Customer Reviews

Biblical Hebrew: A Text and Workbook (Yale Language Series)

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

 

 

Here is what I liked about this book: (1) It is aimed at people who like inductive learning, which specifically means this: It doesn't teach all the exceptions to the rules and stuff at first, nor does it overwhelm you with huge complete charts of grammar rules. Instead it teaches the rules and patterns that are most commonly found in the Biblical texts first (which are incomplete but easy), then it gradually expands to fill in the gaps. (2) It has a great vocabulary list in the back that lists the Hebrew words in order according to how frequently they appear in the Old Testament. Great! (3) Each lesson, on average, focuses on only one or two new concepts, and applies it to a Scripture, so that after each lesson you will be able to translate that much more Scripture.

Here are several things to be careful about, though: (1) You should be comfortable with the Hebrew alphabet before even starting the lessons, or else you might be frustrated and feel like your progress is slow. (2) It teaches inductively and gradually, exposing rules little by little. If you are dependent on seeing all pertinent rules about a given aspect of a language at once, then it might be confusing. (3) The content may seem dry and technical if you can't concentrate without being entertained. Any excitement you experience will be from personal discoveries through the lesson, and not from induced humor from the authors themselves.

Most importantly: Know the Hebrew alphabet first! I hated this book before I knew it, but once I got past that, I started over and saw the genius of its presentation. :) I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because it's not for everyone.

Being primarily a self-taught student, I really liked this grammar. It has a few drawbacks that would apply to other independent learners like me (unfortunately it seems there is no escaping this no matter where you turn). But on the whole it measures up to the highest standards, and somehow even possesses a kind of gracefulness, which is a strange thing to say about a grammar. I imagine the author as a charming and extremely intelligent and gifted teacher, if her book has anything to say about her.
This grammar begins with the most frequent verbal constructions and provides useful clues for recognizing and analyzing them. Each chapter ("lesson") is taught through a real phrase or sentence from Scripture, illustrating the grammatical form of the lesson. Basically this is an "inductive" or "tutorial" approach. I think it is appealing to students who are in danger of being bored to death by exercises and charts. She has a nice way of finding helpful clues to get you thinking your way through trouble spots, mostly in terms of recognizing so-called weak letters ("missing letter rules"; "footprint dagesh"; "traveling dagesh"; "dot vowel" characteristics, etc.), and offers useful grammatical tips that make a big difference (this is where she really seems like a teacher who is "with you" while you study). Later lessons reinforce earlier ones. by the end you will have worked through, word by word and verse by verse, all these passages: Gen 22:1-14; Gen 28:10-29:11; Ex 3:1-17; Gen 37:1-24; Deut 6:1-25; 1 Kgs 17:1-24; 1 Kgs 18:20-46; 1 Kgs 19:1-21; Ps 24; and Ps 100. Quite an accomplishment!
a negative is that the book seems to presuppose a classroom setting (even though it is very thorough in its explanations -- almost as if it were a transcript of an actual class). Therefore, in cases where Kittel provides a paradigm for you, often you need to "fill it out" yourself, and this can leave you with an uneasy feeling since you probably (at least once) would like to "see" it. There are full paradigms in the back of the book but they are always confusing to beginning students. It would help to have another grammar for an occasional take on the "complete" picture of a certain stem (Qal, Piel, Nifal, etc.). With this book, you may find you need to stop every now and then and just practice a single verb construction for a few days.
One tip: if you are a complete beginner without a teacher and tutor and you find Hebrew completely frightening, work through "The First Hebrew Primer" by Simon et al. It will open all the doors for you, and you'll be able to tackle the other grammars from there. And finally, I can say that I've used about four or five Hebrew grammars to help me learn and get practice, but this one by Kittel is the only one I've worked through page by page, learning all she has to teach and doing all the translation work and exercises. I hope some other students will be inspired to do the same, as this is what it is really designed to do.

After struggling with all the rote-memorization in Kelley, I wanted something more user-friendly. I tried Kittel, wary of the "inductive approach," fearing I wasn't going to get the grammar I needed to learn. I was wrong. Kittel presents the grammar in useable, easily-memorized chunks, and right off the bat presents actual Bible passages, holding your hand with many practical helps all along the way. At first, I was dismayed that there was no answer key for the exercises, but as it turned out, I didn't need one. For the grammar-minded, the appendix contains all the paradigms, and helpfully each is pared down to what is unique about each, leaving out unnecessary duplication. The book starts with the Bible and uses it to explain the general features of the language. And unexpectedly, Kittel makes this approach work beautifully.

This is a large book with a sturdy cover, very pleasant to handle. The font is clear, the text well ventilated.
The whole approach is highly imaginative and stimulating. Instead of just throwing heaps of vocabulary and verbs at your face, the author takes one Biblical sentence(all the material covered in the book is Biblical!) and analyses it with great accuracy and refinement, all the while asking you very intelligent questions, so that there is a real dialogue between you and the book. This I find the most outstanding feature of this manual.
The only flaws are the fact that you have to buy an inordinately expensive answer book plus a Hebrew Bible in order to be able to fully use it.
The second part of the manual is a guided reading of Biblical passages, so that this grammar is also a Biblical reader for beginners.

