During the twelfth century, Hebrew became the language of science and philosophy among Jews in Christian Europe due to political changes in the Muslim Spain, which caused many Jews to move to areas under Christian rule. The encounter between Jewish scholars who master the Arabic language and science and Jewish communities thirsting for knowledge but with a relatively low level of scientific knowledge and little or no knowledge of the Arabic language naturally raised the question: in which language should the ‘‘new immigrants’’ write for the locals? In fact, only Hebrew was a common language to both sides and thus the only candidate to become the lingua franca. However, its scientific vocabulary was meagre in most domains.

In the seminar, we shall discuss the scientific Hebrew terminology and its level before the twelfth century, the evolution of the scientific Hebrew between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries and the various mechanisms for coining new terms.