Customer Reviews

Introduction to Biblical Hebrew

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Lambdin's book is not bad - it is more pedagogical and suitable for self-study than most of the old traditional hebrew texts such as Weingreen and Davidson. However for someone using the book for self-study purposes and not taking a Hebrew course concurrently it may be difficult to jump start your language study with Lambdin: the introductory chapter on sounds and spelling is not well written and may have the effect of discouraging the student from further reading. But beyond that the book is fairly easy to digest.

My only other concern is with the paperback edition. The print of the Hebrew letters and points is small. Have a look at a copy before you order. This may not seem significant as you read this review but once you start studying from it you may have regrets.

In my opinion, Lambdin is among the best grammars of Biblical Hebrew (tho' I can't quite understand why US students pay so much for it when the UK edition, tho' paperback, is a quarter of the price).

When I first studied Hebrew, I used Weingreen (which I still consider an excellent book for those who like an old-fashioned approach to language), but when it came to reviewing the language, I used Lambdin, whose far more sophisticated approach gave me quite a different and very valuable perspective on the language.

Another book available in the UK which is invaluable to lone students, H.G.M. Williamson's Annotated Key to Lambdin's Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, which is what it says it is! It is available on Amazon.

Of the grammar books I have used in learning classical Hebrew, this was the most useful. The text is clear and complicated grammar is introduced both logically ad usefully. Adapted biblical passages are used as reading material after each chapter for most of the book. Don't worry about the reviewer's insistence that poetical language isn't covered - except for archaic poetry, the grammar is the same. One proviso, tho' - I didn't give the book 5 stars because it has no key. The University of Sheffield in the UK publish a key, H.G.M. Williamson's "Annotated Key to Lambdin's Introduction to Biblical Hebrew", ISBN 1 85075 065 3 (about $25). Together, they beat anything else.

This was the text specified by my Intro. to Biblical Hebrew professor 2 years ago . I thought it was an excellent book. Our prof. discouraged us from using Lambdin's transliterations as a crutch--we began by memorizing the Hebrew alphabet. Each chapter is organized around a theme (or two), and gives you a manageable amount of vocabulary and paradigms to memorize. Two semesters were not quite enough time to finish the whole book, but we came close. The chapters have plenty of exercises and simplified Biblical passages to translate, plus our prof. supplemented these with translation exercises from the actual Hebrew Bible. It also has English-to-Hebrew excercises, which really have little value for reading the Hebrew Bible. With any foreign language book, typographical errors can be a real nuisance. I am happy to report that typos in this book are few to non-existent. I am not as happy about the recent price increase, but perhaps this is indicative of how well-accepted this book has become at universities where Hebrew is taught. Are there better books for self-study? Perhaps--I can speak only for this one. But Lambdin is very straightforward and if you work hard at the memorization part, this book will put you well on your way to reading the Hebrew Bible.

'An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew' uses complex terminology and the explanations are very detailed and techincal. It thus serves as a good reference volume of basic Biblical Hebrew grammar for someone who becomes deeply involved with the language, but it doesn't serve as a useful introduction. That doesn't mean it's a bad book, it just means that it really doesn't conform to its own title.

Some reviewers have commented that the transliterated text is a hindrance, but I would disagree. I found the transliteration useful for understanding what kind of phonetic changes occur in certain phonetic environments. But I should note that I already knew the Hebrew script thoroughly before I had ever looked at this textbook. The transliteration is useful if you don't rely on it to read, and simply use it for word analysis.

The book follows an deductive method of starting with basic grammar and gradually moving into more complex structures, building a solid grammar base that helped me gain a deeper understanding of the Hebrew language in all of its historical incarnations. Basically, if you love Hebrew as I do and want to read the Mishna and Ha'aretz newspaper as much as the Bible, then you would benefit from the comprehensive and detailed nature of this text. If, however, you just want to get on with reading the Bible, then an inductive grammar such as 'Biblical Hebrew' by Kittel, Hoffer, and Wright would be a better choice. It was through the userfriendly and always relevant Kittle text that I gained an excitement for reading Biblical Hebrew that I never would have gotten had I started with the Lambdin text.

