This book introduces the student to the textual study of the Hebrew Bible--to help such a student "perceive the work of the numberless and nameless scribes torn between tradition and fashion in their restrained attempts to update the orthography of Scripture." Sixteen essays serve as the bridge from older methods for the study of orthography to newer ones, using the computer to analyze large bodies of text.
This book is an outgrowth of the Dahood Memorial Lectures delivered at the University of Michingan 1983. It attempts four things... it speculates on the significate of this evedence for studies in the production and trasmission of the text.
In this detailed study, Barr examines the problem of standardization of spelling in the Bible. He scrutinizes both the optional use or omission of letters such as W or Y to indicate certain vowels, and the several variations of spelling present in the individual books and passages, suggesting explanations of how the different spellings occur on the same page or even in the same verse. An authoritative and original analysis, this book will make an important contribution to the development of the text of the Hebrew Bible and to the history of the Hebrew language.
All previous Biblical Hebrew lexicons have provided a modern western definition and perspective to Hebrew roots and words. This prevents the reader of the Bible from seeing the ancient authors' original intent of the passages. This is the first Biblical Hebrew lexicon that defines each Hebrew word within its original Ancient Hebrew cultural meaning. One of the major differences between the Modern Western mind and the Ancient Hebrew's is that their mind related all words and their meanings to a concrete concept. For instance, the Hebrew word "chai" is normally translated as "life", a western abstract meaning, but the original Hebrew concrete meaning of this word is the "stomach". In the Ancient Hebrew mind, a full stomach is a sign of a full "life". The Hebrew language is a root system oriented language and the lexicon is divided into sections reflecting this root system. Each word of the Hebrew Bible is grouped within its roots and is defined according to its original ancient cultural meaning. Also included in each word entry are its alternative spellings, King James translations of the word and Strong's number. Indexes are included to assist with finding a word within the lexicon according to its spelling, definition, King James translation or Strong's number.
The first five books of the Hebrew Bible, called the Torah, are the foundation to the rest of the Bible. With this edition, the Torah can be read and studied through the original pictographic script from the time of Abraham and Moses. Each letter in this ancient script is a picture, where each picture represents a concrete idea.
Whether you know Hebrew or not, this book will provide you with a quick reference resource for learning the meaning of many Hebrew words that lie beneath the English translations, which will open new doors for you into Biblical interpretation. The Hebrew language of the Bible must be understood from its original and Ancient Hebrew perspective. Our interpretation of a word like "holy" is an abstract idea, derived out of a Greco-Roman culture and mindset, which is usually understood as someone or something that is especially godly, pious or spiritual. However, the Hebrew word קדוש (qadosh) means, from an Ancient Hebrew perspective, unique and is defined in this dictionary as: "Someone or something that has, or has been given the quality of specialness, and has been separated from the rest for a special purpose." With this interpretation, we discover that the nation of Israel is not "holy," in the sense of godliness or piety, but is a unique and special people, separated from all others to serve God. This Biblical Hebrew dictionary contains the one thousand most frequent verbs and nouns found within the Hebrew Bible. Each word is translated and defined from its original concrete Ancient Hebrew perspective, allowing for a more accurate interpretation of the text. In addition to the one thousand verbs and nouns, the appendices in the book include a complete list of Hebrew pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions and numbers.
The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.
Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew is an indispensable publication for biblical scholars, whose interpretations of scriptures must engage the dates when texts were first composed and recorded, and for scholars of language, who will want to read these essays for the latest perspectives on the historical development of Biblical Hebrew. For Hebraists and linguists interested in the historical development of the Hebrew language, it is an essential collection of studies that address the language’s development during the Iron Age (in its various subdivisions), the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, and the Early Hellenistic period. Written for both “text people” and “language people,” this is the first book to address established Historical Linguistics theory as it applies to the study of Hebrew and to focus on the methodologies most appropriate for Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. The book provides exemplary case studies of orthography, lexicography, morphology, syntax, language contact, dialectology, and sociolinguistics and, because of its depth of coverage, has broad implications for the linguistic dating of Biblical texts. The presentations are rounded out by useful summary histories of linguistic diachrony in Aramaic, Ugaritic, and Akkadian, the three languages related to and considered most crucial for Biblical research.
This introduces and abridges the syntactical features of the original language of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. Scholars have made significant progress in recent decades in understanding Biblical Hebrew syntax. Yet intermediate readers seldom have access to this progress due to the technical jargon and sometimes-obscure locations of the scholarly publications. This Guide is an intermediate-level reference grammar for Biblical Hebrew. As such, it assumes an understanding of elementary phonology and morphology, and defines and illustrates the fundamental syntactical features of Biblical Hebrew that most intermediate-level readers struggle to master. The volume divides Biblical Hebrew syntax, and to a lesser extent morphology, into four parts. The first three cover the individual words (nouns, verbs, and particles) with the goal of helping the reader move from morphological and syntactical observations to meaning and significance. The fourth section moves beyond phase-level phenomena and considers the larger relationships of clauses and sentences.
