Jewish tradition believes that God looked into the Torah and then created the world. Knowing that the Torah is written in Hebrew makes it the oldest known language in history.

How much do you know about God’s language? Take this quiz and find out! (Answers at the end)

Hebrew is a Semitic language, meaning that it originated in the Middle East. After which of Biblical Noah’s sons was the term “Semitic” coined?
a. Ham
b. Shem
c. Japheth

How many letters are in the Hebrew alphabet?
a. 26
b. 18
c. 22

How many vowels are in the Bible?
a. 0
b. 5
c. 11

Hebrew is written from:
a. Left to right
b. Right to left
c. Top to bottom

When someone says that Hebrew is based on “roots”, they mean:
a. Hebrew is a consonantal system with three-letter word roots to connote meaning.
b. The Hebrew language roots the Jewish people to the Bible.
c. Hebrew letters look like trees with roots.

The oldest prayer in the world which is found in the Bible and still said today is:
a. The Priestly Blessing
b. The Pledge of Allegiance
c. The Lord’s Prayer

The English “Alphabet” is named as such after:
a. The first two letters of Hebrew, aleph and bet
b. The first two letters of Greek, alpha and beta
c. It’s just a coincidence

Answers:

1. b. Shem “Semitic” was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History. It was derived from the name “Shem”, the forefather of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people (Genesis 6:10). His descendants lived in the Middle East. Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic are all Semitic languages.

2. c. 22

3. a. 0 The Bible was written without vowels. However, the Masoretes in the second half of the first millennium AD in the city of Tiberias in Israel created a system of dots and dashes in order to help people read Hebrew words correctly. Today, 18 vowels are used in Biblical texts, prayer books, Hebrew grammar books and children’s books but are not commonly used in Hebrew writings such as in novels, newspapers and signs in the Holy Land.

4. b. Right to left

5. a. Hebrew is a consonantal system with three-letter word roots to connote meaning Most Hebrew words can be boiled down to a three-consonant root that contains the essence of the word’s meaning. Insight can be gained just by identifying the roots of words. Various Hebrew words are created by taking the root and changing the vowels, and by adding prefixes and suffixes. This actually makes Hebrew a relatively easy language to understand in that, once you know the root, you can figure out the meaning of related words.

6. a. The Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6:24-26)

7. b. The first two letters of Greek, alpha and beta But, don’t you think that it could just as easily have been named after the Hebrew “Aleph bet”?

Are you a Hebrew star? Learning God’s language can be surprisingly easy and is becoming more and more popular as people seek to connect to their Biblical roots – and that’s more than just three consonants.