Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Matthew Anstey" <manstey AT portal.ca>]

Gady Garrett,

Several people replied as to what to read, but I think a more important
issue is how to read.

The method suggested to me by Randy Buth I have found a fantastic help, and
it only takes about 20-30 minutes a day. (Perhaps this is a modification of
what Randy said, I can't remember exactly what he said, but it still works.)

1. Choose one chapter a day. Read first time through at full speed, even if
you only understand 20% of what you read. Just tear through in a few
minutes. Don't worry about parsing or word meaning or anything really, just
enjoy reading so fast (and tell yourself one day I'll get 90+% - Randy
definitely didn't tell me that bit!)
2. Read through a second time with a good translation (NIV, NRSV, or NJPSV)
to help and work out all the words you missed. You should get close to
100&|% of the words and syntax now, provided you have learned them in your
first year course.
3. Read through a third time close to full speed without the English and you
should get about 90% right since it is so fresh.

Make sure you don't refer to grammars or dictionaries, and never think
exegetically. Do this for one month and your Hebrew will sky-rocket.

Now, some will worry about grammar, but this is not really a problem and is
not the goal of this sort of reading. For instance, when I started this, I
had forgotten that qatal could be used modally. This is of course mentioned
in every grammar book. But when I came across one in Genesis somewhere which
I knew just had to be modal, I thought, "That's interesting." Later (since I
was in the bus on the way to college) I found this case in the grammar. But
now I will never forget that, and I could find an example fairly quickly.
This happens all the time with this sort of exercise. You basically get a
great intuitive feel for the language, and a handle on all sorts of
constructions. Your vocab learning will also be contextual. For instance,
when I read the Reuben story I realised in my reading that Reuben had
brought something called "dudanim" in from the fields. I had no idea what
this word meant. In my second reading I found out it means "mandrake roots."
Now I know this quite rare word and one place where it is found since I
associate it with this story. This is a sound learning technique.

Randy encourgaed me to read the Pentateuch following the weekly Jewish
readings, since even though the BH is sometimes harder, it is foundational
for so much of the OT. In studying other books, if you know this stuff well,
you will see allusions to it all over the place. The BHS has these weekly
readings marked in by a special symbol you'll find in the index.

Hope this helps,
Matthew Anstey