Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Kevin Riley" <klriley AT alphalink.com.au>]

While I would reject option number 1 and 3, and so number 2 is the main
reason.  

There is a sense in which Biblical Hebrew is dead, just as Middle English or
Old French or Koiné Greek are dead.  In that sense, pronunciation is not as
significant a factor as it is for a living language.  It would not worry me
whether a class in spoken BH followed the Massoretic pronunciation, or
modern Israeli Hebrew, or one of the traditional schemes.  Given the
closeness of modern Hebrew to BH, I can see arguments for following modern
Hebrew phonology - more the eastern mizrahi variety than the popular as that
would maintain more of the 'guttural' sounds.  As the development of the
bgdkpt letters seems to be post-BH, whether they are distinguished or not is
not essential.

I believe one practical problem is that for those of us not actually
involved in teaching Hebrew or studying it formally, time and money become a
big issue.  Once you finish your undergraduate course, there is never enough
time to do even the things you really want to do.

Kevin Riley

-------Original Message------- 
 
From: Randall Buth 
Date: 14/06/2009 10:26:48 PM 

 
A survey question. 
 
How many on this list are learning Biblical Hebrew in a spoken BH classroom?

 
If not, is this because 
 
1. A belief that non-spoken methods are more efficient. 
 
2. For practical reasons, a spoken BH class is not available for you. 
 
3. A belief that BH is special/dead and shouldn't be spoken as a class
language. 
 
Thank you for your responses. 
Randall