Customer Reviews

A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax

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One can easily memorize word lists but know very little of how Biblical Hebrew words come together to create meaning. This is a great little handbook for beginner Hebrew syntax and usage. There are other more robust guides for Hebrew syntax (Lambdin, Gesenius, Waltke & O'Connor, etc.), but this book excels in its structural presentation and compact size. Each syntactical definition is accompanied by a simple example from the actual text of the OT to illuminate the principle that is taught. It is a must for taking the next step beyond vocabulary memorization.

It's stunning that after years of Biblical authorship, we still don't have a good guide to Biblical grammar for beginning or intermediate level students. Biblical grammar is a tricky thing: it is the product of modern scholarship's attempt to reconstruct a Biblical grammar. Arnold and Choi's contribution is helpful in many ways: it allows someone with only basic grammatical knowledge to penetrate and learn Biblical grammar, someone who would otherwise be lost by the concision of Moshe Greenberg or overwhelmed by Gesenius. It will explain to you that there are no tenses in Hebrew, only "aspects" (perfect and imperfect), and it will run down long taxonomical lists of grammatical "uses", such as pages and pages and pages of the various "meanings" of the lamed. (For what it's worth, there is increasing scholarship today that Biblical Hebrew in fact is a tensed language, not an aspected language, though, not surprisingly, Arnold and Choi do not point out that there is an opposing opinion to theirs.)

The problem, and it is a major one, is that Arnold and Choi make no effort to present to the reader which meanings and uses are relatively established and which are speculative. When I went over many of the uses with a professor of Biblical grammar, I learned that they establish entire categories for uses that occur once in the whole Bible. This is their downfall: if they can make another use or "case," then they will (the astronomical number of special uses of the construct form is absurd), and then they'll tell us that we have to put certain examples in those categories. We are told, for example, that the causative hifil of "see" is the permissive hifil, as in "God let him see" when in fact there is no reason not to translate it "God showed him."

In a pedagogical sense, this has a negative effect on the reader, since we are led to believe that there are dozens and dozens of uses and cases we must memorize, when in fact they could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by simple estimating frequency next to each of their entries, so a student could know what to concentrate on. Furthermore, their hyper-scholarly approach requires that the reader know lots of grammatical terms, which few students today know.

Is it helpful at all? Yes, particularly with verb forms. Most students, even those with significant modern Hebrew under their belts, do not understand the verb form uses in the Bible, such as that Nifal is rarely a passive, and is most often a reflexive and sometimes a reciprocal. That's very important when translating the Bible. Similarly, if you don't understand what it means that Pi'el is used causally for statives, then you can't understand Biblical Hebrew, and this book will explain to you what that means (though you will have to look up "stative" in a dictionary), or what a "putative pi'el" is, which is vital. Read those sections of their book five or six times and you'll eventually "get it."

Still, I personally prefer Moshe Greenberg's Introduction to Hebrew, though that's very short and very dense and assumes you have a basic grounding in Hebrew and grammatical terms.

I have used this book extensively as I have exegeted the Hebrew text and it is fantastic. This guide is snap to use for about 95% of the questions I have regarding the text. The other 5% I use Walkte and O'Connor.

This book is excellent for the student of Biblical Hebrew. Often times, many beginning students do not fully learn the rules of syntax in the first couple of semesters of Biblical Hebrew, and it is not until the student begins to read in upper level classes that the fundamentals of syntax are truly necessary. This book meets the need for a concise guide for syntax, explaining in simple ways how things such as the waw verbal sequences and the varied uses of prepositional prefixes work in sentences. The explanations are very simple, and a student who has performed competently in one or two semesters of Hebrew should not have any trouble discerning the terms and lingo of Hebrew grammar and syntax. The book is basically a highly abridged version of Waltke and O'Connor's Biblical Hebrew Syntax, a thick and essential volume that students will want to graduate to upon mastering Arnold and Choi's smaller volume.

I have used this book quite extensively in my own exegesis classes (Dr. Bill Arnold is one my profs) and it has served me very well. Thus, I recommend it to any student of Hebrew that needs reinforcement in their understanding of Hebrew syntax.

This Book is easy to understand, designed very well and offers good explanations. It is not, however, a reference grammar. It offers alot of footnotes that refer to the bigger grammars for further study. I wish I had used it instead of Waltke and O'Conner for second year Hebrew, but still there is no getting around the need for a more indepth Grammar. Read this book, then buy Waltke and O'Conner.

This is a book I've been looking for. It's nice to have a reference book with all the syntax rules organized and structured. I've used a number of grammars for Biblical Hebrew and some of them deal with syntax to one degree or another, but no one has a summary of syntax rules. This is a great complement to one's study of Biblical Hebrew -- it's not a substitute for a grammar book. I highly recommend it before moving on to Waltke and O'Connor.

Arnold and Choi state in the beginning of the books that their work is to be an "intermediate reference grammar for biblical Hebrew", and I would say that it succeeds wonderfully at that. The work does very well at being concise while at the same time not leaving a great deal of ambiguity (though at time intentionally stating the ambiguity where it persists even for scholars). I teach Biblical Hebrew at the college level but am restricted to a 2semester program which limits me to introductory Hebrew, yet the readability of this book has been very helpful I brining up basic syntax to my students. I would very much recommend this book.

For practicality, the table of contents is very thorough and serves as nearly a summary for the basic categories of syntax if you area already familiar with the terminology, otherwise it makes it very easy to navigate. Each syntactical idea is introduced with a brief (sometimes longer) prose explanation. This is a huge advantage over other syntax works with jump right into examples, which can be difficult to distinguish.

One thing I whicho they would have included was pronominal suffixes and pronouns in a section of their own. Pronouns are so pervasive sometimes knowing how to analyze their antecedent would be helpful, but then again, Waltke O'Connor does alright :)

This book introduces basic issues of Hebrew syntax to beginning and intermediate students.

The work is set out in five parts. After the Introduction there are chapters on Nouns (Nominative, Genitive, Accusative, Apposition, Adjectives, Determination, Numerals), Verbs (Stem, Aspect, Modals, Nonfinites, Verbal Sequences), Particles (Prepositions, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Particles of Existence/Nonexistence, The Particles hinneh and W^hinneh), Clauses and Sentences (Nominal and Verbal Clauses, Subordinate Clauses, Additional Sentence Types). Two Appendices (Stem Charts), a Glossary , Bibliography, Subject and Scripture indices complete the book.

Highly recommended for seminarians and other students of Hebrew.

As a beginning student of Hebrew at the graduate level, I selected this book to supplement our course grammar. I found this text to offer understandable extension to information in the grammar. I am very pleased with my purchase, and believe Arnold and Choi have, in a compact work, provided biblical Hebrew students a very valuable tool for understanding how the language goes together.

This is by far the easiest Hebrew Grammar tool I have used. It is very readable and simple to understand and incorporate into Hebrew studies. The only gripe I have is that the outline style organization method is somewhat confusing if you've been studying for more than a couple of hours. Other than that, it is a great tool to use along with a larger lexicon or other more comprehensive resource.