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 language to express psychological realism and interiority for the first time. As Hebrew poets and writers began arriving in Palestine armed with the new literary language, they exerted a certain amount of influence on the development of spoken Hebrew as well. Jewish communities with different colloquial languages had used Hebrew to communicate with each other across Europe and the Near East since the Middle Ages. As Jews in Palestine spoke a variety of languages such as Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish, and French, inter-communal affairs that required verbal communication were handled in a modified form of Medieval Hebrew. Hebrew was used by