Lecture 1: Biblical Hebrew Grammar I - Dr. Bill Barrick

øt 5:03 Hebrew grammar one it's the first of two courses in elementary Biblical Hebrew and I emphasize this Biblical Hebrew because from time to time we'll use some modern Hebrew songs we'll talk about modern Hebrew pronunciation there's a vast difference between modern Hebrew and the classical biblical hebrew and because of that in my courses I insist upon learning classical biblical pronunciation we're after all going to read classical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew were not reading modern Hebrew we will also utilize the classical Hebrew script rather than using modern Hebrew script for the same exact reason there isn't a Hebrew Bible published anywhere written in modern Hebrew script it's written in the classical Hebrew script and I might qualify that because you'll find out later that it's not even Hebrew script that we have in the Hebrew Bible it's actually Aramaic script that was adopted after the Babylonian exile but it is the script that we will use and we'll learn to read rather than modern Hebrew script because we're learning Biblical Hebrew not modern Hebrew as we look at the course objectives we find out that the first one is that having taken this course you should be able to identify the basic grammatical elements of basic readings from the Hebrew Scriptures when I talk about basic readings from the Hebrew Scriptures there are several sections of the Hebrew Bible that are considered to be classical and very basic and simple the Book of Jonah is one - the second chapter with all of its poetry the book of Haggai is another the Joseph's story starting in Genesis chapter 37 is yet another and from time to time we will actually utilize examples from those sections as we are reading and trying to understand Hebrew the second objective is that you would be able to read aloud that is to pronounce vocally the Hebrew of any passage of the Old Testament to do that you have to learn the script for Hebrew and you have to learn it well but we will practice that in class here and the third objective is that you should be able to translate simple Hebrew sentences from the Old Testament this is the first semester second semester the objectives heightened and we become a little bit more proficient and aim for higher proficiency but in this first semester this is what we will accomplish in fact it may surprise you but within a few weeks we will actually do an exercise we will go to a Hebrew text picked at random and ask you to read it and then when we go a little bit later in the semester sometime after the midterm period of time we will go again to the Old Testament to a random passage and ask you to identify what you see in the text and it will surprise you how much of the text you will be able to recognize and in some cases read and other cases at least you'll be able to go to a lexicon to look up the words or vocabulary you don't know but by the end of this first semester you will be able to pick up and read certain portions of the Hebrew Bible I would recommend you're taking your Hebrew Bible to Chapel from time to time if you have any idea that someone might be preaching or teaching from the Old Testament I believe dr. Grisanti is going to speak in Chapel in just the first few weeks however it may be too soon for you to use it then but as you watch later in the semester it's a good time to force yourself to read and utilize your Hebrew when we talk about the textbooks the textbooks are the grammar that dr. business and I have prepared and written the one that's available to you now is the revised edition of 2004 we're working on the revised edition of 2006 to get it ready for publication by logiss through the library system it also includes a workbook and the workbook must be utilized you'll have workbook assignments at the very start and as we look at the workbook assignments the best thing to do is to take that out of your workbook unless you want to preserve the workbook as a whole as an entity and if you want to preserve your workbook as a separate volume then photocopy the pages for the assignments for the lessons and then turn in your photocopied assignments I might also recommend biblia hebraica Stuttgart insya it's not going to be a text or a book that you'll need to obtain immediately you might want to put it on your list for a gift for Christmas or something like that from your family but eventually you will have to have this it's only recommended for this semester it's required for the second semester so please make certain you have a copy of biblia hebraica stuttgart NCS sometime between now and January so that we can be operating in the Hebrew text at random and anywhere we desire to go for illustration during the class the grading in this course the workbook exercises are 42 percent of your total grade that's because you spend a lot of the time on those that's where you're going to spend most of your time in the semester is writing out the workbook assignments the worksheets that are in the workbook 24 percent are for vocabulary quizzes you have 21 workbook assignments you have 12 vocabulary quizzes to take now you can figure out there that each of these assignments then is worth 2% of your total grade so if you fail to turn in one of the assignments you've already dropped your grade to 98% if you fail to turn in three of your assignments or to take that say that fail to turn in one workbook exercise and do not show up for two vocabulary quizzes you're already down to a ninety four percent and rocking on an a-minus ready to drop to a B+ with a very nixed misstep so you can't afford to miss and be certain that if you have to miss class for any reason whatsoever that you've contact me and let me know the reason so I can determine whether or not as an excused absence if if it is an excused absence you will be allowed to make up that quiz or to turn in that assignment at another time but I must be notified ahead of time if at all possible it must be an excusable absence you can check on that in the student handbook and in the catalog to find out what's excusable there are three exams that will be given throughout the