Learn Biblical Hebrew With 119 Ministries: Lesson 1

[Music] hello and welcome to learn biblical hebrew with 119 ministries this video is part of a series that teaches you how to start reading the hebrew language we pray that this series blesses you in your study of the word if you would like to know more about what 119 ministries believes and teaches please visit us at testeverything.net we hope you enjoy the following lesson [Music] [Music] welcome to learn biblical hebrew with 119 ministries this is lesson one in this lesson i will introduce you to the hebrew language and explain what you can expect to learn from this course first of all what is biblical hebrew biblical hebrew is the primary language that the first 39 books of the bible were written in these books are sometimes collectively referred to as the old testament in hebrew they are called the tanach in this course you will be learning aspects of the hebrew language that are necessary to read the tanakh my goal is to take you from knowing nothing at all about hebrew to being able to read a hebrew bible verse as quickly as possible this course does not teach modern vocabulary or grammar so for example we're not going to learn how to ask where the bathroom is or how much a taxi costs this course is specifically tailored for people whose end goal is to read the bible in its original language there are several resources that are available in this course the first resource is this series of video lectures each of these lectures is roughly 20 to 30 minutes long and covers one or two basic principles of hebrew with explanations and examples i tried to be clear and thorough in my explanations but of course you can feel free to pause or rewind the video if the material is moving too quickly the second resource is a written summary and exercise sheet that accompanies each lesson the summary is just a paragraph or two that briefly sums up what each lesson is about and the exercise sheet is a set of homework problems that you can solve in order to practice your new hebrew skills the answers to the exercises are included so you can check your own work you can find the link to the summary and exercises for each lesson in the description below each video i encourage you to do the exercises because they will help you understand and remember the information much better than just watching the videos so now that you know what you're getting into let's look at some of the basic features of the hebrew language biblical hebrew is written and read from right to left of course english words and sentences are written from left to right so you will have to get used to reading and writing backwards don't worry though it's not quite as difficult as you might think though it does take a little getting used to hebrew has its own alphabet in english of course we use the letters a through z and these letters comprise what is called the latin alphabet there are many languages that use this latin alphabet including spanish german and french so if you've learned any of those languages then you've had the luxury of being able to use all of the letters that you're already used to the hebrew language however is much older than the latin language and hebrew has a different alphabet with different letters we'll be spending the first few lectures in this course learning all about the hebrew letters and the sounds that they make speaking of letters hebrew letters do not have an uppercase and lowercase form so hebrew names are not capitalized and the first word of a sentence is not capitalized because there aren't any capital letters that's good for us because you only have to learn one form of each letter instead of having to learn in uppercase and lowercase form also the hebrew of the bible does not have punctuation markings there are no periods no commas and no quotation marks hebrew letters can be written with different scripts a script is the way that the letters appear in english we can write in print or we can write in cursive and you can think of those two forms as different scripts the letters being written are the same letters they make the same sounds but they look different hebrew also has a number of different scripts the oldest hebrew writings that have been found were written in a script called paleo-hebrew here you can see what that paleo hebrew looks like i won't be going into detail on paleo-hebrew in this course but one very interesting thing to note about it is that the greek alphabet is actually derived from the paleo-hebrew alphabet and the latin alphabet is derived from the greek alphabet so many of the letters that we use today in english could be considered the grandchildren of ancient hebrew letters again we're not going to be talking in detail about those things in this course but i do think that it is worth mentioning that when you learn hebrew you're not just learning a foreign language but you're learning a language that is one of the ancient ancestors of the english language returning to our discussion of scripts the script that we are going to be learning to read and write is called the babylonian script also known as the aramaic script or the square script here you can see what that script looks like this script was developed by hebrew scribes after the babylonian captivity which started around 600 bc the reason that we're going to be learning this particular script is that most copies of the tanakh that are available today are written in this script so if you want to be able to read a hebrew bible this is the most useful script to know another feature of hebrew is that hebrew has small symbols that are called vowel points in english we have five letters that are vowels a e i o and u and the rest of the letters are called consonants most hebrew letters make the sounds of consonants and the vowel sounds are indicated by vowel points to see what this looks like here is a hebrew word right now this hebrew word has only letters and no vowel points here we've added some vowel points beneath the letters whenever you read hebrew the little dots and lines that are underneath the letters are called vowel points hebrew always had vowel sounds but these vowel points did not always exist written vowel points were invented about 1200 years ago by a group of scribes called the masoretes before these vowel points when you read hebrew