William Sanford LaSor's "Handbook of Biblical Hebrew, vol.1(Grand Rapids:He ist absolutely right. We are to perceive Ancient Hebrew as a historical language - avtually there is no contemporary speaker of that language anymore. And as far as BIBLICAL Hebrew is concerned it is important to keep in mind that it is an artificial language, mixing up several synchronic and diachronic different layers (registers, dialects and so on). So, what is BIBLICAL Hebrew to speak? See, for instance, Edward Ullendorf's important studies "Is Biblical Hebrew a language?" and other papers in his: Is Biblical Hebrew a language?, Wiesbaden 1977, and, more recently, E.A.Knauf, War "Biblisch-hebräisch" eine Sprache? Empirische Gesichtspunkte zur linguistischen Annäherung an die Sprache der althebräischen Literatur: ZAH 3 (1990) 11-23.
Errdmans, 1978, p.3:
"All learning is in context. The context, however, is not artificial, composed
perchance by one who does not use the language naturally, but rather it is the actual
language of those who used it as their mother-tongue. For this reason, I refuse to ask
students to compose sentences in Hebrew. To do so is to impress errors on the student's
mind. And, frankly, most of us who teach Biblical hebrew do not have sufficient fluency
in the language to speak or write it."
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