course of this semester and those exams are worth nine percent each of your total grade totaling twenty-seven percent of your final grade you are also graded on class participation we have fourteen weeks of activity in class and I am watching you and expecting you to participate when I ask questions I expect responses there will be times when I ask you to come to the board and to write things and your participation in class is part of your grade and I will evaluate that keep notes on it and at the end assign you a portion of that seven percent as the grade for your participation if you refuse to participate at various times because of a lack of being prepared that goes against you because your lack of preparedness demonstrates them that you have not spent the time you needed to in preparing for that class session so that's seven percent of your total grade you cannot get by in this class and get an A unless you participate just subtract seven from 100 it comes out ninety three or you're in the B range now already so without participation you can only get a b-plus if you're perfect and everything else participation is required that amounts to a hundred percent of the total grade any questions with regard to the grading at this point all right to give you a little bit more of an introduction Martin Luther has been one of my inspirations in the study of the biblical languages in fact the book is written by John Piper with regard to the legacy of sovereign joy that's the title of it one in his Swann series talks about Martin Luther and his dedication to the study of the biblical languages to the exegesis of the biblical text and how he would teach through a biblical book and wherever he ended in one school term he picked up in the next school term that's the reason why now I teach Psalms that way in Hebrew acts Jesus of Psalms I'm on a process of teaching through the Book of Psalms and right now we're already up to Psalm 60 in that process but according to Martin Luther the languages are very important for us languages are the scabbard that contains the sword of the Spirit they are the case which contains the priceless jewels of antique thought they are the vessel that holds the wine we want to get to the wine of the word we want to get to the priceless jewels the word we want to be able to teach and preach them but if we want access to them we have to know the original languages to learn the Bible only in translation is learning the Bible secondhand it's not learning at first hand we'll talk more about as we go along and also he said no sooner did men cease to cultivate the languages than Christendom declined in our days there are some who do not think the languages of any use and I hear that all the time I hear those who say well I really don't need Greek and Hebrew why can't you just give me a theology and Bible and let me get out of here without all the work of Greek and Hebrew and some even go so far to say when I get out I don't intend to use the Greek and Hebrew well that's a sad thing because if they think the languages are no use then they're there in essence saying God made a mistake in giving His Word in those original languages that God is not saw control that he has chosen something that is bad for his people and as useless to preserve his word in there isn't languages but although their doctrine is good Luther says they have often erred in the real meaning of the sacred text this is what happens when you avoid the languages or ignore the languages or abuse the languages we twist the text and pervert it to make it say what we want it to say rather than listening to what it does say they are without arms against error and I fear much that their faith will not remain pure the best response to error in the church is often to deal with what the original languages have to say because there are many errors that arise on the basis of English translation or in some other countries German translation French translation Spanish translation Russian translation bengali translation chinese translation or whatever based on translation rather than on what the original says remember that it is very important we get back to the pure fountain of the word of God and that is as he originally gave it to us and we must learn it and we must preserve it now a little bit later we're going to be learning a song from Zechariah 2:14 and part of the reason for using songs in this class is to help you get into your mind aids for learning mem Nanak devices devices for creating memory the jingles you hear on commercials on TV or on the radio stick with you you remember those tunes they cycle through your head and sometimes you remember a line from it and that's what I want to create by the use of songs in here and some of the songs at least are going to be based upon Scripture as this one and zechariah 2:14 and we'll come back to that one a little bit later and handle that we're also want at this very time to teach you a little bit of modern Hebrew why I hope some of you take the opportunity to go to is for a visit and also if you learn a little bit of modern Hebrew you begin to build a vocabulary that ties in with some of the Old Testament as well they'll just be a few differences in pronunciation at times let's begin with Shalom Aleichem everyone say that Shalom Aleichem all right Shalom Aleichem say it again Shalom Aleichem we get sloppy and say Shalom Aleichem and that's putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable all right we need to say Shalom Aleichem Shalom means what peace alaykum means upon you and the Kim is second masculine plural so it's used to speak to a group Shalom Aleichem is speaking to more than one individual everyone said again Shalom Aleichem and the response to that if someone says that to you your response is to reverse it and say ah like him Shalom okay everyone say that Ali Kim Shalom so if I say Shalom Ali can you say if you say I say Ali Kim Shalom all right bow care tove boat care told I didn't say I broke my toe I didn't say you broke your toe that's good morning bow care told everyone okay bow care is morning Cove is good good morning MA Shalom kha everyone maash lanka is how are you