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
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