Biblical Hebrew (לשון מקרא): 1000BCE-200BCE
- Archaic Biblical Hebrew: verse of the Pentateuch and the Early Prophets
- Standard Biblical Hebrew: Biblical prose until the Babylonian Exile
- Late Biblical Hebrew: Chronicles and other later books after the Babylonian Exile
Mishnaic Hebrew (לשון חכמים): 200BCE-500CE
- Mishnaic Hebrew I / Tannaitic Hebrew: 200BCE-200CE: from the rise of Rabbinic Judaism until the compilation of the Mishna
- Mishnaic Hebrew II / Amoraic Hebrew: 200CE-500CE: until the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud
Medieval Hebrew (לשון תקופת הביניים): 500-1780
Modern Hebrew (עברית חדשה): 1780-
- Maskilic Hebrew: 1780-1880: Haskala period
- Modern Hebrew proper: 1881- : after the arrival of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda to Palestine
Hebrew in the Period 200-1880
- Essentially no function as a spoken language: function of a high variety (written/liturgical language) in the Jewish diglossia with a Jewish language as a low variety (spoken language)