Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Matt:

It depends on what you want to do with your Hebrew studies.

If you want to be able to write erudite papers on comparative linguistics as
it pertains to Biblical Hebrew, comparing and contrasting it to how the same
ideas were presented in other languages, then study as many of the cognate
languages that you can. This can be a near full-time job, because you really
should read Tanakh at least about ten times through to try to internalize
the feel for the language. Even then you’ll just be starting to get the hang
of Biblical Hebrew.

If your main interest is to try to have an internal understanding of the
language such that you have the best understanding what the Biblical authors
wrote, studying these cognate languages can actually be a hinderance.

The reasons for this are at least two related reasons:

1) Even with very close cognates, words that sound almost identical can have
very different meanings in each of the languages. It will take some effort
on your part to read Hebrew as Hebrew and not as bastardized Semitic
language.

2) Unless you know Biblical Hebrew really well, you’ll find that you’ll tend
to read Hebrew according to how ideas would be expressed in different
cognate languages. That will not be deliberate, just something that is hard
to avoid.

Even a native speaker of Biblical Hebrew would find learning cognate
languages somewhat difficult for the above reasons, and none of us is
anywhere close to being a native speaker of Biblical Hebrew. But for the
native speaker, he would want to speak Aramaic, for example, as bastardized
Hebrew.

As I said above, it depends on what you want to do with the cognate language
study, whether or not it will be helpful.

Donald:

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Donald Vance <donaldrvance AT mac.com> wrote:

> … From this you'll learn that the Masoretic
> pointing is a genuine development of the language and not some
> artificial encrusting as some on this list seem to believe. Just
> couldn't help that last dig. :-)
>

I take that as a light-hearted dig. But in seriousness, who on this list
believes that the Masoretic pointing is an artificial encrusting onto the
consonantal text? I don’t, hence my curiosity.

>
> Sent from my iPhone
>

Oy veh! How can you stand that input method for long responses? I’ve tried
it on an iPod Touch (same interface) and it is so slow. I prefer a netbook.

>
> Donald R. Vance
> donaldrvance AT mac.com
>
>
Karl W. Randolph.