Category Archives: Hebrew Bible

Biblical Hebrew Textbook Comparisons

At the 2009 ETS (Evangelical Theological Society) meeting in New Orleans just prior to the SBL meeting, there was a session about how to choose a Biblical Hebrew textbook. I wasn’t at the session, but some friends did obtain a copy of the handout for me. As a result, I also contacted Dr. Hélène Dallaire and asked about the textbook reviews she had done previously (she presented some of her own material at SBL 2006 and the 2009 ETS handout included a completed chart that she had started with Jason DeRouchie). She graciously sent me some digital copies and gave me permission to post them here.

I think these are helpful for instructors trying to make informed choices about textbooks to use for classes. There is no one “best” textbook. Rather, a teacher must consider their students, the type of class, the goals for the class, and their own teaching style and skills in selecting a textbook. The summaries are also helpful for students who are looking for supplemental reading and reference. I have tried to track down a digital copy of the ETS handout, but have not been successful yet, so I am posting a (relatively poor) scanned copy. If someone knows who has the original, I would be grateful if you brought that to my attention.

There are some additional textbooks due out which I hope to review. Most notably the Hendrickson textbook, A Basic Introduction to Biblical Hebrew by Jo Ann Hackett and Fred Putnam‘s upcoming grammar to be published by Sheffield Phoenix.

Should Schools or Students Choose Bible Software?

At the recent New Orleans SBL meeting, one of the “hot” sessions was the Software Bible “Shootout” in which five different software options demonstrated their method for solving a series of challenges. Read Rick Mansfield’s summary here. More discussion here (with lots of further links).The software vendors represented were: Logos, SESB, BibleWorks, Accordance and Olive Tree.

You can look at each of the resources in depth at your leisure. My question today is not which one handles what challenge better, but rather, who should determine which software you use?
Continue reading →

Hobbins on Ancient Hebrew (what it is and isn’t)

John Hobbins has two posts this week which I think could be included as reading assignments in an introductory Biblical Hebrew course (or a Hebrew Bible Introduction). These posts help clarify just what we should mean when we use the term “ancient Hebrew.” As usual, he includes helpful bibliography.

Typing Hebrew on a Mac

Chris Heard has put together two screencasts demonstrating how to setup and use your Mac to type in Hebrew. You might want to be sure you have the unicode SBL Hebrew font installed before you watch the videos. The font is available free for download here. Be sure to also download the keyboard driver and PDF manual. You don’t need to use the SBL Hebrew keyboard drivers, but Chris does demonstrate them in the screencast. Thanks, Chris, for a great resource!

Immanuel ‏עִמָּנוּ ‏אֵל

First semester Hebrew students usually have enough background to understand this Hebrew:

עִמָּנוּ ‏אֵל

Here we find the preposition עם with a 1cp suffix נוּ so we translate “with us.” This is followed by אֵל , which we translate “God.” So in context (Is. 7:14; 8:8), we are told that the child to be born will be named “Immanuel” meaning “God with us.” In the ESV, NET, and NRSV we find the spelling to begin with “I” but in many carols we read “Emmanuel.” Why is this? Because, when Matthew quotes the OT passage (Matt. 1:23), the Greek reads:
ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ ἕξει καὶ τέξεται υἱόν,
καὶ καλέσουσιν τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἐμμανουήλ,
ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον μεθ᾿ ἡμῶν ὁ θεός.

Thus, the English spelling renders the NT Greek as “Emmanuel.”

I still prefer to write the “I” in Immanuel, because my students can then remember that even the prepositions and suffixes that they learn are alive with meaning.

Cultural relevance

I’m wondering about blindspots when it comes to “seeing” our own culture.

First, I wonder about how much Western/Anglo culture affects international translation efforts when the tools for translation are in English and generated (for the most part) by the Western Church. Is a layer of interpretation inserted between the Ancient Hebrew text and the target/receptor language and text? I think that sometimes (not always) we tend to miss just how “foreign” our own English translations are from the original text. I think most people would agree that the best situation is generating a translation from the Hebrew directly into the target language, but this is rarely the case (for lots of different reasons). What best practices will help to appropriately use the current tools, and what is the way forward?

Second, I am surprised by the ability (of some) to accept the need for accommodation to communicate the ancient text (i.e. the Hebrew Bible) into a tribal or remote language so that it is contextually appropriate and understandable, and yet have resistance to allowing modern English translations to likewise reflect their current culture in a meaningful way. Is there a blindspot to our own situated-ness?

Pete Enns on Mesopotamian Myths and “Genre Calibration”

Pete Enns is the Friday “guest voice” again at Science and the Sacred (the BioLogos blog).
Science and the Sacred blog

This week he is discussing the cognate literature (such as Enuma Elish, Atrahasis, and Gilgamesh) of the Hebrew Bible. Why is this helpful?

Placing Israel in its broader cultural and religious context has been referred to as the “comparative approach.” This is a sometimes-maligned term, as it is unfortunately understood by some to imply that Israel was simply copying or “borrowing” what was around them. This is not the case. Rather, the literature of Israel and that of her predecessors and neighbors reflect a common way of looking at the world. The value of these ancient texts is not in telling us from where Israel got her ideas. Instead, they help us understand what kind of a text Genesis is. I like to refer to this as “genre calibration.”

Read the entire post here.

Psalm for Thanksgiving Day

‏

שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת
בְּשׁוּב יְהוָה אֶת־שִׁיבַת צִיּוֹן
הָיִינוּ כְּחֹלְמִים׃
‏ אָז יִמָּלֵא שְׂחוֹק פִּינוּ
וּלְשׁוֹנֵנוּ רִנָּה
אָז יֹאמְרוּ בַגּוֹיִם
הִגְדִּיל יְהוָה לַעֲשׂוֹת עִם־אֵלֶּה׃
‎‏ הִגְדִּיל יְהוָה לַעֲשׂוֹת עִמָּנוּ
הָיִינוּ שְׂמֵחִים׃
‎‏ שׁוּבָה יְהוָה אֶת־שְׁבִיתֵנוּ
כַּאֲפִיקִים בַּנֶּגֶב׃
‎‏ הַזֹּרְעִים בְּדִמְעָה
בְּרִנָּה יִקְצֹרוּ׃
‎‏ הָלוֹךְ יֵלֵךְ וּבָכֹה
נֹשֵׂא מֶשֶׁךְ־הַזָּרַע
בֹּא־יָבוֹא בְרִנָּה
נֹשֵׂא אֲלֻמֹּתָיו׃

Psalm 126

Continue reading →