Learning Biblical Hebrew: Reading for Comprehension: An Introductory Grammar
Learning Biblical Hebrew
What’s the best way to learn a new language? By approaching it not as a series of facts to memorize but as something alive, with a personality you can get to know and tendencies you can begin to predict.
Designed for long-term retention, Learning Biblical Hebrew focuses on helping students understand how the language works and providing a solid grounding in Hebrew through extensive reading in the biblical text.
- Introduces advanced concepts in a form accessible to beginning students.
- Focuses on historic patterns and changes that minimize memorization.
- Focuses on how the language works for long-term retention.
- Encourages mastery of paradigms from a handful of representative forms.
- Includes extensive translation from the third week of class.
- Prepares students for translation of unedited biblical texts by the end of first semester.
- Emphasizes reading comprehension rather than decoding.
- Promotes a strong oral component to enhance language competence.
Written for first-year and second-year Hebrew students, this grammar is laid out to present comprehensive concepts to first-year students and then to aid in review and deeper understanding for second-year students. Though written for Hebrew competency, Learning Biblical Hebrew is well suited for students with different learning styles and objectives.
The Learning Biblical Hebrew Workbook provides essential practice with Hebrew for students using Learning Biblical Hebrew.
Get the grammar and the workbook together in this bundle.
Resources for professors and supplemental materials for students are available on the Learning Biblical Hebrew companion site.
A game-changing Hebrew grammar
Learning a new language can be challenging, and Hebrew is no exception. However, Learning Biblical Hebrew: Reading for Comprehension: An Introductory Grammar is a game-changer known for making the process of learning Hebrew exciting for students.
The first four chapters effectively explain the structure and characteristics of Hebrew syllables and words to inspire confidence in the learner. And unlike many Hebrew grammars that spend weeks on end parsing endless verbs and translating basic phrases, students are reading the biblical text by chapter 4. Learning Biblical Hebrew also clarifies obscure Hebrew language rules. For example, the authors explain in detail the "historical vowels" of Hebrew, which helps students master the vowel changes that occur in Hebrew words when modified by suffixes and prefixes. The authors also provide the "why" behind the principles, which helps Hebrew make more sense.
Students don't just memorize facts but learn the principles behind the Hebrew language so that after learning to read Hebrew, they are more likely to retain it for the long haul. This method makes Hebrew make sense.
Learning Biblical Hebrew also covers all the basic elements of Hebrew grammar, including weak verbs. The grammar follows the traditional format of presenting strong verbs before weak verbs. (Students intuitively translate weak verbs alongside strong verbs from the beginning of the companion workbook.) The grammatical features presented in each chapter are explained according to the broader context of the behavior and patterns of the Hebrew language, though the student is only responsible to learn the core concepts of each chapter.
Most importantly, students will discover a love for Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible.
Praise for Learning Biblical Hebrew
Before trying this Hebrew grammar, I'd taught Biblical Hebrew from eight different grammars—none of which had won out as the obvious choice for future classes. Kutz and Josberger’s grammar makes up for the main weaknesses of the other grammars like insufficient explanation of new concepts, limited translation exercises, and not getting into the biblical text itself quickly enough. This grammar was clearly written by instructors who had struggled with and sought to remedy these same deficiencies. My students found the approach and tools “user-friendly” and the rigorous methodology helpful for day-to-day accountability. The grammar’s clear explanations free the instructor up to concentrate on helping students apply the information.
—Kenneth Turner, Associate Professor of Old Testament, Toccoa Falls College
Learning Biblical Hebrew helps students sidestep pitfalls by providing clear explanations of perennially perplexing issues. Students are led to predict patterns (e.g. vowel changes or irregular verbs) with minimal memorization. Translation exercises in the workbook complement the grammar, quickly familiarizing students with Hebrew syntax and demonstrating the clear upshot of tackling larger sections of Hebrew narrative early on in the learning process. Having adopted this text in both graduate and undergraduate introductory Biblical Hebrew courses I can gladly attest – Learning Biblical Hebrew is appropriately entitled! I’m very excited to see it reach a wider audience.
