Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>]

Hi Chris,

 

Thanks for sharing your history with us.  You are certainly to be commended for trying to learn these things on your own.  I remember when I first tried to learn Hebrew on my own with an old grammar and no instructor; I didn't get very far.  So I admire your "sticktoitiveness."

 

As far as the rest of your answers, I'll just say that what might appear to be a really great, deep insight into the biblical text, may turn out to be more of an exercise of the imagination than really finding what is present in the text itself.  There's an old couplet about this: "Wonderful things in the Bible I see, most of them put there by you and by me!"  So my caution on this would be: insights are wonderful if they are in fact insights; but if we are simply reading our own imagination into the biblical text, then no matter how wonderful and clever it might sound, we really aren't advancing our knowledge of the text; in the end they turn out not to be insights.

 

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm.  Sometimes these imaginative interpretations can be quite interesting and even entertaining and stimulating. (If you have never read it before, get a copy of Chaim Potok's novel, The Chosen, which has some very entertaining passages dealing with gematria and other interpretive techniques).  But in the end, reading the Bible like you would any other book is the way to go.  Reading the Bible as if it was chocked full of hidden codes doesn't really result in credible interpretation.  Sometimes the authors did some clever things with word plays and puns; but for the most part the text can be understood by a fairly commons sense application of the normal rules of grammar.

 

But again, I appreciate your enthusiasm and desire to learn.  Happy studying!

 

Blessings,

 

Jerry

Jerry Shepherd

Taylor Seminary

Edmonton, Alberta

jshepherd53 AT gmail.com