Chris Weimer

Just wondering how many among us actually know Biblical Hebrew here?

Jaguar Prince

I have a fairly good command of Biblical Hebrew, but I'm quickly forgetting it because I don't often read the Tanakh. The trouble is that, when you study Biblical Hebrew, the only book you can read is what the Christians call the "Old Testament", which I often find even more boring and infuriating than the Epistles of Jewish turncoat Paul of Tarsus.

Contrary to common perception, Hebrew really is a very simple language with very few words, specially very few adjectives, which is in fact a huge advantage, because this enables the writer to link together many realities under one word, thus creating a host of new meanings for each verse.

Think for example of the word "ruah": it can mean "pride", "breath", "spirit", "soul", "wind", etc.

Hebrew also has lots of verbs which correspond to English verb+adjective constructions: there is a verb which means "to be much or great": G-D-L (only consonants are written and most words have three root consonants). This is wonderful because having a subject+copula+adjective structure in one's mind is philosphically very misleading, as if there was an entity there in which qualities inhere, whereas the fact is that the entity and the qualities are one (I'm a bishop Berkeley fan ).

Then you have this fascinating amalgamation game with prepositions and other words: "in him" in English is (visually) two words, but in Hebrew, it's one single word "inhim-bo", which graphically is infinitely more evocative.

The study of each letter of the alphabet is also very interesting and the subject of many a kabbalistic treatise. The word "father" begins with the first letter of the alphabet (aleph) and the word "son" with the second (beth)...

Knowing some Hebrew also dispels many useless misinterpretations of the "NT":

"Only begotten son" in Greek (monogenes) is in fact with-whom-I-am-one (Y-H-D), which casts this infamous and exclusivist Johannine term in an altogether different light.

Finally, I think it is important to remember that Hebrew was originally the language of the Jews' heathen neighbors, the Canaanites. Hence the fact that some masculine words like "father" (av) have a feminine plural (avot)and other anomalies absolutely inconceivable in the black-and-white, no-transgender-nonsense mental world of later Judaism. Hence the well-known fact that the word "God" (which can also mean "angels" or "heroes") is a plural noun...

If anyone wants to learn Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek, I'm ready to provide him or her with a complete list of the books he or she should buy.

Shalom!

Jag

spin

Ummm, no. Hebrew is a Canaanite language, as is Phoenician, though the latter obviously left the group earliest because it is the most diverse. The Jews are linguistically Canaanites.


spin

Anat

I'm a native speaker of modern Hebrew, which is somewhat based on biblical, but also mishnaic Hebrew as well as many modernisms (some of which were created by utilizing rare biblical words in new meanings). I have been reading the HB in Hebrew since I was 7 or so, though hadn't done much of that between highschool graduation and a few months ago. My worst problem with the language is ignoring modernisms.

Sheshbazzar

Still learning, and hope to remain humble enough to so admit until the day that I fall asleep.
One thing I have often found interesting about the Hebrew language and alphabet is how often the statement is made that it is written in only consonants. Over the last 30 years I have read much on the development of the various alphabets and examined how they transliterate the names of the various dignitaries, cities, and the names of countries.
It is my independent conclusion (shared by many others) that the unpointed Hebrew alphabet, along with that which is now called "Paleo-Hebrew" contains and employs the same vowel letters and sounds that are found in other languages.
As I said, I'm still learning, and I invite any further information that is more than just a repetition of an assertion, or an "argument from authority" that consists only of an assertion from that authority.

Donald_McRonald

The first two years of high school a lot of Tanakh class was spent learning BH, especially the intricacies of the grammar. So I know my way around the BDB and maybe I could recognize a specific construct, but I couldn't do sight translation (if such a thing is really possible) except in the simplest of examples. So my answer is sorta, but not really.

Jaguar Prince

An illusion that haunts many people who start learning Biblical languages is that reading the original text will somehow cast the message of the holy book into an entirely new light. The fact is that although many interesting discoveries await the person who reads the Greek or Hebrew Bible, no change in vocabulary or grammar will ever transform a sectarian doctrine into a more open and modern religion. That is why I have lost interest in learning Biblical languages: basically what you find is that with some exceptions the translations are accurate.

What could change the message is not so much an understanding of the original tongues as a new interpretation and this can be done with the help of the English text.

Anat

Knowledge of the language allows for better appreciation of the literary value, though, and maybe a little bit better understanding of what it would have meant to someone from antiquity.