Note 104 — Chapter III · ORIGIN AND LANDSCAPE (C) THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CULTURES

For example, Hebrew was supplanted by Aramaic for all ordinary purposes as early as the Maccabees—and to such an extent that in the synagogues the Scriptures had to be translated for the people—but has held its ground as a religious vehicle, and above all as a script, even to this day. (The present use of a spoken Hebrew represents a revival in more recent times, after the wider dispersion of the early Middle Ages had broken the connexion with the Aramaic lands.) In the Persian field the older Zend survived alongside the newer Pehlevi. In Egypt somewhat similar influences were contemporaneously determining the evolution of popular Demotic and official Greek into the Coptic language with Greek characters.—Tr.