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The purpose of this paper is to suggest that something happened around the early third century CE that is not directly attested in any source, but that was to be of crucial importance not just in the history of the Hebrew language but in the whole subsequent history of Judaism. My suggestion is that there was a revival of the Hebrew language at this time. Language revivals can take many forms. In our own time the Cornish language has been revived from virtually beyond the grave: the epitaph of Dorothy Pentreath who died in 1777 states that she was 'said to have been the last person who conversed in the ancient Cornish'; Cornish is now spoken and written by growing circles of enthusiasts. The wellknown modern revival of Hebrew is of a quite different order. Hebrew was not a dead language in any real sense in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was in daily use among millions of people, who read it, wrote it and spoke it in prayer. It had shown itself to be capable of being adapted to the needs of modern European life and thought. It had living traditions of pronunciation. When we speak of the revival of Hebrew we mean essentially its extension from being a living written and liturgical language to being an everyday spoken language as well. Clearly there is a fundamental difference between the revival of Hebrew and the revival of Cornish. The revival I am suggesting took place in the third century is different again. I do not wish to suggest that Hebrew was a dead language at the time the revival began, although it is very likely that the number of Hebrew speakers had declined considerably. The various recent histories of the language agree that Hebrew
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