Customer Reviews

The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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"

I would recommend this as a textbook example of linguistic fallacies. This should be read as a companion text by students who are reading James Barr's *Semantics of Biblical Language*; Moises Silva's *Biblical Words and Their Meaning*; or D. A. Carson's *Exegetical Fallacies*.

The author, well-intentioned and entirely sincere I assume, commits the following fallacies within the first 3-4 pages of the book:
* Root Fallacy: assuming that a word's meaning is best understood by examining its root, rather than allowing its contextual usage to determine its meaning.

* Linkage of Language and Mentality: the idea that the nature of a language both reflects and/or constrains the ways in which native speakers thought. "Hebrew is concrete; Greek is abstract." That this is a false characterization and false dichotomy has been shown repeatedly (e.g., see Barr, Semantics, pp. 8-45).

* Alphabetic-Pictographic Confusion: The author assumes that because paleo-hebrew script was pictographic in nature that the meaning of the words is embedded in the pictographs. This is false. Paleo-Hebrew took the Phoenician alphabet and used it to create an alphabet where each symbol stood for a specific sound in the language and had no independent meaning.

The essential appeal of this book is that it purports to open up an entirely new way of reading and understanding the OT. What it does, in fact, is impose a seriously flawed set of ideas, which have no legitimate support in the history of Jewish, Arabic, or Western study of the Hebrew language, upon biblical Hebrew.

I recommend that this book be avoided unless one already has a good foundation in linguistics and biblical languages.

I would recommend:
A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (Hebrew Edition), which is unfortunately expensive at the moment.

To say this Book is on track is to be on the wrong track. The major problem of the text is that the writers, readers, and culture that lived out the very Hebrew Bible he is commenting on never practiced what he is doing. The writers didn't do it, those commenting on the writers before them didn't do it. No one ever thought of doing this. Etymology is alive and well in Hebrew scholarship and his claims to be the first are flatly false. I browsed the book and he cannot prove the approach he has taken. The answer is not found in a pieces of letters approach, but in reading the Hebrew text. When writers commented on what Moses had written, or Daniel reading Jeremiah's works, they read them as straight forward with basic definitions that anyone with a little Hebrew knowledge could find.

As I am more courious about the actual original Bible than I am a linguist. This will help in knowing more of the early peoples and thier view of the world and their place in it. I am a person that believes our Creator gave Moses the Words of the Holy Book, it truly is an instruction Book for all humanity to follow. There are more than Moses who were inspired to write, that entire tome is really a good read.

Excellent service in receiving this book. I am also very impressed with this work.

Thank you Jeff for tackling such an enormous project and doing an excellent job.

I have been in the ministry for nearly 30, and have been using this book Ancient Hebrew Lexicon for over a year now. It has been a valuable resource in expanding my understanding of the Old Testament. Having used other references, such as Wilson's O.T. Word Studies, I have often found some generic confirmation, in Wilson's et al, concerning the explanations given by Jeff. In fact one friend, who was raised in Orthodox Judaism and has now accepted Jesus as his Messiah, shared with me concepts, definitions and things that I have found confirmed by Jeff Benner.

I notice that Jeff has encountered some criticism of his work. That certainly is no surprise. I have a graduate degree in another area, and am planning to work on another. One thing I have found in the "upper" academic circles is frequent lack of consensus. Often what is promoted as "absolute" is nothing more than someone else's ego/agenda based on their interpretation of their data.

Truth is verified in the application. I have continually found Mr. Benner's Lexicon to be accurate, not only in application of one word, but in coordination with the same word in other scriptures, when correct hermeneutic principles are adhered to. The basic understandings and revelations given me by the Holy Spirit have been confirmed by this Lexicon.

Back in the sixties there was a debate held on television for a half an hour between those Christians who spoke in tongues and those who did not. At the end of the program the moderator (who was not a Christian, let alone a "tongue-talker") summed up the debate with these words, "Well folks, one thing is clear. One group has an argument, the other has an experience." Jeff Benner has a lot more than an argument!

I received this book a few days ago, fast as usual from Amazon and am really enjoying it. My Hebrew studies over the years were feeling rather stalled and this book gave me a new energy to keep going in them. I have also enjoyed a few chuckles so far about how interesting some Hebrew words roots were related to common Hebrew words so that makes my study fun. I did not find it hard at all to learn the ancient script from the Aramaic style and now hardly even notice except when I use the ancient pictographs to try to think of the relationship before I look at the author's conclusions. I have been told that this was hard for some but I found it easy so maybe it just depends on the person and the way they think. If you are feeling stagnated in your study or maybe even if you are new to Hebrew I think you will love this reference. I will not give the book five stars though because in the first part of the book in the short tutorial on how the author is presenting the information and why, there are some errors that unless you are pretty fluent in Hebrew will trip up your understanding of his point. I would hope that the next edition would correct some of the charts and spellings but I did not find it a problem once I caught what was going on. I plan to get Mr. Benner's work on Exodus and Geneses in the future.