Semitic languages
The similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages was accepted by Jewish and Islamic scholars since medieval times. The languages were familiar to Western European scholars due to historical contact with neighbouring Near Eastern countries and through Biblical studies, and a comparative analysis of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic was published in Latin in 1538 by Guillaume Postel. Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described the similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages. However, neither scholar named this grouping as "Semitic".
Modern Hebrew
The word order of Modern Hebrew is predominately SVO (subject–verb–object). Biblical Hebrew was originally verb–subject–object (VSO), but drifted into SVO. Modern Hebrew maintains classical syntactic properties associated with VSO languages—it is prepositional rather than postpositional in making case and adverbial relations, auxiliary verbs precede main verbs; main verbs precede their complements, and noun modifiers (adjectives, determiners other than the definite article , and noun adjuncts) follow the head noun, hence in genitive constructions the possessee noun precedes the possessor. Moreover, Modern Hebrew allows and in cases requires sentences with a predicate initial.