Best Review Text
Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2017 12:23 pm
So, I've subscribed to "The Daily Dose of Hebrew" and already benefitting from the videos. However, what would be a good text for rapid review of Hebrew grammar and syntax?
bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org
http://bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org/
http://bhebrew.biblicalhumanities.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=939
I have Waltke -- he was one of my OT profs at WTS, and not only did he autograph my published copy, but when I took intermediate Hebrew from him, he was getting the galley proofs back, and used it for the class. He invited us to point out errors, and the few we found seemed to positively delight him. Thanks for your response.Kirk Lowery wrote:IMO, van der Merwe A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar. It's an excellent reference, not as detailed as GKC, Joűon-Muraoka, or Waltke & O'Connor. I think it should be on everyone's shelf.
Yes, Karl, I remember you. Weren't you the one that told me knowing Latin was worthless? I'm quite familiar with your idiosyncratic views, and for those I have no use. I have no intention whatsoever of abandoning more than 1/2 a millennium of scholarship and the history of interpretation. Having said that, however, I do agree that nothing beats reading the original language, seeing things in context, and so forth. I give that advice all the time with regard to Greek. "The more you read..."kwrandolph wrote:I’m afraid that I can recommend none of the above. In fact, I don’t know of any to recommend other than to sit down and read the Bible through cover to cover, and after you finish the first time, do it again, then again, then again, and so forth.
There’s a phrase “First year’s lies”. It’s meant as a joke to refer to having to unlearn things learned in the first year of study. However, when following my recommendation above, I learned that there were several things that I had to unlearn from what I studied in class. Things that I had to unlearn include the following:
1) Hebrew verbs don’t conjugate for time, neither tense nor aspect. That means that the conjugations are Qatal and Yiqtol, not perfect and imperfect nor past and future.
2) many words are not correctly defined in standard dictionaries. So a major resource I used heavily, and still use, is a good concordance of the Hebrew Bible, The one I use is Konkordance zum Hebräischen Alten Testament by Lisowski. I use it to do word studies, thousands of them, to find out how words are actually used in Tanakh. I now also use electronic searches on computer.
3) forget the Masoretic points. They represent a pronunciation that is not Biblical. They are wrong often enough as far as meaning is concerned that I found that I cannot trust them. And they clutter up the page.
These three main points are based on Tiberian Hebrew, a language learned as a second language by medieval Jewish scholars, not their primary language. Many Biblical terms had been forgotten, and so traditional dictionaries give Aramaic meanings for those words. Because Biblical pronunciations had been forgotten, and Biblical Hebrew writing had no vowels, the pronunciations of vowels are imported from the Tiberians’ primary languages (Aramaic, Arabic and Greek). Tiberian Hebrew has a grammar that is very different from Biblical Hebrew—for one Tiberian Hebrew has a tense based conjugation while Biblical Hebrew conjugates for neither tense nor aspect.
(Shameless plug) I have written a dictionary summarizing what I’ve learned, which I can send you upon request at kwrandolph@gmail.com . It’s a .pdf file that should be readable on any computer.
Another resource that I recommend is http://www.crosswire.org for Bible texts and other information.
Yours, Karl W. Randolph.
You don't need to do the exercises on paper. You can do them orally.Barry Hofstetter wrote:I was afraid you would say something like that, but ἄνθρωπος ἀργὸς ἐγώ εἰμι, and I would like to get through it with as little work as possible. Yeah.