Would a speaker of modern Hebrew be able to understand a biblical Hebrew speaker?

by Postmastergeneral201

Since modern Hebrew is based on biblical Hebrew I assume that's a possibility.

docawesomephd

Possibly. The grammar is somewhat different is the vocabulary, but the similarities are very strong. A modern Hebrew speaker can read the Hebrew bible without difficulties.

The problem is accent and idiom. We don’t know how biblical era speakers would have pronounced their words. Even today, it can be hard to understand the accents-I speak modern Hebrew fluently, but at a family who pronounces their Hebrew in the Yemenite way, I’m lost. Idiom is problematical too-think of how often we rely on figures of speech to communicate. Someone gets sold down the river, has the heart of a lion, an election has a blue wave. Hebrew is like that too, and it’s unlikely that would be shared between the biblical and modern dialects