Tag: Hebrew Bible

Resources for Learning Biblical Hebrew

Getting back into publishing after a long hiatus. I’ve been doing a lot of sciencing so just for fun I’ll do something completely different and talk about Hebrew. Here’s a list of great resources that I’ve found very useful.

It’s been some time since I’ve published any material. A big part of that was probably graduate school. But I’m done now. I got my Master’s degree in Materials Science and Engineering, which was very interesting education and stuff I’m continuing to work on and learn about. But I thought it would be fun, with getting back into publishing material, to do something in a completely different subject but one that I also find very interesting and that is the Hebrew Bible and the Hebrew language.

I love reading and talking about the Hebrew Bible and especially doing it in Hebrew. I’ve talked to a lot of people who are also interested in both the Hebrew Bible and the Hebrew language, though most I’ve talked to haven’t learned a lot of Hebrew. Yet. I thought I’d put together some preliminary material to introduce the basics of the language and provide some recommendations for resources for further study. I also want to teach my kids Hebrew so I want to make a few videos that are accessible enough for children. But after those preliminaries I’ll just dig into the text and let people do enough self-study of the language to learn as we go.

I’d like to say a word about my motivation and perspective on the Hebrew Bible and why I take the effort to study it in Hebrew. I have a very high view of scripture as the inspired word of God. That’s not to ignore the historically rooted and human element of it. But it is to say that scripture is a unique kind of text in that it is revelation. It comes from God. So it’s really important and it’s important to understand it correctly. If there’s any text that is worth all the effort of learning a language to read it it’s scripture. And this gives Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek special importance.

I want to focus mostly on reading scripture with language study being more supplementary to that. But I would like to recommend some excellent resources that I have found very useful and always recommend to people when this subject comes up. 

The first is a series of video lectures offered by The Great Courses. Biblical Hebrew: Learning a Sacred Language by Michael Carasik, who is a professor of Biblical Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania. This course is fantastic. It’s amazing how comprehensive it is and how much Carasik is able to cover in 36 lectures.

The second is an audiobook, Old Testament Hebrew Vocabulary by Jonathan T. Pennington. This is simply a vocabulary list in audiobook format. But that’s incredibly useful. It goes in order of word use frequency in the Bible. There’s no substitute to learning vocabulary, lots and lots of words! The full audiobook is two hours long. I recommend listening to it over and over again.

The third is the Biblehub Interlinear Bible. This is an online Hebrew Bible in both Hebrew and English. Each Hebrew word has an English gloss underneath it. A gloss, by the way, is not a comprehensive definition but just a short, inexact definition. Each word is also fully parsed out with its grammatical form. Each word also includes a hyperlink that includes the Brown–Driver–Briggs lexicon, which gives more than just a gloss, but a more comprehensive definition of each word. Brown–Driver–Briggs is an older but respectable lexicon. The best is probably the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT) but that one is definitely not free like Brown–Driver–Briggs is. Biblehub also includes entries from Strong’s concordance but it’s not as good as Brown–Driver–Briggs so I’d definitely go with that.

Last is A Reader’s Hebrew Bible published by Zondervan. If you want to go all in and get a Hebrew Bible in print this is a great one. The Reader’s Hebrew Bible gives the Hebrew text with footnotes providing glosses for words that occur less than 30 times. Words that occur 30 times or more are given gloss in the glossary but the best way to read it is to memorize all the words that occur 30 times or more. Then you can just read and look in the footnotes for the less common words. It’s really well done.

In the next two episodes we’ll look at the Hebrew alphabet and Hebrew vowel system respectively. Then get to the good stuff in the Hebrew Bible itself. And hopefully get back into conversations about science, Star Trek, Star Wars, philosophy, literature, and all that stuff.

The Septuagint

Todd and Tyler talk about the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The Hellenistic character of Diaspora Judaism and early Christianity. The importance of the Septuagint to our understanding of the development of the Hebrew Bible texts. The ways that the Septuagint was used by New Testament authors. And ways that Septuagint translators sometimes shifted the meaning of certain passages with their translation choices. We really just got started so we expect to pick up the topic again next week!

Notes:

Isaiah 6:10

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. (KJV)

הַשְׁמֵן֙ לֵב־הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֔ה וְאָזְנָ֥יו הַכְבֵּ֖ד וְעֵינָ֣יו הָשַׁ֑ע פֶּן־יִרְאֶ֨ה בְעֵינָ֜יו וּבְאָזְנָ֣יו יִשְׁמָ֗ע וּלְבָבֹ֥ו יָבִ֛ין וָשָׁ֖ב וְרָ֥פָא לֹֽו׃

LXX: “For the heart of this people has become gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted and and I should heal them.”

