Modern Hebrew is a Semitic language and member of the Afro-Asiatic language family. After Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 BC, Hebrew became mainly a literary language, used most often during prayers. The original version of the Holy Bible was written in the Classical Hebrew language. Hebrew was reborn as a spoken language during the late 19th and 20th centuries as Modern Hebrew replaced Yiddish, Ladino, Arabic and other languages of the Jewish diaspora as the language of the Jewish people returning to Israel. The Hebrew language bears a strong resemblance to South-Central Arabic and Aramaic and shares many of their linguistic features. The rebirth of spoken Hebrew was brought about by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) whose goal was to develop a new language that the Jews could use in everyday communication. Due to the relatively small size of the vocabulary, its numerous foreign borrowings and relatively simple inflectional rules, Hebrew is an easy language to learn.