Hebrew language Christian seminaries. The Torah (the first five books), and most of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form specifically in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, around the time of the Babylonian captivity. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as "" (), "the Holy Language", since ancient times. The modern English word "Hebrew" is derived from Old French "Ebrau", via Latin from the Greek "Ἑβραῖος" ("Hebraîos") and Aramaic "'ibrāy", all ultimately derived from Biblical Hebrew "Ibri" (), one of several names
Revival of the Hebrew language of the First Aliyah and the Second Aliyah. The first Hebrew schools were established in these settlements, Hebrew increasingly became a spoken language of daily affairs, and finally became a systematic and national language. Yet Ben-Yehuda's fame and notoriety stems from his initiation and symbolic leadership of the Hebrew revival. Ben-Yehuda's main innovation in the revival of the Hebrew language lies in his having "invented" many new words to denote objects unknown in Jewish antiquity, or which had long been forgotten in their original Hebrew usage and context. He invented words such as "ḥatzil" (חציל) for an eggplant (aubergine) and