ἐπαχύνθη γὰρ ἡ καρδία τοῦ λαοῦ τούτου καὶ τοῖς ὠσὶν αὐτῶν βαρέως ἤκουσαν καὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῶν ἐκάμμυσαν μήποτε ἴδωσιν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς καὶ τοῖς ὠσὶν ἀκούσωσιν καὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ συνῶσιν καὶ ἐπιστρέψωσιν καὶ ἰάσομαι αὐτούς

The Hebrew hashmen, “make fat”, is an imperative. The Greek epachunthe, “made fat” is not a command but is a third person past tense or aorist. It’s saying what did happen. The hebrew va-enav hasha, “shut their eyes”, is an imperative. The greek ekammusan, “they shut”, is again a third person past tense or aorist. Saying what did happen.

“The charge for the obduracy of the people is removed from divine agency and placed squarely within the realm of human responsibility.” (Theological Ameliorative Translations in LXX Isaiah 6)

Exodus 15:3

The LORD is a man of war the LORD is his name (KJV)

יְהוָ֖ה אִ֣ישׁ מִלְחָמָ֑ה יְהוָ֖ה שְׁמֹֽו׃

LXX: “The Lord bringing wars to nought, the Lord is his name.”

Κύριος συντρίβων πολέμους, Κύριος ὄνομα αὐτῷ.

In place of the Hebrew ish milchamah, “man of war”, the Greek uses suntribon polemous, “bringing wars to nought. From suntribo, συντρίβω, “shatter, crush, beat, win”. But it is polemos, πόλεμος, “war” itself that is the object of this defeat.

Psalm 9:20

Put them in fear, O LORD that the nations may know themselves to be but men Selah (KJV)

שִׁ֘יתָ֤ה יְהוָ֨ה ׀ מֹורָ֗ה לָ֫הֶ֥ם יֵדְע֥וּ גֹויִ֑ם אֱנֹ֖ושׁ הֵ֣מָּה סֶּֽלָה׃

LXX: Appoint, O Lord, a lawgiver over them: let the heathen know that they are men. (Psalm 9:21)

κατάστησον, Κύριε, νομοθέτην ἐπ᾿ αὐτούς, γνώτωσαν ἔθνη ὅτι ἄνθρωποί εἰσιν.

Insights into the Hebrew Language

The Septuagint can give us some insights into the Hebrew language as well. The most notable example is the change in pronunciation of the Hebrew letter ayin, ע. Today the ayin is silent but in ancient times there were two forms, one of which had a kind of ‘g’ sound to it, called a ghayn, still present in Arabic. It since merged with ayin in most Semitic languages except for Arabic. Biblical Hebrew, as of the 3rd century BCE, apparently still distinguished the phonemes, based on transcriptions in the Septuagint. In Hebrew the word for Gamorrah is עֲמֹרָה (‘Ămōrā). In the Septuagint this is rendered as Γόμορρᾰ (Gómorrha). So we know that that form of ayin was used for that word.

Septuagint as and Inspired Translation

“We are right in believing that the translators of the Septuagint had received the spirit of prophecy; and so if, with its authority, they altered anything and used expressions in their translation different from those of the original, we should not doubt that these expressions also were divinely inspired.” (Augustine, City of God 15.23)

“Accordingly, when anyone claims, ‘Moses meant what I say,’ and another retorts, ‘No, rather what I find there,’ I think that I will be answering in a more religious spirit if I say, ‘Why not both, if both are true?’ And if there is a third possibility, and a fourth, and if someone else sees an entirely different meaning in these words, why should we not think that he was aware of all of them?” (Augustine, Confessions 12.31.42)

God’s Dynamic Character

Mike and Todd discuss the work of Jack Miles and the different experiences and perspectives on God found in the Bible. Approached as a biography, the Bible crafts a fascinating and dynamic story of God’s developing character and God’s developing relationship with humanity. God is at times creator, destroyer, liberator, lawgiver, conqueror, executioner, wife, Holy One, recluse, puzzle, and Ancient of Days. And then, for Christians, the development and new birth of God as human being, co-sufferer, and teacher of nonviolence and universal love.