How NOT to Learn Ancient Hebrew

Stephen Hebert over at his excellent blog describes how NOT to learn Biblical Greek. The post he’s put up is a minor masterpiece. Everything he says applies, mutatis mutandis, to how NOT to learn ancient Hebrew.

To state things POSITIVELY:

(1) Use all the tools you have in Logos/Accordance/etc. on some occasions, but then sight read, without any helps, for chapters on end when you are at all able to, deciding by context what vocabulary items and constructions you’re not sure about might mean, on other occasions.

(2) Read far more text than you are required to for exams.

(3) Read as much hard Hebrew as you can, like the Hebrew of the book of Job. It’s also important, in my view, to work through the Hebrew of Ben Sira or that of Baruch in the retroversion of Emanuel Tov. That is, it’s important to work through texts in Hebrew that you don’t know well in your mother tongue.

Comments

[stephen]

Thanks for the praise! I admit that my Hebrew muscles are in poor shape. Perhaps I'll work through Ben Sira...any suggestions on what text to use? I don't know if I've ever seen or touched a Hebrew text of Ben Sira...

[Peter Kirk]

You had me confused for a bit! In fact, surely you mean that these are three things that students should do. And I would agree ...

... with the proviso that for most of us there are enough parts of the Hebrew Bible which we "don’t know well in [our] mother tongue" that there is no need to go to later fragmentary and unpointed texts like Ben Sira (let alone the translation Hebrew of a "retroversion") to find something suitable to read. Anyway, I'm surprised at your suggestion that people are expected to know deuterocanonical works less well than those of the Hebrew Bible.

[John Hobbins]

I've used Tov's retroversion of the prose of Baruch on final exams for second year Hebrew students. The retroversion is quite reliable, really, and not that hard.

I'm planning to start learning some of Ben Sira by heart, just as I have for some Psalms and such. I'm still working in the direction of living by my own principles. You got me there.

[John Hobbins]

I added a phrase to the post to meet Peter's objection.

[Iyov]

Here is my single biggest tip: learn as early as possible (preferably from the beginning) to read Hebrew without nikudos (vowel marks). It is not that much harder to learn -- and I've observed that people who learn Hebrew with nikudos rely on it as a crutch. It seems that jumping from Hebrew with nikudos to standard Hebrew writing is a difficult jump for many people, and I even see people become anxious when faced with standard Hebrew.

The problem is that the only works that are widely available with nikudos are the Bible, the Siddur, and books designed for beginning Hebrew learners (such as editions of the Mishna or Gemara with nikudos.) Most of the riches of Hebrew literature (and classical presentations of Biblical books on scrolls) have no written vowelization. Even reading the Masoretic notes becomes challenging.

Unfortunately, most textbooks of Biblical Hebrew never address learning Hebrew without nikudos.

[Christopher Heard]

"That is, it’s important to work through texts in Hebrew that you don’t know well in your mother tongue."

I will be teaching Elementary Hebrew I-II and Intermediate Hebrew I over the course of the next three semesters. For the very reason stated above, I am planning—in the third semester—to have the students struggle with some unpointed and epigraphic Hebrew (in Paleo-Hebraic script), perhaps a little bit of Sirach and a couple of the Lachish ostraca. I don't want to overwhelm the students, but I do want them to be stretched beyond the canonical materials just a little. (These are undergraduates, by the way, not seminarians—mostly.)

[Kevin P. Edgecomb]

Peter, I think John is talking more about that phenomenon of subconsciously translating what one is reading according to an English/other known version. Unfamiliar texts that require a person to actually read and comprehend in their own state, without the crutch of familiarity of a version, are really a good thing to spend time with.

That said, I too must evangelize with the gospel of "Just read."

[Suzanne]

Exactly, Kevin, and that is why one can hardly learn to read Greek by reading the NT. What part of it are people not familiar with?

I remember my first Hebrew exam though. The prof chose Gen. 22 and since I had it pretty much by memory I told the prof that I had not translated it. He said that I was the only one in the class in that situation. Strange. But I have to ask Iyov how to learn without the nikudos. I would assume either with a teacher, or with audio.

[Iyov]

I always recommend learning a language with a teacher; I simply don't believe that it is possible to learn a language without a teacher.

There are certainly textbooks (often addressing both Modern and Classical Hebrew) that don't use any nekudos; such as Hebrew from Scratch -- or the famous Textbook of Israeli Hebrew with an Introduction the Classical Language. I haven't made a comprehensive study of Hebrew textbooks, but I am under the impression that most ulpan textbooks from Israel teach Hebrew sans nekudos.

[John Hobbins]

A teacher is a must. But I benefited, I think, as a teenager learning Hebrew and spending long hours in the language lab listening to an Israeli, I think, read portions of the Tanakh (very much like the tapes I provide a link for on this site).

I would repeat and repeat, and in fact, I would often being doing that and studying something else at the same time.

Maybe I'm all wet, but I thought of it as a way to get Hebrew into my subconscious.

[Peter Kirk]

Suzanne's experience ties up with what I was trying to say. If she was the only one in the class to know a well known passage like Genesis 22 well enough in her mother tongue to translate from memory, how many people are going to know an obscure passage in Ezekiel or Job? Anyway, unless they are committed Protestant Christians, they might be just as likely to know Ben Sira or Baruch.

But I agree in principle concerning non-biblical Greek; I regret that my own Greek is almost entirely from the New Testament.

[Peter Kirk]

On the issue of reading unpointed Hebrew, the problem for me is not so much with understanding as with knowing how to pronounce it. I find myself reading along with understanding but a probably highly defective vocalisation, often guessing in the same way that scholars of ancient Egyptian, Ugaritic etc have to guess. Does that matter? I'm not sure.

[John Hobbins]

Of course you will mispronounce some words, especially at first, if you read unvocalized Hebrew. But practice makes perfect.

Try out the unvocalized lines from Pirke Avot in the post above. Then check your work. Most students are surprised by how much they get right, not how much they get wrong.