Jewish Koine Greek; the Targum translations into Aramaic were also generated during this era, both due to the decline of knowledge of Hebrew. Jews based their faith and religious practice on the Torah, five books said to have been given by God to Moses. The three prominent religious parties were the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Sadducees. Together these parties represented only a small fraction of the population. Most Jews looked forward to a time that God would deliver them from their pagan rulers, possibly through war against the Romans.
Jesus | Judea and Galilee in the 1st century
Hebrew ceased to be an everyday spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and immigrants. Hebrew survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce and poetry. With the rise of national consciousness among Jews in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, becoming the main language of the Yishuv and subsequently of the State of Israel. According to "Ethnologue", in 1998, Hebrew was the language of five million people worldwide.
Hebrew language | Introduction
The translations of the Jewish Publication Society of America (JPS) have become the most popular English translations of the Hebrew Bible. JPS has published two such translations.
Jewish English Bible translations | Jewish Publication Society translations
According to Rabbinic Judaism, the Oral Torah () was given to Moses with the Torah at Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb as an exposition to the latter. The accumulated traditions of the Oral Law, expounded by scholars in each generation from Moses onward, is considered as the necessary basis for the interpretation, and often for the reading, of the Written Law. Jews sometimes refer to this as the Masorah (Hebrew: ), roughly translated as tradition, though that word is often used in a narrower sense to mean traditions concerning the editing and reading of the Biblical text (see Masoretic Text).
Mishnah | The Mishnah and the Hebrew Bible
Agnon's writing often used words and phrases that differed from what would become established modern Hebrew. His distinct language is based on traditional Jewish sources, such as the Torah and the Prophets, Midrashic literature, the Mishnah, and other Rabbinic literature. Some examples include: Bar-Ilan University has made a computerized concordance of his works in order to study his language.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon | Language
The English word Jew derives via the Anglo-French "Iuw" from the Old French forms "Giu" and "Juieu", which had elided (dropped) the letter "d" from the Medieval Latin form "Iudaeus", which, like the Greek "Ioudaioi" it derives from, meant both Jews and Judeans / "of Judea". However, most other European languages retained the letter "d" in the word for Jew; e.g. Danish and Norwegian "jøde", Dutch "jood", German "Jude", Italian "giudeo", Spanish "judío" etc. The distinction of translation of "Yehudim" in Biblical Hebrew between "Judeans", and "Jews" is relevant in English translations of the Bible.
Ioudaios | Language comparison
Jews were expected to also have knowledge of Judeo-Aramaic, the language of religious commentary ("targumim") as well as many prayers, including the Kaddish. Hebrew, the "Holy Tongue", was the highest linguistic register in these communities, used for liturgy and study. Hebrew-Aramaic is the only adstratum shared by all Jewish languages. Some Jewish languages have multiple registers; for example, both Yiddish and Judezmo have three linguistic registers: colloquial, written, and scholarly-liturgical. Some Jewish languages show the effects of the history of language shift among the speakers, including Hebrew-Aramaic influence. Yiddish exemplifies such a language. Some Jewish languages may become marked as distinctively Jewish because some shift affected some parts of the language as a whole.
Jewish languages | Classification
Lishan Didan is called 'Jewish Azerbaijani Neo-Aramaic' by most scholars. Its speakers lived in Northern Iran in the townships of Northern Iranian Azerbaijan (specifically Urmia, official name Rizaiye and Salamas, official name Shahpur). Lishan Didan, translated as 'our language' is often confused with a similar language called Lishanid Noshan (which is also referred to as Lishan Didan). The term targum is often used to describe the two different languages called Lishan Didan, as it is a traditional and common term for the Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects. Another Lishan Didan language is called Manuscript Barzani or Barzani Jewish Neo-Aramaic. Manuscript Barzani was spoken in a community in Iraqi Kurdistan of the Rewanduz/Arbel region.
Lishán Didán | Jewish Languages
Jews in Syria had distinctive dialects of Judaeo-Arabic. They are not known to have any current speakers. Syrian Jews had a distinctive traditional sharḥ (translation of the Bible into Syrian Judaeo-Arabic), which was used in teaching children, though not for any liturgical purpose. One version of this was printed in about 1900: another (from the so-called Avishur Manuscript) was printed by the "Merkaz Olami le-Moreshet Yahadut Aram Tsoba" in 2006, with pages of translation facing pages from the "Jerusalem Crown". This print contains the Torah only, but volumes for the rest of the Bible are planned. Many Syrian Jews have the custom of reciting each paragraph of the Passover Haggadah first in Hebrew and then in Judaeo-Arabic.
