Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #89146 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 408 pages

Customer Reviews

By far the best way of learning biblical Hebrew
I have been trying to learn Hebrew as a part of my theological education at university, but so far in vain. The material used in class focuses mainly on grammar and less on reading and understanding, and I find it extremely difficult to learn parsing, rules, exceptions, etc. by heart. And fortunately I don't have to any more. I bought Dobson's excellent book, and as stated on the cover, I was reading and understanding passages from the Hebrew Bible after only two hours. It wasn't easy, but still a lot easier and infinitely more fun and motivating than the university approach.

Dobson teaches words and their use, and when topics of grammar arise, he explains by means of examples, exercises, etc. And in my opinion this practical approach to grammar is a lot easier to understand, compared to learning an endless number of rules. The grammar drills include using certain word forms in a number of ways, and translating sentences from Hebrew to English, and (probably more important for learning purposes) from English to Hebrew. The pleasure of being able to translate actual sentences into Hebrew after only a few hours of studying is hard to describe.

One of the brilliant things about Dobson's book is that the student almost immediately gets the feeling of being able to read, understand, and even translate. At first, only simple phrases and sentences, but pretty soon long and rather complex narratives. The lessons take approx. 2 - 3 hours each, and after lesson 25 I can actually read and understand the bulk of the Hebrew Bible, as well as discover and understand interesting grammatical points, word plays, etc. I cannot recommend this book enough. I have been through 5 or 6 books on the subject, but absolutely nothing compares to Dobson's. In my opinion, this is by far the best way of learning biblical Hebrew.

A good book for learners
This is an excellent book for those learning Biblical Hebrew. It uses a more inductive approach than other textbooks, giving examples and exercises to help the learner see and understand how Hebrew grammar works rather than focussing on memorising of formal and rather abstract grammar rules. For the current generation of students who have not much knowledge of formal grammar, having never studied Latin or Greek in grammar school, this is a much better book than most others. I attended an intensive "Hebrew in a week" course using this book and we learnt more Hebrew in five days than most seminary students learn in a semester.

One question: The previous edition came with a casette tape. This contains reading exercises from the book and is an essential accompanyment to it. Does the 2003 edition come with a casette or CD?

BRILLIANT indeed,
Learning biblical hebrew can be a dounting task. Not only because it is not as simple and straight forwards as its modern counterpart, but also and mainly because the few existing books that are available on that topic, tend to cram your head with endless and boring grammar rules, exceptions and whatever they can create to make your life a misery .

Well, be ready for a chock with that book .
It is awesome .. easy to use, even if your self studying, the grammar is clear, loads of exercices and.. it s pleasant to use..
I would not say fun as learning is seldom fun, BUT it sure does make the task of learning Old Testament Hebrew pleasant and does trigger some smiles along the way

The textbook comes with a CD rom .. VERY useful for getting a grasp of the language and also.. for learning .. without learning ..

"you listen .. you understand .. you know "

Good news for all students in theology .

The same textbook exist as well for New Testament Greek (Koine)

Get them both and enjoy .. You REALLY will