This is a good grammar and vocabulary and the passages chosen are a good start on the Scriptures. The weak point is that for those struggling with the Hebrew letters, it is NOT helpful to put the English transliteration in between the Hebrew words and the English translation: A future reprint of this book should set the type so that it is possible to cover up all the English tranliterations with a single piece of paper and practice the page. Also, a future printing should consider using the interlinear format for example translations: that way more advanced exercises can be demonstrated using the interlinears than the students could read on their own.

This is the best textbook for introduction to Biblical Hebrew (BH). I own half a dozen other BH textbooks and have reviewed at least as many other books all intended for the introductory BH course. An Lambdin's book is by far my favorite.

The book's content, structure of lessons, coverage of syntax and grammar are great. This is structured around a first year college course for BH, with introduction, 55 lessons and a few appendices. Each lesson is well structured covering grammatical principles and rules, vocabulary and exercises (and later on also with reading passages). I especially like its thorough coverage, discussion and examples of the syntactical rules such as narrative sequences, clauses, conditional sentences and idioms. These are covered in more depth than just about any other textbook.


TEXTBOOK vs. REFERENCE GRAMMAR
I've said is elsewhere, but I feel the need to bring this point up after reading some other reviews. This work is a textbook, not a reference grammar. These are two different types of works serving different purposes. Textbook are structured around lessons and are intended to teach basics aspects of BH, such as grammar, vocabulary and syntax. They typically have a reference section at the back, but that is not intended to be an exhaustive reference. Reference grammars are intended for this purpose -- they, on the other hand are not intended to be used as textbook and aren't structured in a lesson format. All too often people confuse the two and are upset when a book does not meet their expectations. So for the records, this book is an introductory textbook.


COMPARING WITH OTHER TEXTBOOKS
A couple of notes on how this compares with other textbooks. The introduction may be a bit confusing as it is trying to explain Biblical Hebrew (BH) without using Hebrew characters -- it uses only linguistic transliterations without ever making the mapping between them and Hebrew characters, whether consonants or vowels. For someone who's using the book in a classroom setting it's probably okay as one has a chance to discuss it with a teacher. But I would think it would be a challenge for someone using the book for self study. In either case, you can do a bit of research and do the mapping yourself by checking out another book. Although there some folks who really like linguistics and are comfortable with transliterations, so if you're one of them you'll especially love this book.

Unlike Seow's textbook all examples are made up, not taken from an actual text. With that said, they are structured in such a way as to illustrate the example using the vocabulary learned so far. I don't feel that this is a problem, but am just adding this for the pundit.

The verbs (one of the most challenging things about BH) are introduced in a pretty natural manner, starting with active participles in lesson 4 and moving on to the perfect in lesson 9. Lambdin spends the next 6 lessons dealing with variations of the QAL perfect. The imperfect is introduces in lesson 22, followed by lessons on the imperative, jussive, cohortative, infinitives, etc. with all their variations such as gutturals, I-Yodh, etc. Other stems, namely Niphal is not introduced until lesson 37, or technically the second semester. This is different than how Ross for example, introduces verbs. Ross introduces all basic verbs, QAL, Niphal, Piel, etc. for the regular verb and then deals with all the variations later. There really isn't a right or wrong approach, there will be people preferring either approach. Again, I'm adding this for completeness.

The vocabulary words do not include frequency of occurrence in the BH text as some other textbooks do. For me, this is not an issue. In fact I believe that including frequencies is a distraction and can often work to the student's detriment leading him or her to focus on the words with highest frequencies. As I said in another review, knowing the most frequently occurring words does not translate into being able to read the text. Just about every verse in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) will include words that you won't find anywhere near the top of the frequency list. So to me, including frequencies in an introductory textbook is a distraction. There are other tools that cover frequencies, if you're interested go to my profile and see my Guide to Biblical Hebrew for more info.

