Hebrew

From Tolkien Gateway

Hebrew is a Semitic language. The Old Testament, the first half of the Bible, was originally written in Hebrew.

While working on The Jerusalem Bible as a translator in the 1960s, Tolkien prepared himself learning a great amount of Hebrew.[1] He explained to his grandson Michael George: "I am at present immersed in Hebrew. If you want a beautiful but idiotic alphabet, and a language so difficult that it makes Latin (or even Greek) seem footling but also glimpses into a past that makes Homer seem recent - that is the stuff! (I am hoping when I retire to get included in a new Bible-translation team that is brewing. I have passed the test: with a version of the Book of Jonah. Not from Hebrew direct!)".[2]

Among the books in his library, J.R.R. Tolkien had some Semitic-related publications, including The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic of Gilgamish and Babylonisch-Assyrische Grammatik mit Übungsbuch. Babylonian and Assyrian were classical Semitic languages, distantly related to Hebrew.

In Tolkien's works[edit | edit source]

In his legendarium, Tolkien compared his Dwarves to the history of the Jewish people,[3] and despite their Norse connections (using Germanic names and Runes) their original language, Khuzdul, displays Hebrew-like structure.

The same happens with the unrelated Adûnaic language.[4]

Hebrew script is an impure abjad, that uses letters for consonants whereas signs placed above or under them signify vowels. The Tengwar script is a pure abjad.

References

External links[edit | edit source]