you just had to be familiar enough with the language to know which vowel sounds to use and where to use them but thanks to the mazzarites and their vowel points it's much easier to learn hebrew today in this course we are going to learn these vowel points not only because it makes the language easier to learn but also because any tanakh you find today is going to have vowel points in it so we've explained how we're going to write the letters in vowels but how are we going to pronounce them as you might have guessed there are a number of different ways to actually pronounce the hebrew letters and vowels these different ways of pronouncing hebrew are called dialects every language has different dialects for example i speak english but the way i pronounce english words is different from the way someone in scotland would pronounce those same words in fact they wouldn't call their country scotland they would say something more like scotland in the same way people pronounce english differently in alabama than they do in minnesota so english has a number of different dialects and hebrew has different dialects also in this course the dialect we're going to be learning is called modern hebrew or israeli hebrew this dialect is considered proper speech in modern israel and it is actually a blend of two older dialects one other dialect worth mentioning is called the ashkenazic dialect this dialect comes from jews who lived in germany and it is still a very popular dialect today especially among orthodox jews it is very likely that you will hear hebrew spoken in the ashkenazic dialect at some point so in this course we are going to officially teach the modern dialect but i will also tell you some things about the ashkenazic dialect so that you can recognize it when you hear it there is one more thing i need to explain about hebrew dialects and that is why am i teaching a modern dialect in a biblical hebrew course why don't i teach a dialect that was spoken at the time the hebrew bible was written there are two reasons for this first we don't know exactly how hebrew was pronounced in ancient times scholars have come up with some educated guesses but since we don't have any 3 000 year old audio recordings we just can't know for certain how the hebrew of ancient times really sounded second hebrew had different dialects even in biblical times and the bible itself tells us this in the book of judges chapter 12 we find a story of a civil war that took place during the reign of the judge jephthah during this conflict japhtho's armies could tell the difference between ephraimites and other israelites by the way the ephraimites pronounced the word shibboleth in other words the ephermite's dialect was different from the dialect of the other israelites so this means there were dialectic differences in the hebrew language long before even king david's time so even if i knew exactly how to pronounce every hebrew dialect that existed from the time of moses to the time of ezra it's not clear which one of those dialects you could consider the most biblical so instead of taking a wild guess at how the language was spoken at some particular pastime and place i'm just going to teach the pronunciation of hebrew that you will most likely hear today and again just to clarify even though we're learning a modern pronunciation of hebrew we are not learning modern hebrew vocabulary we won't be learning words for things like airplane or television because we don't need to know those words in order to read the tanakh finally this is an introductory level course my goal is to take you from a place of knowing nothing at all about hebrew to actually reading a bible verse in as short a time as possible consequently i am not going to cover every single detail of the language nor am i going to mention every exception to every rule my goal in this course is to give you enough information to get started learning hebrew without getting bogged down in all the technical details right away as we get further into the course i will supply more and more details so you can get a more complete and correct understanding of the language but at first i'm going to simplify everything as much as i can again so that you can get to reading and writing the language on a basic level as quickly as possible this course is designed to give you a good base of knowledge and understanding that you can build on later if you decide that you really want to dig into the language if you do decide to continue learning the language when you have completed this course my recommendation would be to either take a university hebrew course or to find a hebrew language tutor so let's quickly review everything i've talked about today hebrew is written and read from right to left we are going to learn the hebrew alphabet we are going to learn biblical hebrew vocabulary and grammar we are going to write using the babylonian script and the masoretic vowel points finally we are going to pronounce the words in the modern israeli dialect while also making a note of the ashkenazic dialect we're going to end every lesson with this hebrew word this word is shalom in modern hebrew shalom is both a greeting and a farewell so it's the equivalent of saying hello or goodbye in ancient hebrew shalom is a word that means peace so at the end of each lesson i will bid you shalom which means both farewell and peace you can find a written summary of this lesson at the link in the description below i look forward to seeing you in the next lesson where we will begin to learn the letters of the hebrew alphabet [Music] shalom [Music] it is because of you our generous supporters who make it possible to offer these high quality teachings completely free of charge if you feel led to support 119 ministries so that we can continue this effort please visit testeverything.net and click on the support 119 tab learn how you can partner with us to take the whole word of god to the [Music] nations you

Channel: 119Ministries

Views: 30,271

Rating: 4.9717116 out of 5

Keywords: 119Ministries, torah, bible, hebrew roots, Hebrew Lesson, Hebrew Alphabet, Learn Hebrew, Hebrew Language, Learning Biblical Hebrew, Biblical hebrew, Israel, Torah, TANAKH, Scripture, Linguistics, Language, Hebraic, Jews, Messianic, Yeshua, YHWH

Id: VqI1kmFIRAY

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020