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Daily Dose of Hebrew

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2018 9:44 am
by Ruminator
I'm loving the Daily Dose of Greek (dailydoseofgreek.org) and it occurred to me that there might be a Hebrew version and sure enough there is:

http://dailydoseofhebrew.com/

These are two minute instructional videos by qualified instructors. You can optionally get a daily reminder email with a link to the latest video.

Re: Daily Dose of Hebrew

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2018 9:51 am
by Kirk Lowery
I watch both every day. They are well done and keeps one's brain into Hebrew. Highly recommended.

Re: Daily Dose of Hebrew

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2018 2:43 pm
by Schubert
I also find the Daily Doses of Hebrew very helpful.

Re: Daily Dose of Hebrew

Posted: Sun Dec 02, 2018 10:30 pm
by kwrandolph
I decided to look into this daily dose of Hebrew. I see it’s based on a textbook by someone I’ve never heard of before, so anything I say is not personal against the author, rather commenting on what is said and written.

My fist question, what sort of Hebrew is being taught? Biblical? Tiberian? Modern questioning? In looking at the textbook’s table of contents, it starts with the vowels. “Oh oh, bad sign. Biblical Hebrew doesn’t have written vowels.” That means that what is taught is Tiberian Hebrew, a language that has a different grammar and different pronunciation from Biblical Hebrew.

I was taught Tiberian Hebrew when I studied Hebrew in class, and had to unlearn much when I read Tanakh through over and over again. I also found that sometimes a simple statement in Biblical Hebrew was made overly complex and even very difficult to understand because of the vowel points that come from Tiberian Hebrew. In other words, sometimes they indicate wrong meanings.

The author has not kept up with the latest research on Biblical Hebrew. One of the members on this list, Rolf Furuli, showed in his dissertation that the Biblical Hebrew conjugations do not conjugate for tense. In other words, there’s no “perfect” nor “imperfect/future” in Biblical Hebrew. Decades ago I came to the same realization but without the formal research to back up my findings. Yet these people are still teaching tense-based Tiberian Hebrew.

In closing, I found some of their teachings challenging with insights that I hadn’t heard before, but there are other times that I simply say “This are wrong.” I’m not saying to stay away from these videos, just remember that when they say “perfect” or “past”, or “imperfect” or “future”, that the actions could actually be present, or past, or future.

By the way, my daily dose of Hebrew that I aim for is an hour rereading Tanakh, which can cover anything from a couple of chapters to as many as ten chapters in Tanakh.

Re: Daily Dose of Hebrew

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2018 5:09 pm
by Ruminator
Thanks for the review! Can you please tell me whether or not your and Rolf's conclusions are controversial or not? Thanks.

Re: Daily Dose of Hebrew

Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2018 10:01 am
by kwrandolph
What part of studying Biblical Hebrew isn’t controversial?

I suppose that sticking with Tiberian Hebrew and calling it “Biblical’ is the least controversial, as that is a tradition that has been taught since the medieval age. But when I wrote “modern questioning”, that’s not a reference to modern Israeli Hebrew, rather modern scholars questioning the tradition that Tiberian Hebrew is the same as Biblical Hebrew. The following book gives a survey of many of the theories presented over the years.

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Bib ... nor+hebrew

I have been told, though I haven’t verified it for myself, that it is long tradition among Jewish rabbis to question the Masoretic points. When I was being taught Tiberian Hebrew, already other books were coming on the market questioning the equation that Tiberian Hebrew = Biblical Hebrew. Because most scholars come from a western tradition that verbal conjugations refer to some sort of time measurement, they assume Biblical Hebrew’s conjugations also refer to time, whether tense, aspect or a combination of the two. I’m not the first to suggest that the conjugations are modal, not time. Today it doesn’t matter which view you take, there are people who will disagree with you.

Karl W. Randolph.

Re: Daily Dose of Hebrew

Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2018 10:35 am
by Ruminator
I believe it was in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Story-Structure- ... ords=story that the author made the assertion that resonates with me... he said "Only conflict is interesting", which is one reason why studying the scriptures is so endlessly fascinating!