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Aramaic began to have a great influence on Hebrew as early as the preexilic period, due to the great deal of contact the Hebrews had with Aramaic-speaking people in the Assyrian Empire. But this influence became even more important after the fall of the Jewish realms of Samaria and, most significantly, in 597 BCE, of Jerusalem. When the Jews returned to Jerusalem from their Babylonian exile, the leaders and a large part of the masses had substituted Aramaic for Hebrew. As a result, and despite the restoration carried out by Esdras and Nehemiah, certain chapters of the Bible itself were written in Aramaic. Later, as Hebrew was becoming gradually restricted to liturgical use, Aramaic replaced it in everyday life, and was adopted as the language of the great Commentaries of the Bible—the Mishna and the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds—, before the spread of Arabic as a result of the Islamic conquest, and the adoption of the languages of the Gentiles after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the ensuing diaspora. Hebrew morphology has kept some Aramaic features, but Aramaic influence is much broader in the lexicon. A number of Aramaic words were borrowed to name objects and concepts for which a Hebrew word was lacking. In addition to Ben Yehuda and Bialik’s new words, many others were introduced by the great writers of the late nineteenth century, translating into Hebrew Yiddish words which were themselves adapted from Aramaic. Another domain in which Aramaic was used was patronyms, translated, for some time, from German into Aramaic rather than Hebrew, which was felt less prestigious. However, Aramaic has now become much less frequent as a source of neology and patronyms. These days, no new words are coined using it as it was used in the former stages of the history of Hebrew.