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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

Hebrew, at least as far as instances of Hebrew writing, is _much_ older than Arabic. There are 3,000 year old Hebrew Inscriptions ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zayit_Stone ). The Zayit stone was found 31 miles south west of Jerusalem and its dated as 10th century BCE.

Also see: https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-older-Hebrew-or-Arab...

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That's because Hebrew died out for over a thousand years and is now a revived dead language. The lack of a vulgar dialect prevented it from changing, similar to how Latin has not changed since native vulgar speakers died out (or rather, their dialects became so distinct that they are now considered different languages e.g. Romanian).

Hebrew never "died." That is revisionist propaganda. People have been continuously speaking Hebrew in Jerusalem, Judea, Sumeria, and nearby in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Gaza for the past 3,000 years, as well as using it for prayer and study while in exile.

Source? Obviously people have been speaking Hebrew all over the world as part of prayer and study, nobody would dispute that. But to my knowledge nobody was using Hebrew as a day-to-day language until Zionism became popular in the late 19th-20th centuries.

Depends on how strict your definition of language death, I suppose. AFAIK Hebrew has always been used in religious contexts by the Jewish diaspora.

Wikipedia disagrees and says that as of the second century CE it ceased to be used as a mother tongue and was only used in the context of religious rituals, etc up until its revival. The article is decently sourced.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_Hebrew_langua...

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