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Intro to Biblical Hebrew

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Intro to Biblical Hebrew Intro to Biblical Hebrew Pastor Trey Graham Lesson 1 Be a Student of God’s Word • There is power in reading God’s Word. • How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. Psalm 1:1-2 • All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 • There is power in reading God’s Word in any language. • If you only know English and read the Bible in English, there is power in reading God’s Word and your learning is not cheated or failing. • You can be blessed and your knowledge of God can expand if you learn the original biblical languages, especially Hebrew. Be a Student of God’s Word in Hebrew • You can read the Hebrew Bible in a secular, academic, grammatical manner • You can read the Hebrew Bible as a religious, God-loving, Orthodox Jew • You can read the Hebrew Bible as a disciple of Jesus, lover of God’s truth, lover of Israel, looking for Promises of the Messiah Goals when learning a new language • Knowing the names of the letters • Knowing the sounds of the letters • Knowing the numerical values of the letters • Knowing the meaning of the letters • Writing the letters • Reading words and sentences • Saying words and sentences • Carrying on a basic conversation • Becoming fluent Our goals when starting to learn Biblical Hebrew • Knowing the names of the letters • Knowing the sounds of the letters • Knowing the numerical values of the letters • Knowing the meaning of the letters • Reading words and sentences in the Bible (not a newspaper or menu) Why do we need to learn a foreign language today? Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. Genesis 11:1-9 General Information on the Bible • 66 Books: 39 in Old Testament, 27 in New Testament • Old Testament books: 17 historical, 5 experiential, 17 prophetical • New Testament books: 4 Gospels, Acts, Christian Church Epistles, Pastoral Epistles, Hebrews, Christian Epistles • Majority of Old Testament written originally in Hebrew • Small sections (268 verses) written in Aramaic • Ezra 4:8–6:18 and 7:12-26 (67 verses), Daniel 2:4b–7:28 (200 verses), Jeremiah 10:11 written in Aramaic • New Testament written originally in Greek General Information on the Bible • Chapter divisions added in 1228 AD • Verse divisions added in 1448 AD (Old Testament) and 1551 AD (New Testament) • First hand-written translation into English by J. Wycliffe in 1380 AD • First printed English Bible by W. Tyndale in 1526 AD What was the language of the Old Testament? • Ancient Hebrew was the tongue of the ancient Israelites and the language in which most of the Old Testament was penned. Isaiah 19:18 calls it “the language of Canaan,” while other verses label it “Judean” and “language of the Jews” (2 Kings 18:26; Isaiah 36:11, 13; 2 Chronicles 32:18; Nehemiah 13:24). • Ancient Hebrew is a Semitic language that dates back past 1500 B.C. • While Hebrew remained the sacred tongue of the Jews, its use as a common spoken language declined after the Jews’ return from exile (538 B.C.). • Despite a revival of the language during the Maccabean era, it was eventually all but replaced in everyday usage by Aramaic. Modern Hebrew can trace its ancestry to Biblical Hebrew, but has incorporated many other influences as well. • Many people assume that the New Testament was written in Hebrew as well, but by the time the gospels were being written, many Jews didn’t even speak Hebrew anymore. Rome had conquered Greece, and the influence of Greek culture had saturated the empire. Biblical Greek didn’t use a high- class or complicated style; it was written in koine (common Greek), a language that could be understood by almost anyone, educated or not. https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2012/06/what-was-the-original-language-of-the-bible/ 8 Things You Should Know About Hebrew 1) The Alphabet Has 22 Letters. • There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet (commonly referred to as the aleph-bet, after the first two letters, aleph and bet). In addition, the language includes five final letters. When the letters khaf, mem, nun, pey, and tzade are the last letters of a word, they are written differently. 2) It’s Related to Arabic and Aramaic — and Originally Had No Vowels. • Hebrew is a Semitic language — like Arabic and Aramaic — and like most ancient Semitic languages its alphabet has no vowels. However, sometime between the middle and end of the first millennium, rabbis known as the Masoretes instituted a system of dots and dashes to indicate how words were to be pronounced. Torah scrolls and most contemporary Hebrew writing are still written without vowels. 3) It’s Read from Right to Left. • Unlike English, Hebrew is read and written from right to left. There are numerous types of Hebrew script. The most familiar is the block letters used in Torah scrolls and most printed texts. This was originally referred to as ktav ashuri, or Assyrian script. It is contrasted with ktav ivri, which was an earlier script probably used until a few hundred years prior to the Common Era. 4) It Dates Back to the Second Millennium BCE. • The earliest Hebrew texts date from the end of the second millennium BCE. Hebrew was employed as both a written and spoken language until the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. After that, Hebrew was used primarily as a literary and liturgical language. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-hebrew-language/amp/ 8 Things You Should Know About Hebrew 5) Not All Major Jewish Texts Are In Hebrew. • The Old Testament of the Bible (except for parts of Ezra and Daniel) is written in Hebrew, as is the Mishnah, the corpus of Jewish law edited during the 2nd and 3rd century CE. • The Gemara — books of rabbinic legal discussions interpreting the Mishnah — is largely written in Aramaic with some Hebrew, while medieval Jewish literature is written primarily in a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic. 6) It Was Often Thought to Be the Language of Angels — and God. • Because it is the language of sacred texts, Hebrew itself was often considered sacred. In post-biblical times, it was referred to as lashon ha-kodesh, the holy language. Hebrew was often thought to be the language of the angels, and indeed, of God. According to rabbinic tradition, Hebrew was the original language of humanity. It was spoken by all of humankind prior to the dispersion described in the Tower of Babel story in Genesis. In addition, the Hebrew language was thought of as the tool that God used to create the world. A midrash states that, “Just as the Torah was given in lashon ha-kodesh, so the world was created with lashon ha-kodesh.” Similarly, the mystical book Sefer Yetzirah, describes the creation of the world through the manipulation of the Hebrew alphabet. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-hebrew-language/amp/ 8 Things You Should Know About Hebrew 7) Secular Hebrew Journals, Newspapers and Literature Emerged in the 18th Century. • The Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, sparked a renewed interest in Hebrew, particularly biblical Hebrew, which the maskilim (the proponents of the Enlightenment) viewed as a purer form of the language. Journals, newspapers, and literature were written in Hebrew, but there were many problems with adapting this ancient language to the needs of modern prose. Many of these problems were addressed by S.Y. Abramowitz (better known as Mendele Mokher Seforim), who created an amalgam of rabbinic and biblical Hebrew that suited modern literary needs. 8) After Not Being Spoken for Two Millennia, It Was Dramatically Revived. • While the creation of a corpus of secular Hebrew literature was impressive, the reinstitution of Hebrew as a spoken language was almost miraculous. Hebrew had not been a spoken language for two millennia, and yet at the end of the 19th century, European Jews dreaming of a cultural renaissance in Palestine began to resurrect the language.
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