שלום מרקוס! השלום לך
Glad to see you’re still with us at B-Hebrew, and that you’re still learning Biblical Hebrew!
I’m going to slightly disagree with Karl about the value of Hebrew translations of the New Testament, then address your main question.
There are a number of Hebrew New Testaments available, only two of which I’ve used, so I’ll confine my comments to those. They are Delitzsch and the Bible Society in Israel (BIS) version. Delitzsch was done in the late 19th century, and is, I understand, based primarily on Mishnaic or early Rabbinic Hebrew. (This is the same Delitzsch who co-authored the famed Keil and Delitzsch commentaries on the Old Testament.) He chose this form because it was thought (correctly, as it turns out from more additional, more recent researches) to be close to the vernacular Hebrew of the first century A.D. (Karl doesn’t agree that there was a vernacular Hebrew then, but that’s a separate thread.)
The BSI one first appeared in 1976 and was revised in 1991. I have used both of these for several years now. The BSI one also has a dramatized audio version, available through the Bible.is site and Faith Comes By Hearing site. And while, yes, Biblical Hebrew and Modern are quite different, I agree that there is great value for the student of Biblical Hebrew in reading a Hebrew NT. Despite the differences in the Modern language, there is a key core vocabulary that MH uses that is drawn from the Tanakh. Many of the words are identical in both form and meaning. Not all, but many. Thus, for the most part, I have no trouble reading and comprehending a Hebrew New Testament, whether Delitzsch or the BIS one. This is true of the audio version as well. There is a large overlap with BH vocabulary and morphology. And if there is a rough spot or two, I can always check the Greek.
Now on to your main question. To answer Karl first (briefly), you would format the “made-up” Hebrew based on the Hebrew Old Testament as much as possible. Depending on the topic, or the desired vocabulary, there might be some words unavailable that you would want. There would be several options, then on how to proceed: 1) Decide not to use those words. 2) Use words that are ancient Hebrew, but not in Tanakh, such words from the Apocrypha (e.g., Ben Sira, Tobit, or other apocrypha from Qumran that were found in Hebrew, e.g. the Genesis Apocryphon), or from other Hebrew literature at Qumran such as the Rule of Discipline, etc. I would also put words from Hebrew inscriptions and ostraca here. 3) Use words from Mishnaic Hebrew. 4) Use words from medieval or Renaissance Hebrew. 5) Use words from Modern Hebrew. Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with using options 2 to 5, though options 2 and 3 would be my preference. In regard to Modern, I regularly address our household cats in BH with short monologues for practice, and of course I use the modern חטול for “cat”. (The cat neither knows nor cares that חטול is MH. The way I figure it, MH is still Hebrew.) Latinists do this all the time, adapting (and adopting) words from modern languages when they want to speak or write about modern daily life or other topics about personal interests. Many people who enjoy Latin learning are fine with this, and I certainly am.
Sadly, there are no such Hebrew readers currently available with made-up Hebrew for BH students that I know of. I would be happy to be proven wrong. A few years back there was for sale on Amazon a book of fairy tales translated into BH (I forget the author’s name), but it is out of print. (If I run across it, I’ll post about it and maybe we can find some used copies.) Unfortunately, I didn’t order when it was available, so I don’t have it.
There are, however, some readers that are based directly on BH texts: ones on Genesis, Jonah, and Ruth. For Genesis we have Biblical Hebrew Step by Step, Volume 2: Readings from the Book of Genesis by Menahem Mansoor (Third Edition, 1984; I don’t know if there is a later edition.) For Jonah and Ruth there are Charles L. Echols’ guides to the Hebrew text. All three give the Biblical texts along with vocabulary and grammar helps. Mansoor also provides some exercises, including some in compostion/translation. He includes some made-up Hebrew in his Hebrew to English exercises, but it is supposed to be based on the Tanakh. I haven’t used Mansoor’s text yet (I did use his volume 1 as a primer when I first studied Hebrew), so I don’t know how close his made-up Hebrew is to actual BH. You can probably get Mansoor on Amazon or thru another bookstore. Echols’ books are available as PDFs from
https://www.academia.edu online (free downloads).
If you like a comic-book type format, there are several options available. Charles Grebe has produced a Jonah comic that apparently includes the entire text. You can listen to it in Hebrew (read slowly) while reading it online at
http://www.animatedhebrew.com/jonah/jonah_01.html. For purchase, GlossaHouse has illustrated versions of Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel (online at
https://www.glossahouse.com/illustrated-biblical-texts). The Ruth one also an audio/video version. I have used the Animated Hebrew Jonah by Grebe a little and it is well done. For the text you have the option of using either vocalized or unvocalized Hebrew, which is nice. The GlossaHouse ones look promising from the sample pages I saw.
Hope this helps!
Dewayne