I have used this book as the primary text book in an introductory Biblical Hebrew course at the seminary level and I believe it has helped me develop an excitement for and a proficiency at reading Hebrew faster than another text would have.

As another reviewer has pointed out, this book does not follow the traditional layout of a grammar textbook. Rather than slowly build from the simplest constructions to the more complicated, this book teaches grammar as well as vocabulary in the order of its frequency in the Bible. This technique has the advantage of getting you to the point of reading the Bible (which is why we're doing this in the first place) faster than you otherwise could. The disadvantage, as pointed out before, is that you may not grasp the subtleties of the more complicated, but more frequent, constructions until later in the book. I think that's a worthwhile trade-off. By the end of the course you will still have covered the same material at the same depth as in another course, but this text gets you reading real material sooner, which is advantageous in holding a student's interest in learning a classical language.

In sum, of the introductory Hebrew grammars I've seen, I would recommend this book most strongly to anyone wishing to learn to read the Hebrew Bible. This book does an excellent job of getting the beginning student to the level where they can comfortably read biblical prose and are ready for more advanced grammatical study.

I find this book a joy to use- it makes learning the language simple! The one quibble I have is with the English-to-Biblical Hebrew translations: they are unness. for studying the Bible in Hebrew, and insufficient for studying modern Hebrew as a spoken language... but as they are limited to a single ex. every four chapters or so, omitting them does not pose a problem. I find the introduction of words and grammatical concepts in the order of their freq. fabulous! (You aren't constantly seeing things 'that you will learn in chapter 56') And the frequency-controlled vocabulary in the early chapters makes the index easy to use. I have successfully used a King-James Bible to check my Hebrew-English translations for word order and the like (as all exercizes are taken from the Bible and the book chapter and verse are given) and phonetically read random pages from the Hebrew Bible(before I know the vocab) to increase my speed. The level of education and understanding with this text is very high, and the presentation is consistant with the way a language is naturally learned. The process is based on 'immersion learning' and anyone trained for foriegn service is taught language in this way, as it makes concepts immediately available for use. I am having glorious fun with this text and hope to teach a group of friends with it next year.

Concerning another's review, I must disagree on some things. Learning from the most common grammatical constructions to the least makes sense. And yes, the Vav consecutive/conversive rule does seem a bit odd place to start, if one knows Modern Hebrew. But this book is about Biblical Hebrew, and the vav consecutive is about the most common grammatical feature with verbs in the Bible. Also, the issue of pronunciation is no big deal. Unless one is going to be a chanter, it doesn't matter. No one has determined which pronunciation is correct for Biblical Hebrew, and there are MANY variations of Modern Hebrew just in Israel alone. My only complaint would be that the editors should have used the easiest vowel system available since pronunciation is not an issue. Many courses, by Jewish teachers and professors, use the simpler Modern Hebrew pronunciation.

This book has been an excellent resource for learning Biblical Hebrew in my experience. One commentator said you need to learn the alefbet first. Well, of course you do, and it is in the front of the book. The book instructs from the most common grammar and vocabulary to the less common. There are times when you feel like a question has been raised by the lesson and you wonder if it will be answered. But I have found that it has been later on, when it needs to be. And if you are willing to reference through the book, looking at points in later chapters or study the glossary, you'll find the answers sooner than you really need to know them. Important information is charted and can be referenced ANYTIME for rote memorization. Rare is the person who will find a good Hebrew book easy. That's because Hebrew is not for the timid, though it's far from the hardest language to read. Some may find this book difficult to learn from, but the problem is not the book. The problem is the lack of seriousness of the student to learn Hebrew correctly. Any person who thinks they can just memorize words and know a language doesn't understand language. This book is excellent for the serious learner. It is laid out well. After the first lesson, you will have learned 4% of the Hebrew Bible!, with only learning 3 words and one particle. Verb conjugations in Hebrew can be very discouraging; but they can be in any language since they are the hardest part of any language to learn. If one is willing to slow down on the verb sections and truly study the patterns, they will get it. If anyone doesn't want to learn verb conjugations, don't try to learn any language. The book handles the verb issue excellently---the second best I've seen. Develop a work ethic, be patient and determined, and you'll learn it.

I found this book a very useful aid for learning Hebrew by myself. For one example: at last the construct form made sense! I wasn't an absolute beginner when I started, since I already had mastered the alphabet and begun to accumulate a small vocabulary, but I'd been frustrated by the other texts I'd tried in order to learn in a systematic way.

I do wish there was an answer key available, so I could check my work on the exercises.

I have studied many languages, and when I turned to biblical Hebrew I was delighted to find such a terrific text. It was easy to follow and a joy to use.

This book teaches the language in frequency order, teaching you the most common things first, which allows you to quickly begin reading authentic texts. This method is effective since this is also the way that children learn their first language, learning the most common words first. Learning in this way makes the language more natural and much easier to pick up quickly.