Syrian Jews | Judaeo-Arabic dialect
About a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew fell into disuse as a spoken language. The later section of the Talmud, the Gemara, generally comments on the Mishnah and Baraitot in two forms of Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew survived as a liturgical and literary language in the form of later Amoraic Hebrew, which sometimes occurs in the text of the Gemara. Hebrew was always regarded as the language of Israel's religion, history and national pride, and after it faded as a spoken language, it continued to be used as a "lingua franca" among scholars and Jews traveling in foreign countries.
Hebrew language | Mishnah and Talmud
The "Me'am Loez" quickly became extremely popular in the Jewish communities of Turkey, Spain, Morocco and Egypt. With the decline of Ladino after the Holocaust, various translations were produced, and the work can still be found in many Orthodox synagogues to this day. In 1967, a Hebrew translation, "Yalkut Me'am Lo'ez", was produced by Rabbi Shmuel Kravitzer. The first English translation, the "Torah Anthology", was written (primarily) by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan. This translation made use of both Yerushalmi's Hebrew translation as well as Ladino manuscripts—which Kaplan checked against Yerushalmi's translation. The resulting work introduced Me'am Lo'ez to the broader Ashkenazi world.
Me'am Lo'ez | Translations
The Hebrew Bible (i.e. the Jewish "Tanakh" or Christian Old Testament) is almost entirely in Classical (or Biblical) Hebrew. However, there are some significant sections in Biblical Aramaic: about a third of the Book of Daniel and several quoted royal letters and edicts in the Book of Ezra. These are written in the same square-script as the Hebrew parts, and many readers of the Bible in Hebrew are sufficiently familiar with Aramaic as not to require translation for them. Nevertheless, numerous Hebrew translations and paraphrases for these Aramaic parts have been written from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Bible translations into Hebrew | Hebrew Bible
In Hebrew, the classical pronunciation associated with the consonant ' was tapped , and was grammatically treated as an ungeminable phoneme of the language. In most dialects of Hebrew among the Jewish diaspora, it remained a tap or a trill . However, in some Ashkenazi dialects as preserved among Jews in northern Europe it was a uvular rhotic, either a trill or a fricative . This was because many (but not all) native dialects of Yiddish were spoken that way, and their liturgical Hebrew carried the same pronunciation. Some Iraqi Jews also pronounce ' as a guttural , reflecting their dialect of Arabic.
Guttural R | Hebrew
Moreover, in these circles Yiddish is associated with the memory of the great Torah sages of Eastern Europe, who spoke it and whose communities were destroyed in the Holocaust. Among the Sephardim Ladino, a calque of Hebrew or Aramaic syntax and Castilian words, was used for sacred translations such as the Ferrara Bible. It was also used during the Sephardi liturgy. Note that the name "Ladino" is also used for Judeo-Spanish, a dialect of Castilian used by Sephardim as an everyday language until the 20th century.
Sacred language | Judaism
The Septuagint (reputedly a product of Hellenistic Jewish scholarship) and other Greek documents translated , "Yehudi" and the Aramaic "" using the Koine Greek term "Ioudaios" (; pl. "Ioudaioi"), which had lost the 'h' sound. The Latin term, following the Greek version, is "Iudaeus", and from these sources the term passed to other European languages. The Old French "giu", earlier "juieu", had elided (dropped) the letter "d" from the Latin "Iudaeus". The Middle English word "Jew" derives from Old English where the word is attested as early as 1000 in various forms, such as "Iudeas", "Gyu", "Giu", "Iuu", "Iuw", "Iew".
Jew (word) | Development in European languages
The literary register of the dialect has some differences in vocabulary, e.g. ʼāhu for ʼāwa 'he', ʼāhi for ʼāya 'she', məskenūθa for faqirūθa 'poverty'. A secret register called "lišanəd ṭəšwa" was used to make speech unintelligible to adjacent Muslims and Christians. This involved using a special set of 'cryptic' words to replace their regular counterparts.
Betanure Jewish Neo-Aramaic | Registers