The purpose of this brief treatment is to distinguish some of the different stages of the Hebrew language. By 'Hebrew Nomenclature' I mean to distinguish what I mean by 'Hebrew', or 'Biblical Hebrew', or 'Ancient Hebrew', ect...

In Eduard Y. Kutscher's "History of the Hebrew Language" he mentions that many words were invented in Hebrew durring the late Middle Ages because the original nature of word formation had been forgotten.

Modern Hebrew:
In the formation of Modern Hebrew scholars had a difficult task, they were supposed to introduce some of the old forms back into Hebrew. Modern Hebrew replaced Israeli Hebrew. An old man that I talked to said that he learned Israeli Hebrew when he was in school and that Modern Hebrew is a different language today. In the formation of Modern Hebrew the Hebrew lexicologists assigned to the task chose the Safardic Spanish five vowel system and they chose the Arabic style of pronouncing consonants since that is believed to be accurate to the original pronunciation of consonants of Semitic. Also Modern Hebrew grammar is not based on Ancient Hebrew grammar. MH lacks prefixes and many of the suffixes of AH. In AH prepositions and conjunctions are prefixes, pronouns and some auxiliary verbs are suffixes, and to change the grammatical case of a word you either add a suffix or a Y or U (Vav) infix.

Biblical Hebrew Language:
Biblical Hebrew is the language of the Old Testament, the way we think that language was, and sometimes it is called Ancient Hebrew. The Masoretic scribes indicated how to vocalize that language 1000 years ago so we have a good idea how it was pronounced and there are even some numerous manuscripts which give epigraphic evidence of the development of the various vocalization systems (Palestinian, Tiberian, Babylonian). But that is not the way that language was pronounced in the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Neither is that the way Hebrew was pronounced when Jewish people spoke Greek 2000 years ago. We have evidence of vocalization from Hebrew-Greek transliterations. Hebrew pronunciation was different 3000 years ago and 4000 years ago.

But the Old Testament is written in Ancient Hebrew without the Masoretic vocalization. I prefer to think of the Hebrew of 1000 years ago as 'Classical Hebrew' which is the reference point for scholars of Hebrew, the basis or foundation of all subsequent Hebrew languages. The question is weather 'Biblical Hebrew' is 'Classical Hebrew' or 'Ancient Hebrew'? If Biblical Hebrew was written 1000 years ago then Classical Hebrew would be Biblical Hebrew, but Biblical Hebrew was written long ago, so Biblical Hebrew is Ancient Hebrew. And it does not require Masoretic vocalization to prove what grammatical class or semantic class a given word fits into. Therefore Ancient Hebrew must be deciphered from the Old Testament.

The Old Testament has Classical Hebrew and Ancient Hebrew depending on how it is read. In the Classical Hebrew system there is heavy reliance on the Masoretic vocalization and so there is a loss of understanding of some of the suffixes and at least two of the prefixes are misunderstood. Many word meanings are not understood. Also some of the letters have their phonetic values misunderstood. Moreover the Masoretic vocalization indicated by the devised vowel letters do not seem to be related to the original vocalization. And there is a great lack of understanding of the original nature of word formation. I have certainty in my understanding of the nature of word formation, but the Masoretic vocalization does not correspond to it. Much has been discovered about the original nature of vocalization, but there is still a long way to go.