(BA) Hebrew

...

22 July 2022

Hebrew is, with the exception of a few Aramaic bits, the language of the Hebrew Bible. The Bible is written in a relatively early form of Hebrew, sometimes called Classical or Biblical Hebrew, to distinguish it from later varieties. At one point, Classical Hebrew was the spoken language of Judah and Israel, but outside of the Bible, a relatively small amount of Classical Hebrew has survived -- a few inscriptions and documents here and there.

This creates a real problem for understanding Hebrew -- besides the inevitable troubles that come with the fact that it is not an Indo-European language, and is thus tricky sometimes for English-speakers to grasp. The problem is this: if a word appears only once or a few times in the Bible, how can we know what it means? Often we can't.

The best we can do is look carefully at the contexts a word is used in to figure out what it might mean, and it doesn't hurt to look at similar words in related languages. Of course, you don't have to figure it all out yourself -- there's a long line of Hebrew dictionaries and grammars to help you along. But their verdict on any given word is only as good as the evidence behind that verdict.

The dictionaries include, in chronological order, Gesenius's Lexicon, BDB, DCH, and HALOT.

The grammars include the one by Gesenius, and more recently a neat beginning grammar by Robert Holmstedt and John Cook, which can be found online here, or better yet, buy it.