Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>]

Karl: Just to be clear, I'm not proposing any such volume. Somebody else is,
and had opened a discussion about it here. The message to which you
responded was a response to Peter posing a question about a message in which
I had said that I was philosophically uncomfortable with Hebrew students
using such a volume. I was saying that I would _not_ want students in Hebrew
classes to use such a volume, and I also agree with you and everyone else
who has said that electronic tools would be preferable.

Chris

On 1/19/05 1:46 PM, "Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com> wrote:

> Chris:
> 
> IMHO students undergoing instruction in Hebrew are precisely those I think
> would be least well served by such a volume.
> 
> I was already instructed back in my day not to use an analytical lexicon, 
> but
> after class I used it until pages started falling out and scattering to the
> four winds, after which I consigned what remained to the recycle bin. It was
> very good practice for me to look at the text and try to understand it while
> trying to avoid the hassle of leafing through the dictionary, but still 
> having
> it as a backup to correct myself. (That analytical lexicon listed all words
> under their traditionally understood roots. Trying to recognize which root a
> word stemmed from (to avoid leafing through the dictionary twice for each
> lookup) became an excellent education.)
> 
> The purpose of Hebrew class is to get a feel for the language, not just to
> regurgitate someone's translation, which is about all one can do with short
> glosses on the page. Why not then have an interlinier? I think that just
> clicking on a word and having BDB or KB pop up is almost too simple, but I
> think even those would give a better feel for the language than just a short
> gloss on the page.
> 
> I think those who would be best served by such a volume would be those who
> don't really want to learn the language, but need a certain familiarity with
> the language for theological reasons. Those who want to go beyond a mere
> theological reading of the text but actually have some familiarity with the
> language would be better served by software packages, such as Accordance. In
> this day with software tools available, I think there would be a very small
> market for the paper book you propose.
> 
> Karl W. Randolph.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>
> 
>> 
>> On 1/18/05 8:38 AM, "Peter Kirk" <peterkirk AT qaya.org> wrote:
>>> This seems like a strange philosophy, Chris. Do you have a philosophical
>>> problem with all labour and time saving devices? Do you do all your
>>> washing by hand? Do you walk everywhere? Just as cars and washing
>>> machines save time and effort, so does having dictionary glosses on the
>>> same page rather in a separate book. I could agree that it doesn't help
>>> students to save them making real effort to learn the language, but is
>>> it really the best use of their language learning time to spend much of
>>> it leafing through dictionaries for the right entry?
>> 
>> Well, first of all I should probably say that I was thinking in terms of
>> students actually undergoing Hebrew instruction -- as in, having flashbacks
>> to how overly reliant I and some of my friends became on
>> Armstrong-Busby-Carr.
>> 
>> Second, I probably didn't read well enough Philip's original statement 
>> about
>> his intended audience:
>>>>> It will be paper. I’m not targeting in-class students so much
>>>>> as those who
>>>>> have completed a year or more of Hebrew and want to read their
>>>>> OT regularly,
>>>>> but are unwilling to take the time to look up all the words
>>>>> they don’t know.
>>>>> That targeted audience is, even at a conservative estimate, easily 60% 
>>>>> of
>>>>> all students who take 1 or more years of Hebrew.
>> 
>> Third, for the question
>>> I could agree that it doesn't help
>>> students to save them making real effort to learn the language, but is
>>> it really the best use of their language learning time to spend much of
>>> it leafing through dictionaries for the right entry?
>> 
>> [Warning: The following paragraph contains Unicode.]
>> 
>> I could probably argue that either way, but let me just expose a little bit
>> of my reasoning as to why the answer might be "yes." Or, at least, if the
>> tool in question simply gives brief glosses as does Armstrong-Busby-Carr or
>> Accordance. Dictionaries like BDB and KB give far more information than 
>> mere
>> translation-equivalents. Used properly, dictionaries give readers a sense 
>> of
>> the entire semantic range of a particular word, something that short 
>> glosses
>> often can't do. If done well, they also give readers a sense of how the
>> semantic properties of a word might vary with syntax, e.g., a dictionary
>> will more likely distinguish between "root XXX followed by ב" and "root XXX
>> followed by ל" than is a simple gloss. Often, dictionaries will provide
>> compressed information about the evidence for why a word is believed to 
>> have
>> certain translation-equivalents.
>> 
>> Once again, though, please note that my comments/perspectives are probably
>> not exactly on target with the intended audience that Philip has described.
>> I was thinking in terms of students enrolled in Hebrew classes, which 
>> misses
>> Philip's point.
>> 
>>> My problem with this work is that I see little market for it as a large
>>> bulk of paper when it can be done more efficiently and cheaply with
>>> already existing computer tools.
>> 
>> I quite agree with that statement. I cannot claim to know all the BH words
>> that occur <50x in the Tanakh, but if I wanted a quick gloss and didn't 
>> have
>> my KB handy, I'd pull out my PDA or open my laptop.
>> 
>> Chris
>> 
>> --
>> R. Christopher Heard
>> Assistant Professor of Religion
>> Armstrong Fellow in Religion
>> Pepperdine University
>> http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
>> http://www.iTanakh.org
>> http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info

-- 
R. Christopher Heard
Assistant Professor of Religion
Armstrong Fellow in Religion
Pepperdine University
http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/cheard
http://www.iTanakh.org
http://www.semioticsandexegesis.info