Customer Reviews

In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language (English and Hebrew Edition)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In The Beginning - A short History of the Hebrew Language by Joel M. Hoffman is possibly the most exiting book I've read in a decade. Hoffman's writing style is chipper and friendly; I never thought I'd be grinning widely while reading a book on linguistic theory. But it's more than that. In The Beginning is almost a coming of age novel, not just of the Hebrew language but of the whole of human speech. I'm sure it's often underestimated what the Hebrew language has done for mankind, but Hoffman explains and reveals with so much obvious fun that any reader with even the most modest interest in language feels quickened and finally informed.

The ability to read and write equals the ability to preserve data and complex thought. It equals the ability of a culture to form a reflective continuum the way the universe forms time. But written text used to be nothing more than a string of vague consonantal hints towards spoken words. Esoteric knowledge was always a key without which the text could not be unlocked, and writing was merely an extension of the oral tradition. All of this changed with the incredible invention of the Hebrews to use symbols for vowels. When this art became established reading and writing became available to the masses, and it competes with the printing press for the predicate of most important invention that lead to modern civilization.

Hoffman tells the story with as much feel for flair as for clarity, and In The Beginning treads confidently and with a continuous sense of awe upon the stage of evolution. It lists the unknowns without shame or the idle consolation of conjecture, and revitalizes petrified certainties into wells of alternatives. After a brief introductory chapter Hoffman reviews the 'Rules of the Game,' which is a general essay on the 'Three Theories of the World,' namely 1) The Dumb-Luck Theory-- everything happens by chance and that's it then; 2) The God-Theory-- everything happens because of God and that's it then; and 3) The Science Theory--there is un underlying order to the universe that we humans can understand.

The language in which the Bible was written is a formidable phenomenon and every serious student of the Bible should at least be acquainted with some of the achievements of this language. The Bible is by no means just another book in a bookstore, but a bright bolt of light that caused the bookstore!

"In the Beginning" is chock full of fascinating information about Hebrew and its history. The book grabs your attention from the first page and covers the invention of the alphabet, ancient Hebrew, the Hebrew of the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest copy of the Hebrew Bible (only 1,000 years old!), Modern Hebrew, and everything in between, all in manner that's readable and scholarly at the same time.
Hoffman's style is fun and engaging. One reviewer wrote that the book "reads like an adventure novel," and I couldn't agree more.

This book will not teach you Hebrew (and you don't have to know any Hebrew to understand it), but it is quickly becoming the de facto standard book *about* Hebrew.

I highly recommend "In the Beginning" for anyone interested in ancient languages, history, Hebrew, or the Bible.

This is a most interesting and enlightening treatise, written with scholarly authoritativeness. The author covers his subject most thoroughly and eloquently, even, as the title claims, it is a "short" history. However, his claim that Hebrew formed the original basis for ancient Greek and Latin would have been better served if he had provided more compelling evidence and documentation for this very startling assertion. The similarity of Aleph-Bet and Alpha-Beta isn't entirely convincing. Yet, in all fairness, the author does make many other revelatory and absorbing points throught his book which certainly seem incontrovertible based on his scholastic background.

Dr. Joel Hoffman's book "In the Beginning" is an excellent introduction into the study of the centuries-long history of Hebrew and its grammar. Hoffman manages to pack a lot of information into a very concise book and his writing style makes it a real pleasure to read. But what distinguishes this book from most books on the history of Hebrew is that it is written by a professional linguist from the perspective of contemporary linguistic theory, which does not equate language with its writing system, or label languages as "primitive" or "complex". Hoffman analyzes (admittedly sparse) information about the state of the Hebrew language in the last three millennia as a linguist would analyze any other language (living or dead). Hoffman does not pretend to have the final word on the subject. Instead, his book provides an excellent "Beginning" for a linguistically sophisticated study of the diachronic adventures of the Hebrew language. Anyone interested in Hebrew should read this book.

Speaking as a complete lay person with respect to Hebrew (but not with respect to linguistics), I can say that the book was indeed a fascinating introduction to the history and development of the language. I can't speak to some of the finer academic points of "what we know about Hebrew vs. what we don't know" (and my high rating of four stars perhaps betrays that ignorance further), but many of Hoffman's speculations were very intriguing -- even if, in some cases, he didn't have much evidence for them.

For those who are interested in the subject (but with less focus on one specific language), I would recommend Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language. It addresses some similar questions in evolutionary linguistics (and talks about Hebrew as well -- in addition to a number of other languages).

As someone who dabbles in linguistics, and an American Jew who learned Hebrew in school, I am fascinated by all things related to the Hebrew language. This is the first scholarly (as opposed to purely religious) book I have read on this fascinating subject. The book is simply fantastic, and I read it cover-to-cover without putting it down. The highest praise I can give is this: I got the book from my university library for free, but after having read it I plan to buy a copy to keep on my shelf.

I have just a few quibbles, and I only list them here because I know the author reads these reviews. There were several typos and at least one (minor) error in the edition I read. I also would have preferred more use of footnotes/endnotes -- the bibliography is great (and I plan to read many of the books referenced) but for specific claims throughout the book it would be nice to have a specific citation to the literature. Other than that, my only complaint is that I wish the book had been longer!

Mr. Hoffman fills many pages telling us what we don't know or don't know for sure about biblical Hebrew, but devotes almost no space to telling the reader in clear, concise language what we do know. There is no simple table telling the reader what the pronunciations were or probably were for each letter at each stage of Hebrew's development. There is no table or list showing how the same thought might have been expressed in early biblical Hebrew, late biblical Hebrew, rabbinic Hebrew and modern Hebrew. The reader must puzzle it all out for himself - and, of course, cannot. And there are some probable errors, such as the idea that the sound of the undageshed tav in biblical Hebrew could realistically have been /s/. The book is also marred by a large number of typographical errors, many of which should have been caught by a simple spell-check program, and the rest by simple proof-reading.

A great book for those who are interested in the origins of the language and how it continues to evolve even today. The book is easy to understand even without a knowledge of the Hebrew language. Altogether, a great report.

Dr. Hoffman makes writes his books in a way that is fun and engaging while being academically credible. I don't know of another book of this depth that has been as fun to read!

This book provides an interesting history of the evolution of Hebrew. Special attention is given to the idea that Hebrew deserves a special place in the evolution of writing because it was (supposedly) the language in which vowels were first incorporated into an alphabet or system of writing. The author even conjectures that the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh, was coined to exhibit this newly developed vowel system.

The central argument for the primacy of Hebrew as the cradle of vowels systems, as discussed in Chapter 3, seems to be that the spread and incorporation of vowels into other languages would have been more widespread if these vowels had been propagated by the more widespread language of Aramaic (noting that the Aramaic language and alphabet are similar to and closely related to that of Hebrew). That is, the slow spread of vowels into neighboring languages, such as Greek, suggests the obscure language of Hebrew as the source rather than the more widespread language of Aramaic.

The author notes that Aramaic appears to have developed these vowels during the same 9th or 10th century B.C. time frame as Hebrew, and that evidence does not favor either language as the first developer of these vowels. The author, however, confuses the reader by such statements as the opening sentence in Chapter 3: "Approximately 3000 years ago, the ancient Hebrews discovered what would be the precursors to every modern system of writing." This book would be more to my liking if the author had more uniformly maintained the balance between evidence and conjecture.