Hebrew language

====Early post-Biblical Hebrew====
* [[Dead Sea Scrolls|Dead Sea Scroll]] Hebrew from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, corresponding to the Hellenistic and Roman Periods before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and represented by the Qumran Scrolls that form most (but not all) of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Commonly abbreviated as DSS Hebrew, also called Qumran Hebrew. The Imperial Aramaic script of the earlier scrolls in the 3rd century BCE evolved into the [[Hebrew square script]] of the later scrolls in the 1st century CE, also known as ''ketav Ashuri'' (Assyrian script), still in use today.
* [[Mishnaic Hebrew]] from the 1st to the 3rd or 4th century CE, corresponding to the Roman Period after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and represented by the bulk of the [[Mishnah]] and [[Tosefta]] within the [[Talmud]] and by the Dead Sea Scrolls, notably the [[Bar Kokhba revolt|Bar Kokhba]] letters and the [[Copper Scroll]]. Also called Tannaitic Hebrew or Early Rabbinic Hebrew.

Sometimes the above phases of spoken Classical Hebrew are simplified into "Biblical Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 10th century BCE to 2nd century BCE and extant in certain Dead Sea Scrolls) and "Mishnaic Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE and extant in certain other Dead Sea Scrolls).<ref name=Segal>M. Segal, ''A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927).</ref> However, today most Hebrew linguists classify Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew as a set of dialects evolving out of Late Biblical Hebrew and into Mishnaic Hebrew, thus including elements from both but remaining distinct from either.<ref name=Qimron>[[Elisha Qimron|Qimron, Elisha]] (1986). ''The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls''. Harvard Semitic Studies 29. (Atlanta: Scholars Press).</ref>

By the start of the Byzantine Period in the 4th century CE, Classical Hebrew ceased as a regularly spoken language, roughly a century after the publication of the Mishnah, apparently declining since the aftermath of the catastrophic [[Bar Kokhba revolt]] around 135 CE.