Hebrew is estimated to be around 3,000 years old and supposedly was the first written language that was simple enough for everyone to learn. The history of Hebrew is divided into four periods: Biblical Hebrew, Mishnaic Hebrew, Medieval Hebrew and Modern Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew developed over 3,000 years ago as a fully formed literary language, in which the Old Testament and the Torah were written. Until the end of the First Temple Period in around 586 BC it served as a living language. When Aramaic became the second language of the Jews in the Second Temple Period, the contact between those two languages led to a different kind of spoken Hebrew, called Mishnaic or Rabbinic Hebrew. During this time the Canaanite alphabet was used before it was being replaced by the Assyrian square script, which was used in Aramaic. The Mishna was then written in Mishnaic Hebrew and the language continued to be used together with Aramaic in the Mishnaic literature. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, its role as a spoken language declined. From the 4th century onwards, Medieval Hebrew was used, mainly in written form by rabbis, scholars and poets. A lot of lexical items were either based on older Hebrew forms or borrowed from languages like Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Arabic. Later on it was even influenced by Spanish to some extent. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Hebrew was revived as a spoken language. From this the Modern Hebrew developed, which uses Biblical Hebrew morphemes, Mishnaic Hebrew spelling and Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation. Modern Hebrew, also called Israelic Hebrew, is the primary official language of Israel.
