Customer Reviews

A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew (Revised Edition)

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

 

 

This is a fine intro grammar for Biblical Hebrew. Ultimately, however, that is all it is. It gives the basics and does so in a well laid out manner. Finding topics is pretty easy using either the index of the table of contents. Explanations are extraordinarily thorough - this being the primary positive trait of this book.

More advanced grammars are need for the serious student of Biblical Hebrew (see Joüon-Muraoka; Waltke-O'Connor; Gesenius, etc.). But I keep Seow at hand for quick reminders and explanations for my students.

Unfortunately, many teachers seem to think this book serves as an intro text. Seow apparantly thought by adding exercises to the end of every chapter that it could serve this purpose, as well. I disagree. The order in which concepts are presented does not facilitate quick and easy access to the Hebrew text. Seow gives all of the minutiae on a given concept before moving on. One example should suffice: verbs are not even addressed until chapter VIII, before which nouns in all their forms (geminate, segolate, mem-prefix nouns, tav-prefix nouns, etc.), adjective inflection and patterns (qatol, qatel, qatal, qall, etc.), and an intro to BDB and 'Reading Markers and Pausal Forms' have all been addressed ad nauseum.

By contrast, A First Hebrew Primer by Simon, Resnikoff, and Motzkin serves as a fantastic intro text. It's laid out in a manner which gets students into the Hebrew Scriptures much quicker. This may seem like a small thing, but increases the level of interest in the student tremendously.

A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew receives four stars because it's a pretty good elementary grammar. If you're looking for an intro text, though, please look first at A First Hebrew Primer. It will be worth your time. Then you can use Seow's book to supplement what the Primer doesn't deal with as completely.

Seow's introductions to noun morphology, the article, prepositions and pronouns are good. However, I found Seow's verb introductions too steep for me, a student who had no previous exposure to Hebrew or any other Semitic language.

Seow does not drill the student enough toward confidence in reading whole sentences and extended passages.

Seow provides excellent excurses about the BDB lexicon, reading markers and pausal forms, nomenclature for verbal patterns and root types, reference grammars, poetic Hebrew, and orientation to the Hebrew Bible.

I do recommend Seow's book as a review text. Because of the steep verb introductions, I do not recommend it as the main text for students who have no previous familiarity with Hebrew or any other Semitic language.

This is an excellent grammar. However, it is not a do it yourself beginner's book. It requires either a good instructor, or enough of a background in Biblical Hebrew to appreciate the complexity of the grammar and the thoroughness of Seow's approach. There are a few typographical errors. Seow also has a tendency to slip important concepts in without any fanfare. But his reinforcement of the material by picking unaltered Biblical texts to demonstrate is excellent. The addition of a volume with exercises is needed. It is a textbook, therefore not a complete grammar. Gesenius is still good to have on the side.

Having studied Hebrew by translating Torah, I have found the organization of this book to be immensely helpful. Reading through it, I frequently find myself thinking "Aha! That's why it was like that!" or "Oh, that's why I had a hard time finding that form in the BDB." After hearing plenty of experts tell me how logical Hebrew is, it's nice to actually see the logic of it clearly laid out. It's also great to have the purpose of the trope explained without having to learn to sing it myself.

Seow's progression through the basics of Hebrew grammar is recognized in many seminaries and universities. Sometimes his definitions and explanations of certain Hebrew phenomena are oversimplified, but all in all this is a great tool for the beginner. It's compact, hardbound, and easy to follow. The basic edition lacks an answer key, so one should be hesitant to utilize this book outside a classroom setting or for independent study. The only problems with the book are it's lack of exhaustive index at the rear, it's inability to teach the student to think from English to Hebrew, and some of its Hebrew spellings are incorrect (as pointed out by a former instructor). All in all, I recommend it.

Prof. Seow's grammar is methodical and well laid out, and clearly informed by a love and deep appreciation for the language of the Old Testament. Another feature of this grammar I liked was the extensive use of verbatim quotations from each book of the Old Testament as part of the grammatical exercises. Highly recommended.

I am currently in a Biblical Hebrew class where we are using this grammer. I have found it to be a very good textbook. It forces you to use the BDB Lexicon, and your Hebrew bible, which are the main reasons to take Biblical Hebrew in the first place. It goes at a good pace, and a good order. The exercises, although tedious, are extremly helpful, and aid to Hebrew knowledge. I have heard of people using other Hebrew grammar books, and they do not understand the language as well as those of us using this book. I highly recommend this book. It would be hard to understand this individually, but it is difficult to learn any language like that.

While no one grammar is perfect, this one is fatally flawed by not having a Hebrew to English glossary. Had I known this, I would have purchased the first edition instead, which does have one. I also don't like having to use a separate Hebrew text (plus a dictionary) to do the exercises, which means you cannot use this grammar on the go. The explanations are not clear, and Seow gives you too many vocabulary words and not enough easy excercises to reenforce them.
The pros are that you do read a lot of the Hebrew Bible and you are more prepared to move on to real reading, but even so, I think a much better choice is Weingreen's "A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew." At the very least, though, get Seow's first edition because trying to use a grammar without a Hebrew to English glossary is a nightmare. I don't know what Seow was thinking in leaving one out. I really regret buying this book.

Having used this text in my introductory Classical Hebrew studies I found the order of the lessons to be incredibly illogical, jumping from one verbal stem to another and then back to the first, rather than covering each one individually and thoroughly. Further, the whole book is pedagogically atrocious. Practice exercises in the book recommend translations from the Tanakh that contain a great deal of grammar that has not yet been covered in the book, rather than offering simplified paraphrases. Further, the book offers no practice in translating from English to Hebrew, which is invaluable in learning Classical Hebrew. Instead, I would suggest Thomas Lambdin's grammar which, though a bit more expensive, is worth every penny.

From what I understand Seow's quite the expert, and finds flashcards fun. While I find languages interesting and fascinating, they are still rather difficult for me, and this book didn't help that very much. There are very few typos, and he has plenty of examples, but he didn't use very clear language in explaning how the language works, my professor had to translate from Seow to student so that we could translate Hebrew!

While I'm sure this would/will make an excellent review book, I do not reccommend it for beginners. I also second the earlier comments about how he explains each minute detail of an aspect (and every exception of that detail, no matter how rare) of the language before moving on to the next aspect, which allowed me to forget things much easier: I've worked steadily at Hebrew for almost two years now, and still only remember most of the basic grammar with the help of a flashcard of the binyanim and constant review. My Greek, on the other hand, while I've studied it for half the time, is much better.