My now six-year-old has been asking again to learn more Hebrew. We started last spring (see here and especially here), but the Hebrew learning has been largely on hold. We have some materials from Sarah and David’s Read Hebrew, an interactive program to help children (and others) learn Hebrew. The other day, as you can see … Continue reading A 6-Year-Old (re)Learns Some Hebrew
…to beef up your knowledge of vocabulary in the Hebrew Bible. But reading through the detailed instructions on building the tabernacle (Exodus 26 and following) can feel like too much of a vocab stretch. It seems like every other word is a rare one. Using an alphabetically organized lexicon for such passages really slows down the reading. … Continue reading One Way to Improve Your Biblical Hebrew Is…
Reading through Isaiah, I’ve made connections between biblical texts that I never noticed before. I’ve posted about Philippians and Ephesians. Today I saw something in Isaiah 63:11 that seems to have inspired the author of Hebrews. Isaiah 63:11 English: And the one who brought up from the land the shepherd of the sheep remembered the … Continue reading Who is Isaiah’s Shepherd of the Sheep? Hebrews Ventures an Answer
Recently I’ve been paying more attention to the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew and its Concise counterpart (see here). It took me a little while to figure out how to read the frequency stats in DCH/CDCH. So I’m posting this little tidbit here to save some folks a bit of time. The introduction to the concise version of … Continue reading A Quick Tip for Understanding Word Frequency Stats in the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew
HALOT has been the scholarly standard in Hebrew lexicons, but might that change? The mammoth 8-volume Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH) is another major lexical source for readers of biblical Hebrew to consult. What is unique about the DCH is that lexicons like HALOT and Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) cover solely the Hebrew found in the Hebrew Bible. DCH, by … Continue reading A New Standard Lexicon for Hebrew?
As I read Isaiah 22:19 recently, I had a question about a rarely occurring word in that verse. The Greek reads: καὶ ἀφαιρεθήσῃ ἐκ τῆς οἰκονομίας σου καὶ ἐκ τῆς στάσεώς σου. (And you will be removed from your office and from your post.) The word οἰκονομία occurs in the Septuagint only here and two verses … Continue reading Review of A Greek-Hebrew/Aramaic Two-way Index to the Septuagint by T. Muraoka
Hebrews can be a hard book to grasp. Whether in Greek or English (or any other language), the development of the book’s logic–especially early on–requires careful attention. One hears about Jesus’ priesthood, which makes the most sense when examined against the backdrop of the Old Testament priesthood and sacrificial system. Angels and Moses and Aaron … Continue reading Charts on the Book of Hebrews, Reviewed
I mentioned a few weeks ago that my five-year-old son is learning Hebrew, using the materials from Sarah and David. Part of his learning process was to re-shape his English bathtub letters into Hebrew ones, as noted and pictured here. Now (thanks, Diana!) he has real ones: And he’s pretty happy about them, too: More … Continue reading Real Hebrew Bathtub Letters This Time
Okay, so he’s not really reviewing the Hebrew language, but he is learning it. Wanting to spend more time with my kids this summer, and seeing a voracious appetite for learning in my five-year-old son, I offered to help him learn a language. I told him I could offer Hebrew (of the biblical variety), Greek (koine/New Testament), and … Continue reading My five-year-old son reviews: The Hebrew Language
Miles Van Pelt keeps turning out the hits. Through Zondervan he has published resources that fill a gap in original language learning in biblical studies. I’ve reviewed (with approval) his Biblical Hebrew: A Compact Guide, his Basics of Biblical Aramaic, and have been grateful in my Göttingen Septuagint primer to link to a short two-page abbreviations sheet he … Continue reading Review of Basics of Biblical Hebrew: Video Lectures
Words on the Word 