The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible [Hardcover]

Jeff A. Benner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1589397762 | ISBN-13: 978-1589397767 | Publication Date: August 29, 2005

All previous Biblical Hebrew lexicons have provided a modern western definition and perspective to Hebrew roots and words. This prevents the reader of the Bible from seeing the ancient authors' original intent of the passages. This is the first Biblical Hebrew lexicon that defines each Hebrew word within its original Ancient Hebrew cultural meaning. One of the major differences between the Modern Western mind and the Ancient Hebrew's is that their mind related all words and their meanings to a concrete concept. For instance, the Hebrew word "chai" is normally translated as "life", a western abstract meaning, but the original Hebrew concrete meaning of this word is the "stomach". In the Ancient Hebrew mind, a full stomach is a sign of a full "life". The Hebrew language is a root system oriented language and the lexicon is divided into sections reflecting this root system. Each word of the Hebrew Bible is grouped within its roots and is defined according to its original ancient cultural meaning. Also included in each word entry are its alternative spellings, King James translations of the word and Strong's number. Indexes are included to assist with finding a word within the lexicon according to its spelling, definition, King James translation or Strong's number.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

As the Bible was written in an ancient Near East culture it is imperative that the Bible be read from this perspective, not from a modern western one. This lexicon revolutionizes how we read the Bible and is designed to reveal insights into the Ancient Hebrew text of the Bible as never before seen.

About the Author

When Mr. Benner first began reading the Hebrew text of the Bible he quickly discovered that the Ancient Hebrews did not think in the same manner we do and realized that we should not be reading the Biblical text as if we were reading a modern Novel. Mr. Benner founded the "Ancient Hebrew Research Center" in 1999 in order to promote and teach the Ancient Hebrew language, culture and thought to those interested in learning how to read the Bible from an Ancient Hebrew perspective. Mr. Benner is also the author of several books related to the study of the Ancient Hebrew language and thought including Learn to Read Biblical Hebrew, The Ancient Hebrew Language and Alphabet and His Name is One.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 616 pages
• Publisher: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing (August 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589397762
• ISBN-13: 978-1589397767
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mr. Benner, founder of the Ancient Hebrew Research Center (www.ancient-hebrew.org) and the Mechanical Translation of the Hebrew Bible Project (www.mechanical-translation.org), has authored many books on the subject of the Ancient Hebrew alphabet, language and culture and speaks around the country on this same subject. Mr. Benner's goal is to teach proper Biblical interpretation by providing others with the tools needed to read and understand the Bible from its original Hebraic context.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars An unfortunate result of non-scholarship, May 10, 2008

By 

Paul Stevenson "Linguist" (Duhok, Iraq) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible (Hardcover)

I had started to write a much harsher review of this book when I decided to find out what I could about the author. It turns out that he is an engineer who became fascinated with Hebrew. I have now been moved by pity more than outrage to write a general statement about this book and others of its ilk.

Mr. Benner states on his website that he has no formal training in Hebrew, though lots of self study. I must recognize that his motives in preparing his many books on the subject are sincere, but his utter lack of familiarity with the scholarly literature and sound research methodology leaves him unprepared for writing even the most basic sort of book on Hebrew.

The example cited by another reviewer of *bara'* "create" is a perfect case in point. Consultation of the standard Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon shows that the root refers to "shaping by cutting," for example, cutting a reed to shape it for a particular use. It looks like Mr. Benner took a lone use of a homophonous root in a reflexive form in 1 Samuel 2:29 (meaning "to fatten oneself") and tried to generalize this to all uses of the root. This is hardly a legitimate procedure unless he can prove, by investigation of cognates in Akkadian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic, Ethiopic and other Semitic languages that there is evidence of a shared cognate with these two widely divergent uses, and that neither use of this cognate in fact derives from a loan from another language, such as Sumerian, from which Semitic languages borrowed many words. In fact, BDB cites cognates of *br'* "create, shape by cutting" from Arabic, Phoenician, Akkadian, Sabean and Aramaic. For the homophonous *br'* meaning "be fat," BDB refers the reader to the root *mr'* (b and m are both bilabial and variation between them in cognate languages is not unusual, a fact that a person with adequate linguistic training would recognize). We learn that this root is the usual form of the root meaning "be fat," as attested by cognates in Akkadian and Arabic. Hebrew has a number of words derived from it, such as *mri'* "fatling". Thus, we see that Mr. Benner has used a superficial correspondence, inadequately researched, to devise a creative but entirely unwarranted bogus etymology. He has served his readers very poorly.

However, self-taught amateurs such as Mr. Benner are rarely aware of the necessity for such careful research, nor do they tend to have the reference works necessary for such in-depth research.

Aside from the example of this one word, statements such as "This is the first Biblical Hebrew lexicon that defines each Hebrew word within its original Ancient Hebrew cultural meaning" make Mr. Benner's ignorance of the relevant literature glaringly obvious. If he had bothered to become familiar with the standard scholarly lexicons and the vast scholarly literature, he would see that a great deal has in fact been done to help us understand Hebrew words in the context of Hebrew culture. It is a shame that he has invested so much work in such an ill-informed effort. If he were to undertake serious studies at the graduate level, his considerable zeal and interest could be channeled into truly useful works for the interested public. As is, he is producing a string of very poorly informed books that simply add to the great pile of low-quality popular literature on Hebrew which propounds a great deal more myth than fact. It grieves me to see many people interested in this area so ill served by so many well-intentioned but utterly unprepared authors.

