re: #6 Buck

Interesting that the Egyptian people and Persians have been lost to history. Today’s Egyptian people don’t speak the same language, have any of the same culture or anything else in common with the empire of that day. Same with the Iranians and any common string with Persians.

Yet those Jews speak the same language, have the same religion, the same cultural identity as those “poor - the little Jewish people” of history.

You’re forgetting that there had to be an active revival of Hebrew in the 19th century.

Also, the line from Old Persian to Farsi, aside from loanwords, is an unbroken linguistic development with few changes to the root grammar.