B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

Logos has a sale on several relevant books for $8.99 that might interest our users.

Logos link

For example, I just picked up Benjamin J. Noonan's Advances in the Study of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic: New Insights for Reading the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020) for $8.99 and just started reading it.

From the first chapter:

Traditionally we have done a good job learning Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic, but a not so good job of understanding these languages in light of linguistics. This is a problem because—as this book will demonstrate—linguistics directly impacts exegesis. Whether we realize it or not, we each have our own understanding of linguistics that we bring to the table when we read Hebrew and Aramaic. An informed understanding will produce good results, but a poor understanding will produce bad results. To ignore linguistics is to bring harm to our understanding of the Hebrew Bible, which then weakens our effectiveness in ministry and the academy.

It's certainly true that John Cook and Robert Holmstedt are doing all they can to bring linguistics to the fore in our approach to biblical Hebrew.

Would you agree that learning at least the basics about linguistics is important to a good understanding of the languages?

Of course, Holmstedt wrote up a review of this book, and it wasn't exactly shining.

https://www.academia.edu/50219447/Revie ... r2NlM2ssK4

When I first went to UCLA to work on my MA in Near Eastern Languages and Literature, the first thing my advisor (Stanislav Segert) had me read was John Lyon's Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. It was a profound experience, changing my worldview about text, language, and the Bible. It raised and answered questions I had had in seminary, but no one seemed to know the answers.

In my opinion, every seminary student, pastor or teacher/professor should have the equivalent of Linguistics 101 to prepare them for exegeting the biblical text. In fact, a short basic intro to basic linguistic principles should be included in the religious training of the laity. Not that I've had any success in promoting that idea. But my grad students had to pass an extra exam on linguistics after reading Lyons!

One can never force anything upon the laity. LOL

When I still lived in the States, I started offering group Hebrew lessons from my home for free. I created a website called "Joplin Hebrew Reading," since I was from Joplin, Missouri. People from the local synagogue did indeed come over, and we had lessons for about four weeks. We were using the NJOP (National Jewish Outreach Program) simple introduction to Hebrew, and we ended up basically repeating the same lessons again and again over just a few letters of the alphabet. People put up blocks and think they cannot learn, though they surely can, but their lack of confidence kept us going over three or four letters of the alphabet from one session to the next.

I think Zoom has been good for getting people from different parts of the world to join together to read Hebrew and Greek together. The past year has been great for readers, I think.