The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew [Paperback]

Miles V. Van Pelt (Author), Gary D. Pratico (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 29, 2003

A Hebrew vocabulary guide that gives the student everything he or she needs in order to master basic Hebrew vocabulary and to expand knowledge of biblical Hebrew. This title is intentionally made with a space between the cover and the binding to allow the book to lay flat when opened.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A guide for mastering basic Hebrew vocabulary

This guide helps seminary and Christian college students learn Hebrew vocabulary. A special feature of the guide is that it groups thevocabulary in three basic consonants. • All words occurring ten times or more in the Hebrew Bible in descending order of frequency • Primary roots and all words derived from roots occurring ten timesor more • Unusual and difficult word list, such as proper names, adjectives, prepositions, pronouns, particles, and verbs

About the Author

Miles Van Pelt (PhD, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Alan Belcher Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Languages at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, where he also serves as the Director of the Summer Institute for Biblical Languages and Academic Dean. Miles has been studying and teaching biblical languages for over 20 years and he currently lives in Madison, Mississippi, with his wife Laurie and their four children.

Gary D. Pratico (ThD, Harvard Divinity School) is professor of Old Testament and director of the Hebrew language program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He has been teaching Hebrew for nearly thirty years. He is coauthor with Miles Van Pelt of Basics of Biblical Hebrew (grammar and workbook) and The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (July 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310250722
• ISBN-13: 978-0310250722
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Hebrew > Instruction

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars great help for Hebrew vocabulary memorization, June 11, 2004

By 

djdjdjdjdjdj9 "djdjdjdjdjdj9" (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew (Paperback)

While most Biblical Hebrew textbooks take noble strides to acquaint students with basic vocabulary skills and memorization, a vocabulary guide like Van Pelt (or Landes) really equip the student with memorizing power. Don't waste your time memorizing words that only occur in BH a few times-this guide allows you to memorize the words of BH in descending word order frequency, thereby supplying the student with the skills early on to begin reading BH without too much help from lexicons and dictionaries. Also includes helpful statistics for the various verb forms that appear in BH.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well done, but reading is still the best way to build vocabulary, February 13, 2007

By 

Jaroslav Melgr "jaroski" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew (Paperback)

This is a great book and a welcome addition for my library of Biblical Hebrew study aids. It will be beneficial to students (and teachers) of Biblical Hebrew at almost any level of proficiency. It's great for research and reference purposes as well as vocabulary building. As far as building my vocabulary, I think it also helps and is certainly useful, but I personally learn the best through reading. I can read a word in a passage once and remember it because of the context, while I will struggle to remember a word even after running numerous times through my word list. But obviously everyone learns differently and for me reading happens to be the best way to pick up new words and make them stick.

As for the book, the authors provide plenty of lists and ways to organize words to allow for multiple focused approaches to building up Biblical Hebrew vocabulary -- for example a frequency based word list for words appearing at least 10 times, a word list arranged by a common root, lists of nouns, lists of verbs (all verbs alphabetically and arranged by a verb type and stem...), statistical distributions of occurrences, etc.... Although I do wish it had even more list, such as a list of all hapax words for each section of the Tanakh for example, I do realize that it is beyond the scope of this book as intended by the authors. I highly recommend this book.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Guide to Hebrew Vocabulary, April 18, 2008

By 

Jason - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew (Paperback)

Any student of biblical Hebrew knows that one of the most important tasks in mastering the language is mastery of vocabulary. This volume is a helpful guide in trying to do just that. The authors provide two ways of learning the vocabulary: by frequency and by similar roots. Both arrangements certainly make it easier to tackle the sheer number of words one must learn to master the Hebrew OT. While nothing can replace regular study and interaction with the Hebrew text, this volume is sure to be a dependable guide in that process. Much smaller than any standard Hebrew lexicon, it is much more accessible than, say, BDB and the aforementioned layout makes location of words very easy. I highly recommend this volume.