Street Hebrew

With papyrological evidence, there’s some grounds for saying that there’s considerable overlap between the vocabulary and syntax of NT Greek and “street Greek.” Barr, though, thinks the same about Hebrew: “In Israel at any rate much of the biblical language is unspecialized, for the religious structure is roughly coincident with the linguistic group and the nation as a whole.” The argument of the last clause is intriguing. One could put it this way: Because the whole nation was covenantally formed, he concludes that the language of the covenant documents and the language of normal life overlapped. But isn’t it possible that the OT contains a specialized language for common life, just as lawyers speak a specialized language for things that non-lawyers talk about in non-specialized ways?

In any case, in the absence of comparative evidence, there is simply no way to know for sure whether the Hebrew of the Hebrew Bible is street Hebrew or not. Barr’s main concerns are lexical and semantic, and in that regard it’s likely that there’s considerable overlap. There’s no reason why traders in the market would not have talked about the latest news about the melek , and no reason to think there was another word for “walk” than halak .

Given the intricate literary form of the Hebrew Bible, and the frequent focus on specialized priestly concerns, however, there’s a good bit of evidence that it’s not street Hebrew in every respect.