[b-hebrew] Collecting Wow stories
Karl Randolph
kwrandolph at email.com
Tue Jun 13 21:27:26 EDT 2006
James:
I'm afraid that I don't really have any WOW stories
from knowing Hebrew: after all, most of what I know
of the Hebrew Bible, I read in Hebrew. It's sort of
hard to have a WOW moment connected with Hebrew
language when I have so little experience reading
Tanakh outside of Hebrew language as a comparison.
Rather what you can tell your students that one
does not have to have a great amount of classwork
in order to read the Hebrew Bible. I had all of one
year in class, followed by a couple of years where
I hardly touched Hebrew, then I started in Genesis,
reading slowly but steadily, until I reached the
end of 2 Chronicles. That was interesting, so I did
it again. And again. And again. Until I lost count.
I read it using a card under the words to hide the
vowel points. I read it using a font derived from
the writing on the Gezar calendar. Most recently I
have been reading using a program from the Sword
project http://www.crosswire.org where the text is
in unicode, reading it without points and accents.
So encourage your students. Of course they will
make mistakes. I did. The first time through they
will misunderstand portions. I did. But the Hebrew
is within reach. It is not overwhelming. With a
little bit of practice, the book will open.
The closest I have to WOW moments are in comparison
with the New Testament, how even the terminology
used is so similar in meaning despite being a
different language.
Karl W. Randolph.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "bowick at idirect.com" <bowick at idirect.com>
>
> Hi folks:>
> I was wondering if you would be willing to share stories or places where
> your knowledge of Hebrew has let you see something in the text, or have an
> insight that made you say 'wow'. I am not thinking of advanced studies,
> and the cutting edge insights you have made so much as I am asking us to
> reflect back on our early experiences with the language. In some cases,
> later reflection may have led us to discard aspects of those insights, but
> their emotional impact remains.
>
> My purpose is to collect stories to motivate beginning students. We know
> that learning Hebrew is a lot of work, and it can get discouraging. These
> stories can give students, perhaps some even lurking on this list, a
> reminder of why they are doing it.
>
>...
>
> My guess is many of you have much better stories and insights. Lets
> collect them to motivate the novices on the list, and also to help one
> another encourage our students.
>
> James Bowick
--
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/
More information about the b-hebrew
mailing list