Medieval Hebrew Medieval Hebrew Medieval Hebrew was a literary and liturgical language that existed between the 4th and 18th century. It was not commonly used as a spoken language, but mainly in written form by rabbis, scholars and poets. Medieval Hebrew had many features that distinguished it from older forms of Hebrew. These affected grammar, syntax, sentence structure, and also included a wide variety of new lexical items, which were either based on older forms or borrowed from other languages, especially Aramaic, Greek and Latin. In the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, important work was done by grammarians
Mishnaic Hebrew Biblical Hebrew as preserved after the Babylonian captivity, and definitively recorded by Jewish sages in writing the Mishnah and other contemporary documents. It was not used by the Samaritans, who preserved their own form of Hebrew, Samaritan Hebrew. A transitional form of the language occurs in the other works of Tannaitic literature dating from the century beginning with the completion of the Mishnah. These include the halachic Midrashim (Sifra, Sifre, Mechilta etc.) and the expanded collection of Mishnah-related material known as the Tosefta. The Talmud contains excerpts from these works, as well as further Tannaitic material not attested elsewhere; the