P.S. I just discovered the image of p. 54 of this dictionary, which is displayed on this site. Having looked it over, I am appalled! This is far worse than the BARA entry. Mr. Benner gives the pictographic Proto-Canaanite forms of letters used to write Hebrew and then tries to link the pictures to general semantic concepts associated with roots. This is just ludicrous. It shows abject ignorance of the nature of alphabetic writing systems, to say nothing of the fact that speech came to exist millennia before writing systems. It looks as if Mr. Benner could have borrowed some of the wilder ideas of Athanasius Kircher (a 17th century Jesuit scholar and very creative interpreter of Egyptian hieroglyphs), but Mr. Benner's scholarship is so shallow that I would be astonished to learn that he had done enough research to have even com across Kircher's name. No, I suspect that Mr. Benner has simply re-invented this particular wheel of ignorance bordering on superstition.

For those interested in real Hebrew dictionaries, I recommend the most recent standard scholarly dictionary, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, or the older, less expensive and still good Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Smaller but still useful is A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament.

68 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must lexicon for the serious student of Biblical Hebrew., March 21, 2006

By 

L. Taylor (Roanoke, Va.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible (Hardcover)

There are numerous lexicons, dictionaries, and concordances on the market for students to use when translating Hebrew words as they appear in the Old Testament Hebrew text into English. This is one the few (and the only one I know of personally) that not only gives on the viewpoint of translating Hebrew words into English, while carrying across the thought process that comes with Ancient Hebrew culture.

A good example is the word, "Bara" in Genesis 1:1, where it says, "In the beginning, God created (bara) the Heavens and the Earth. The word "Bara" in most concordances and lexicons will simply trnaslated this word as "to create or to make". However, this is an abstract translation. A more concrete translation, as seen from a ancient Hebrew perspective would be "To fatten, or to fill", as what is fattened is filled. Thus, Genesis 1:1 would be better translated, "In the Beginning, God fattened and filled the Heavens and the Earth", portraying the idea of God filling a Earth that was without form and void, and not the idea of him creating it that way.

Another good thing about this book, is it is keyed to the Strongs exhuastive concordance, so you can look up what the word means in this lexicon, and this carry it over to the Strongs concordance to see the various translations. I highly recommend this work. There needs to be more works into the study of Ancient Hebrew culture & thought, and how it effects Biblical interpreation and translation. The only reason why I give it 4 stars, is because there are some roots (only a few) that are left without all their proper translations, but that is the case with pretty much any lexicon, which is why a serious student should always have more than one resource in the first place.

46 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Totally silly!, July 29, 2007

By 

Vazhaspa Spitman "Vazhaspa Spitman" (USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible (Hardcover)

Did you know that ancient people invented writing first, then started creating concepts and spoken words accordingly-?? Mind though, I'm not talking about Grammatology of Jacque Derrida but the postmodern "Ancient Hebrew Lexicon .."
Seriously:
Don't let the misleading title of the book or any positive (hoaxed?) reviews fool you. I could not believe my own eyes when I first paged through this so called "Lexicon". In short, this book is written by an unknown genius whom scholars may cruelly describe as a "crack pot". To see the point, let me give you an outline of the dictionary. The author has written the bulk of Biblical Hebrew words in his own version of Phoenician script; then like medieval magicians (who thought Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was series of encoded pictographs) has deciphered his home-made pictographic lexicon. In this regard, the author acts like an ancient Greek oracle: His etymological methodology is under sever influence of a phantasmagoric volcanic fume rising out of his own imagination.
If you are not allergic, let me invite you to inhale a sample of this laughing gas:
(1)The Hebrew word "KB" means `star'. Let's see how the author has discovered the root of this word: He starts with the interpretation of his own pictographic version of "KB" (written with a picture of a hand and a house). The result is what you may call delusional etymology: The first pictograph "is a picture of the palm of hand and represents a covering; the [second sign] is a picture of a tent. Combined these mean `covering of the tent'." -SO WHAT? You may ask, WHAT IS IT GOT TO DO WITH `STAR'?? The answer is so easy if you are patient enough and let the oracle continue: "The black goat hair fabric used for the roof of the tent allows some light through giving the appearance of stars overhead." (p.144)
CAN YOU BELIEVE that 611 pages of this deluxe lexicon are based on such jargons?
(2) second example: the Hebrew word K' ='chastise', is written in this lexicon with two pictographs: the first "is a picture of the palm of hand" again, the second is "a picture of a wall. Combined these mean `palm wall'." Now please find the etymological connection between the concept of `chastising' and `hand-wall' ! Here, even our author's imagination may not help-- (I could have thought of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and the chastisement of its protagonist!). But, wait! Here is the author's resolution: "To correct or chastise with a firm hand." (p 145).
Order this book if you need a real fun! Otherwise I recommend the following excellent book:
George Fohrer's "Hebrew and Aramaic Dictionary of the Old Testament"