The summaries and verb tables at the back of the book, the appendices are not structured and presented in the best way. Just about any other BH textbook (Seow, Weingreen, LaSor, Ross, Van Pelt/Pratico,...) does a much better job at that. However, you can pick up any of the books I just listed and photocopy tables for your reference.


SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION
While the introduction would be much clearer with Hebrew vowels spelled out and few of the appendices could have been presented in a better way, the book as a whole is a great resource. In fact I did take one star off because of these two items, but that should not dissuade anyone from checking this book out. As I state in the previous paragraphs, these items can be supplemented either with the help of a teacher in a classroom setting or with a bit of research for the self-student. But the lessons and their content and structure easily make up for these shortcomings and I wholeheartedly recommend this book. Alternatively, you will find other books that have pretty charts and tables, but are hard to follow.

Together with Kittel and Hoffer's Biblical Hebrew, Lambdin's grammar has helped me the most in learning Biblical Hebrew. In a way, Lambdin's book, though written in the conventional deductive method, seems to surpass Kittel's in having more depth to its treatment of the language without sacrificing clarity.
I'm only midway through the book but among the features I like most are: the lessons are concise, the transliterations aid in pronunciation, the exercises are plentiful and aid retention well(I used to think made-up sentences and English to Hebrew exercises are only bothersome academic exercises,but not after this book), idiomatic constructions are given when needed (I have now come to understand nuances of verb plus preposition constructions, among other things), and syntactical considerations are given early.
The only drawback is the price. I also wish the font sizes for the Hebrew texts were bigger for easier reading. I have the hardcover version and I can imagine how much smaller the fonts would be in the paperback version given its physical dimensions, as was complained by one reviewer here.
I also have Kelley's grammar and the new book by Russell Fuller. Both are good and Kelley's is cheap, but save your money for this.
Kittel's is a good first book, but go ahead and read Lambdin's grammar as a next step. It goes beyond Kittel yet remains accessible and compulsively readable to a self-learner. That's coming from one who's learning Hebrew on his own as a hobby. I don't have Williamson's Annotated Key yet though I am almost sure it will be an additional aid. But the Annotated Key seems overpriced.

The best Hebrew grammar book for new learners is Andrew Bartelt's Fundamental Biblical Hebrew. Lambdin's book is definitely not it. In fact, I rate Weingreen's Classical Hebrew Grammar and Page Kelley's Classical Hebrew way over Lambdin's. Lambdin's text is confusing and frustrating. I say that as someone who started off by teaching myself Hebrew -- Weingreen was excellent, and Kelley supplemented where Weingreen fell short. I do have the Lambdin text, but gave it up in frustration. The one text that organizes and clarifies in a way that neither Lambdin, Weingreen, nor Kelley does, is Bartelt's. That's the text for the Hebrew neophyte, either with a teacher or a self-starter.

This is a detailed Biblical Hebrew grammar for the serious student. I am teaching myself Biblical Hebrew on the side and am finding it tough going in places. What would help me is a top down framework for the book. In a university, this needed structure is possibly provided by the professor. The book feels like a detailed listing of all rules and exceptions. Perhaps that is exactly what a grammar is; but, it can be a challenging way for some of us to learn a language. Nevertheless, other than Gesenius' older work, this seems to be the grammar to use.

As for the physical softcover book, it is outstanding. It is printed on high quality, bright paper with a folio binding. The printing accurately captures the Hebrew pointing which is the downfall of some books. For those of you who are on a budget, this UK edition is far less expensive than the US edition(s). While it is softcover, it feels like it will bear up to many years of heavy use.

For comparison, I am a layperson who has familiarity with Modern Israeli Hebrew and several years of linguistics study.