Customer Reviews

The Ancient Hebrew Language and Alphabet: Understanding the Ancient Hebrew Language of the Bible Based on Ancient Hebrew Culture and Thought

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I loved this book. The rare opinion stated as fact and the few faith based comments do not change my feeling that this is a good intro to the subject.

I am a borderline agnostic with a sincere interest in Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, early Phoenecian scripts, etc. I don't care about anyone else's religious beliefs and I don't care if the occasional prejudice slips through between the lines now & then when I am reading the works of authors with a passion for their faith, as long as I am learning something in a subject of interest.

Sure, I disagreed with a few of Mr. Benner's opinions here and there but in the end I have to say that this is the single best book I have seen that teaches introductory 'Ancient Hebrew 101' in such a clear, readable, and most importantly, learnable fashion. Now I can order Mr. Benner's other books with confidence that I will actually learn a good deal of the subject matter rather than fall asleep trying to stay focused on the dry, boring, dull treatment of ancient scripts given by snobbish academians whose obvious priority is trying to impress their peers rather than actually teach the neophytes.

Another good book on ancient scripts is "Mysteries of the Alphabet" by Ouaknin.

The book actually contains only about 50 pages of simple to understand background information on the ancient Hebrew language. The rest of the book deals with specific appendices that detail information on the pictographic and alphabetic characters themselves. All told, the info opens up a wide area of additional information on Bible names.

This book is a wonderful introduction to the world of the Hebrew Language. I have been struggling to teach myself Hebrew, and frankly was having trouble learning the aleph-beit. So many letters that look similar! Such a different type of writing! And why do they have three letters than mean "s", more than one "K" and two that don't have any sound, anyway?

THIS BOOK ANSWERS THOSE QUESTIONS, and more!

This book explains the origins of Hebrew, and allows you to see what each of the ancient letters MEAN. I had been wondering how the sages made determinations of the "real" meanings of Hebrew words by looking at the letters that make them up, and now I know! This book will open a window to the Hebrew Language that will "turn you on" to how the language works, and how it affects the Jewish Faith. Their earliest beliefs about G-d will become very clear...just by studying the letters they used to spell his name.

GREAT BOOK.

This book, along with two other books by this author make a great study package for the Old Testament. By using them, I am learning a great deal of the deeper meaning of Old Testament scriptures.

In this frustrating book, Benner proclaims (prima facie most implausibly) that Hebrew script, which was clearly partly pictographic in origin, kept its pictographic function even after it became alphabetic. Even less plausibly, he holds that the Hebrew language and its script must have appeared simultaneously when God created Adam with a mature knowledge of the spoken and written language. He claims to have demonstrated the truth of this latter view, but I cannot locate any such demonstration (see below on standards of proof).

As the above might suggest would be the case, Benner combines these specific claims about Hebrew with unargued acceptance of the Genesis story - including the Tower of Babel story about the origin of linguistic diversity - as uncontroversially and literally true. This is a one-sidedly fundamentalist treatment of the issues in question, and readers with other views on these issues will be unable to accept it by way of background (given Benner's failure to argue adequately for his own stance and the well-known weakness of such positions in scientific and historical terms).

In addition, Benner's discussion of linguistic matters more generally (other than some of the specifics of Hebrew) appears naive and ill-informed. His standards of proof appear too loose. Further, he accepts (in general terms) the idea, most notoriously promoted in recent times by Mozeson, that many words in English and other non-Semitic languages derive from Hebrew - on the basis of 'evidence' which in no way meets the very robust criteria which have long been known to linguists. This alone suggests that he does not understand historical linguistics.

Indeed, Benner fails to refer to established linguistic scholarship, and instead invokes fringe and semi-fringe writers in support of some of his claims, apparently treating these authors as authoritative. This is in fact not unusual among linguistic amateurs; they seem to locate the relatively sober fringe thinker or the maverick on the fringe of professional linguistics much more readily than the genuine mainstream scholar. In this case, Benner notably invokes Fano, who was one of the members of a mid-C20 breakaway Italian school of non-scientific linguists influenced by the idealist philosophy of Croce. Fano in fact rejected Croce's more extreme ideas; but he is still conspicuously non-mainstream in international terms, and he cannot be treated as authoritative.

Benner also has a marked tendency not to distinguish clearly enough between generally accepted points and his own controversial claims. A reader without prior knowledge of the structure of Hebrew would not be able to disentangle these two aspects of the material.

In producing this version of his material, Benner has failed to take on board or even engage with the many crucial linguistic points which tell against his account of the development of Hebrew and its script. I myself made many of these points in correspondence with him but apparently to no avail.

All this will have the consequence that a linguistically trained person who comes across the material will surely (and rightly) dismiss it, as will other non-fundamentalist scholars. At best, some of Benner's very particular proposals might possibly be valid, but these are lost amid the highly unsatisfactory general treatment of the issues.

I am happy about the research that went into this book as well as several other books I ordered by Jeff A. Benner through Amazon. Every purchase I have made on Amazon has arrived quickly and in excellent condition. If you are interested in learning the heart and mind of the Father, I recommend this book to you.

Shalom to all the Saints of Elohim.

Here is another master peace from Jeff Benner. I thank Elohim for him and his ministry because he makes available the Hebrew alphabet and language as well as other teaching and learning materials for free from his website "The Ancient Hebrew Research Center. He also write books to teach those who wish to dive deeper into the WORD of Elohim. This book entitled "The Ancient Hebrew Language And Alphabet" teaches us the earliest Hebrew alphabet called the Pictograph/Paleo Hebrew. It is the language that Yahweh taught Moses. It is the alphabet and language in which the prophets used and prophesied from. Each Hebrew letter is a representation of the character of the Messiah. I believe that Yahweh wants and desires to teach His children from the very WORD of His mouth, using His pure language. Zephaniah 3:9 says "For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name (HaShem)of Yahweh; to serve him with one accord. It is time to sit at Yahweh's feet and learn from him, that we all as saints will call on His name (HaShem); proclaiming His HaShem to the world. I highly recommend that all saints purchase this book and begin the wonderful journey learning the language of the Heavens. Don't you think it is about time? Don't you think it is the season? Maranatha.

I am still currently reading this book and have yet to finish but I am having to time of my life reading it.

I'm not quite finished with the book, but it is very interesting to see an ancient perspective. The words are a lot like poetry. The pictograph language is controversial, but it does make sense that the Hebrews would use an alphabet like this because Abram, who became Abraham, came from Ur, which was a major city back then and became a nomad. It does help the meaning of words that have been taken out of context and the original thought and intent has been a bit lost. I would recommend this book. I think it will need further research to correlate meanings, but it is a great start into the deeper meaning of words, and the pictures the words create are quite beautiful. The ancient languages were pictoral; Chinese and Egyptian were as well.

The book is a great beginning study of anceint Hebrew. I just misunderstood what I was ordering. I'm really looking more for a Hebrew lexicon.

This book gives one a revealing perspective on how the languages of the scriptures evolved. One can also derive how different tranliterations and mis-transliterations were derived from the same core source. I wish it were a bit more comprehensive, but all in all, this was an interesting and enlightening read.