I happened to come across this thread and just wanted to add an important point. Modern Hebrew did not pop up out of nowhere as a revival of a completely dead Biblical Hebrew. Hebrew was still a living language in many ways (even if not a day-to-day spoken language) continuously from biblical times to this very day, and through out this time it was continuously evolving and adapting new vocabulary to refer to new things in new places and times. If you look at the written Hebrew from even before the
Haskalah, such as the language of the
Shulchan Aruch, you will notice it is much more similar to Modern Hebrew than it is to Biblical, and perhaps equally similar to Modern as it is to
Mishnaic.