Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jason Hare <jaihare AT gmail.com>]

George,

I've never been a Hebrew teacher in a university/college classroom, so
I can't comment on that.

I learned Hebrew (the first year of grammar in college) using C.L.
Seow's /A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew/. I found it really useful, but
you had to keep your eyes open for typos, many of which I pointed out
to my professor (we had a small class, of course) during the course of
the year — and others which he pointed out to us. If there is a newer
edition, it may have a lot of corrections. I thought that the
presentation was clear and effective, but I have to admit that when I
finished that first year and entered the summer vacation, I thought I
would never pick up a Hebrew book again. It was wrecking on the mind!

After a break of a couple of months, I came back to third-semester
Hebrew, in which we studied the Joseph narrative with the help of
Prof. Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi book which, for the life of me, I cannot
find a title for. I thought it was simply "The Story of Joseph" or
"The Life of Joseph," but I'm not sure. I haven't been able to find it
online, and I even called the Hebrew Union College library in L.A.
just now to see if they could help me out, and we didn't come across
it. It was a full letter-sized print bound in cardstock and plastic.
Not impressive in its appearance but great in content, having the
whole Joseph narrative presented verse-by-verse with inductive grammar
presentations, cognate associations in Syriac and Arabic, lexical
comments, etc. It made reading the story much more palatable for a
still fledgling student.

Anyway, that's my experience. Since then, of course, it's READ READ
READ, as it is when learning any text-based language.

Yours,
Jason Hare
Rehovot, Israel

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:34 AM, George Athas <George.Athas AT moore.edu.au> 
wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> In light of recent posts, I thought I'd put a few questions out there:
>
> (1) Which book did you use when you began to learn Hebrew?
>
> (2) If you are (or have been) an instructor, which book(s) do you use in 
> the classroom? Any pro's and con's?
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> GEORGE ATHAS
> Moore Theological College (Sydney, Australia)
> www.moore.edu.au
>
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