—Richard Rohlfing Jr., Fuller Theological Seminary
Top Highlights
“One group of consonants that take dagesh forte can lose that dagesh under special conditions. The mnemonic Skin ‘em Levi or -קנמ לוי‘s’ (where the ‘s’ = the sounds ס, צ, שׂ, שׁ) will help you remember the consonants included in this group. These Skin ‘em Levi letters frequently (though inconsistently) lose dagesh forte when they are followed by a shewa.” (Page 21)
“When attached to words beginning with ב, מ, פ, or to any consonants with a simple shewa, the conjunction will be vocalized as וּ (long ū). Remember the mnemonic—‘BuMP-Shewa.’” (Page 52)
“A vocal shewa begins a syllable and a silent shewa closes a syllable.” (Page 32)
“As a general rule,2 Hebrew syllables begin with a consonant and have only one vowel.” (Page 26)
“If a dot appears in a letter that is not a BeGaD KePhaT letter, it must be a dagesh forte.” (Page 21)
- Hebrew Alphabet
- Hebrew Vowels
- Syllables and Reading Hebrew
- Gender and Number, Definite Article and Conjunction
- Vowel Changes in Hebrew Nouns
- Noun and Adjective Function
- Constructs, Directional Ending, Prepositions, and Interrogatives
- Pronominal Suffixes and Review of Definiteness
- Learning to Read Intuitively: Common Patterns in Hebrew Nouns
- Numbers
- Introduction to Hebrew Verbs
- Vowel Changes in Verbs
- Qal Perfects
- Qal Imperfects
- Qal Volitionals
- Qal Participles and Infinitives
- Qal Waw Consecutives
- Niphal
- Piel, Pual, and Hithpael
- Hiphil and Hophal
- Rare Verb Stems
- Verbs with Object Suffixes
- Irregular Features in Object Suffixes
- Hebrew Weak Verbs
- III-Waw/Yod Verbs
- I-Waw/Yod Verbs
- II-Waw/Yod Verbs: Introduction and Qal Stem
- II-Waw/Yod Verbs: Niphal–Hophal Stems
- Geminate Verbs
- I-Nun Verbs
- I-Guttural Verbs
- II-Guttural Verbs
- III-Guttural and III-Aleph Verbs
Product Details
- Title: Learning Biblical Hebrew: Reading for Comprehension: An Introductory Grammar
- Author: Karl Kutz and Rebekah Josberger
- Publisher: Lexham Press
- Publication Date: 2018
- Pages: 528
- Format: Logos Digital, Hardcover
- Trim Size: 7x9
- ISBN: 9781683590842
About the Authors
Karl V. Kutz (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin–Madison) is professor of biblical languages at Multnomah University in Portland, OR. For over two decades his teaching and mentoring of students in the language and literature of the Hebrew Bible has cultivated students' passion for the biblical text, shaped and transformed their lives, and led to the establishment of an outstanding program for the study of the Hebrew Bible.
Rebekah L. Josberger (Ph.D., Southern Seminary) is associate professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, OR. Since coming to Multnomah in 2009, she has focused on developing a solid Hebrew program that enables and encourages students to learn Hebrew well enough to use it for personal growth and ministry long after they leave seminary. She teaches Old Testament with a focus towards biblical theology and continues research related to Torah.
Sample Pages from Learning Biblical Hebrew
Reviews
15 ratings
Rein de Wit
9/17/2023
Robert Strother
6/10/2023
The book itself is fantastic. Wonderful approach to this language, with good illustrations and clear explanations . The digital implementation has many errors. Not just typos. I recall a table that is supposed to contrast two Hebrew forms, but the same form is duplicated for both. I found a paragraph of English in which it seems like a couple of words got inadvertently dragged out of position, making a word salad out of the paragraph. There are sometimes also text justification issues when a Hebrew word appears in an English sentence, especially when a screen switches between landscape and portrait orientation . I would recommend another round of proofreading, and by someone who has a little Hebrew language knowledge. The print version can be difficult to come by, so I'm glad to have access to this version, but it's not up to Logos' usual excellent standards.Brice Giesbrecht
12/28/2022
I have the print version and the workbook and am very impressed with both. Having learned from BBH2 and a few others in places, this grammar has a very different and welcome feel. I sat down to skim through it and ended up reading the first 8 chapters. I couldn't really put it down. Chapter 5 was fantastic and alone was worth the price of the book. The workbook is more or less a reader and what a blast. Getting into the text early, even if slightly abridged, is such a great experience as a student. I commend Lexham for such a wonderful set of resources. If I ever end up teaching Hebrew, this will be on my short list.Sheree Lear
12/14/2022
I have found this grammar to be so useful! I really appreciate the vowel changes chapters. I don't feel the reviews below are doing justice to the actual content (yes, there are typos, especially in the logos version) hope they do fix them, BUT I'm very happy with the actual content.
David C. Hacker
2/21/2022
It appears that the person converting this to Logos had no knowledge of how to use a Hebrew keyboard layout and intermingle English and Hebrew within a sentence and further that no one bothered to proof read it and compare it to the print edition. The result is that many Hebrew phrases are completely out of order or they have copy and pasted the wrong Hebrew word resulting in unusable tables. Please update the Logos edition of the excellent book to make it usable.
Steve Werkema
9/23/2021
The content of this book is excellent (easily five starts). However, the electronic implementation by Logos is simply awful. I've not seen an electronic implementation of a book that is as bad as this one. Much of the Hebrew text occurs as images rather than as characters in a Hebrew font. Many of these images are unreadably small and don't change size when the text is resized. The sizing of images is inconsistent. For example, the book contains tables where some rows use images for Hebrew text while other rows have the Hebrew rendered in a Hebrew font. Moreover, the size of the images of Hebrew text can vary from row to row. The content of book is outstanding. It contains an approach to introductory Hebrew that (in my rather limited experience) is unique and very helpful. The book has helped my fledgling understanding of Biblical Hebrew in significant ways. The book has become so important to my study of Hebrew that I bought a hard copy of it. The printed version does not suffer from the deficiencies of the electronic version. The authors of this book deserve much better than the mess Logos has made of their work. Kurtz and Josberger have made an important contribution. The Logos implementation of their good work does not reflect the value of it. I highly recommend buying this the print version book.Björn Pettersson
5/24/2021
I wish there would be a separate rating for the book and context, and the Logos typing. The first would get a 4-5 reward, the second a 1 star. There are so many cut and pastes, which is really unprofessionally made, i.e. different font, white boxes in spite of having chosen another background colour in Logos etc. Readability is degraded in all of those many places. I am really expecting a correction of all these typos! In the current state it should just not have been ready for launch.
