Customer Reviews

More Light on the Path: Daily Scripture Readings in Hebrew and Greek

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

 

 

I was somewhat torn on how to rate this item. From the standpoint of having a daily-devotional book that will lead you to spend more time practicing your Hebrew and Greek skills, it probably deserves a 3.5-4 star rating. From the standpoint of its usefulness for doing so, it deserves a 2. The most valuable aspect of the book is the simple fact that it gives short reading selections for you to practice each day, which will help you get into a healthy regimen of study.

However, the biggest downfall of this book is the poor study helps they made. Judging from what another reviewer said, they seem to have actually taken a step backward on the usefulness of the Hebrew helps. I agree. For the beginning student in Hebrew, the helps are so limited that you will not be able to translate the passages without another complete study tool. You might as well just ignore the Hebrew helps in the margins. They assume far too much regarding your knowledge of Hebrew vocabulary. I'm judging that by comparison to the Greek helps, where they provide far more help, and even on relatively simple and common Greek words. There really is an imbalance, and if you want to keep up BOTH your Greek and Hebrew, you will need a supplementary tool for the HEbrew like the Armstrong, Busby, Carr "Reader's Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament." This book has a very useful glossary as well as verse by verse helps with those less-common words that don't occur in the glossary. It also is much simpler and more user-friendly than the dreaded Brown Drivers Briggs Lexicon. Its a pity that More Light on the Path didn't do a better job with the text helps. The other frustrating part about the helps is the original language spelling errors that are so frequent. That certainly doesn't help out the beginning student either.

Despite all the negative feedback I gave on this book, I'd still probably recommend buying it, simply because I'm not aware of any other daily Hebrew & Greek readings books that are in print. If you get an additional study tool for either the Greek or Hebrew along with it, you should be fine.

While this work does have some improvements over the original Heinrich Bitzer work, it has some downsides. Bitzer's work contained much more help with the Hebrew, which is generally what more people need more "crutches" for. This version makes it appear that the authors are more preferential towards those users who make Greek a priority & Hebrew an afterthought, a study kept up only by a few hard-core users who are willing to daily dig out their Hebrew lexicons.

Also, Bitzer gave "dictionary forms" or "roots", which is helpful. And, I enjoyed Bitzer's tri-lingual translations, to help me keep up on German and Latin, also, when I so chose.

This volume does have the advantage of being more "devotional" in the sense that it is set up around the liturgical calendar and there are prayers and commentary included. Of course, I've heard it argued that Bitzer's occasionally "obtuse" connections in the 2 verses he chose were actually more thought-provoking, sending you on an internal search and reflection for what Bitzer saw.

All in all, it is good for pastors and Bible language scholars to keep a volume such as this around to keep language learning integrated into an active devotional life. But perhaps Baker Books has been a little too hasty in consigning Bitzer's original works to the dust heap.

After studying Hebrew & Greek in seminary, I had some difficulty using the languages and keeping up with reading to actually _learn_ them. I was especially "afraid" of my large Hebrew Bible. "More Light on the Path" helped me to get in to reading the Bible in the original languages every day. Its short readings are 'easily digestible' and will help a student or pastor who wants to gain more familiarity with these languages to keep up and build their skills. If you have difficulty reading the Hebrew OT and/or the Greek NT, but want to get better, this is a good book to consider purchasing. It helped me to get to the point where I didn't need this book any more, and I gave it to a friend who is a pastor who wanted to work on his language skills.

This is a wonderful tool for staying sharp with the biblical languages. The daily devotional approach makes it a must for serious students of the Word!