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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Survey Question about use of Biblical Hebrew in class
  • Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:24:16 +0200


Dear Tory,

I agree that to be fluent in modern Hebrew is an advantage for classical Hebrew scholars, because then they can read the linguistic literature written in modern Hebrew (and they also have an advantage in connection with the Biblical Hebrew vocabulary). But the same is true in connection with French and Italian; scholars being fluent in these languages can read the linguistic literature in these languages.

I have not said that being fluent in modern Hebrew *is* a serious disadvantage for those learning Biblical Hebrew, but in some cases it *can* be a disadvantage, as in the case of the two students I mentioned. Their problem was that that they thought in modern Hebrew, and therefore they automatically ascribed characteristics to biblical Hebrew that are foreign to that language. And they had difficulties in adjusting their mind set and ascertain that Biblical Hebrew is a different language compared with modern Hebrew.

Therefore I am a little skeptical about learning Biblical Hebrew in a spoken BH classroom. We do not know how Biblical Hebrew was spoken, or whether parts of the Tanakh contain a literary language that was not spoken by the ordinary people at the time the texts were made. I therefore surmise (but I may be wrong) that the Biblical Hebrew spoken in the classroom has modern Hebrew as its basis, and that because of this, modern ideas such as tense=grammaticalized location in time (which I claim is completely foreign to Biblical Hebrew) can be smuggled into Biblical Hebrew by help of the classroom Hebrew. Therefore, I asked Randall about the advantage of using classroom Biblical Hebrew.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



--- On Sun, 6/14/09, Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no> wrote:

Because of their modern Hebrew background, it was
not as easy for them to learn Biblical Hebrew (the
subtleties of the language)

I would strongly disagree that modern Hebrew is any sort of obstacle to learning BH. I may or may not be alone in the following opinion, but Hebrew scholars who are not fluent in the modern Hebrew are at a serious disadvantage in this field.

Tory Thorpe


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