(I am a Hebrew speaker) When reading the Bible, one encounters sometimes words whose meaning in modern Hebrew clearly does not correspond to what was meant in the text (in Kohelet for example, "מסכן" seems to mean poor, and not miserable; for another, perhaps more substantial example, I don't think that "רשע" in the Bible corresponds exactly to its meaning in modern Hebrew). This suggests that before modern Hebrew came into existence, the Bible text sometimes had a different meaning for the Jewish scholars (with Yiddish, or Spanish, or Portuguese, or ... being their mother tongue) than the meaning which it has for native Hebrew speakers nowadays (or "sounded" differently, so to speak).
Could you recommend any studies which try to compare ancient and modern Hebrew? How this divergence in Hebrew is being approached to in religious studies where students have prior knowledge of modern Hebrew? (speaking about myself, I do feel sometimes misled by my knowledge of modern Hebrew when reading the Bible)
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