and that said to a single male individual if I say to Gregg mashallah mwah then he knows he has to respond saying something and you've learned one word so far you could answer Tove good you just say Tove all right so MA Shalom cause what you say to one individual male okay one say that ma Shalom kha if you're speaking to a woman its Marshall make everyone Marshall Oh make the answer to that is Tove toda viata and that's pronouncing it with modern hebrew everyone say this together Tove toda Vetta if you're and that data is male if you're talking to a male person if you're talking to a female responding to her you save that at the at-at is you feminine singular at tah is the male second person singular personal pronoun you alright so Tove todavía tah and then the next is Laura toda Laura means not bad in other words you're sending a signal by saying Laura you're not really that good all right you don't want to say told because you don't really feel that good but you don't want to say that you're really bad so you just say not bad low is the negative rah is bad and toda is thank you everyone low rot toda and then when we finish a conversation and we leave each other we say goodbye with liheap throat liheap throat everyone llahi throat la heat throat everyone liheap throat it means until I see you again okay until I see you again alright let's read through all of these alright Shalom Aleichem Ali Kim Shalom Boker Tov maash lanka Maslow make Tov toda Virata Laura toda la he traught okay so let's remember these and from time to time use them as we come to class and as I see you I will greet you with different things so I'll ask you how you're doing maash lanka I may say good morning Boker Tov and we'll try to learn a little bit of Hebrew and as we use these that will help your vocabulary begin to build and you begin to hear the sounds and we will be weaning you away from transliteration very rapidly and quickly as well now these are in your syllabus on pages fifth excuse me page 14 you'll see some of these are given for you and you can look over those the last one like eat throat is the last one the bottom page 14 in your syllabus and you can pick out the different ones and we'll be using more of these as we go along while we're talking about learning Biblical Hebrew we need to realize and I should have turned that sound off I forgot about that being there this was at a time and I had it turned up to because of the fact that when I taught this before I was trying to keep students awake on the front row and my first year of teaching I used sound effects that way we don't really need to do it anymore all I needed to know about he I learned in 503 all right everything you learn in 503 is adequate in fact the totality of it is adequate for reading the Hebrew Bible 504 just picks up in broadens a very little bit and begins to deepen it second semester is a lot of practice of what we learn in 503 if you don't learn here in this semester what we have in 503 well you will not do well at any other stage of your Hebrew learning this is the most important semester you have in Hebrew you must dedicate yourself to learning as much of the basics as possible and some of these basics that we go along we will summarize and we'll talk about okay what do I need to know what is important what is significant and one of the things that I do in my classes as dr. Bustos dozen is is we have a minimum of memorization you will not be memorizing all the pages and pages of Hebrew verb paradigms that are found in the backs of grammars when I took basic Hebrew I was required to memorize every single verb paradigm in the back of the grammar page after page after page after page and you know what it was not necessary because if we understand how the Hebrew language works we only need to memorize one verb paradigm and everything else falls in place and so as you take this course you can rest assured that you're going to have an easier time of it than those who are taking the other two sections of introductory Hebrew but you will have the same amount of knowledge in fact I believe because of the simplification of it that by the time you finish both semesters you will have even more knowledge because we have time then to cover far more things and to get more into the text itself but remember it all starts here in 503 the goals for the study of Biblical Hebrew are a working knowledge of grammar which we're going to be learning piece by piece bit by bit some of the terms may be unfamiliar to you because of a long disuse perhaps the last time you took a language was maybe advanced English in high school or or maybe an English grammar course and junior high perhaps you've forgotten what a participle is what an infinitive is what a noun clause is those things we will talk about will define and we'll learn I will not leave you hanging out there on a limb and I also want you to be certain that you can ask a question any time about any grammatical term I use if you do not know what that is or what is meant by it and please don't be bashful because if you don't know there's at least one other person if not two or three in class who has the same question so don't be bashful just speak up and ask you have to have a working understanding of the grammatical thought process in Hebrew Hebrew speakers have a Hebrew thought process that they utilize in speaking Hebrew the same as you do in English if you speak another language like Roger does you speak several different Chinese dialects to actually speak it smoothly and fluently you have to think the way the people who speak that dialect think that's why when you know that you're learning Hebrew is when you're dreaming Hebrew in the middle of the night your mind is suddenly not drinking about being scared to death in a Hebrew class I'm talking about dreaming Hebrew that Hebrew words are in your mind and you may even wake up and speak a Hebrew word just right out of your sleep your wife said what was that you said and you have no idea what you said but it's there and that's part of the process and that's part of the reason for using the songs and the exercises the repetition the chance that we use everything else in here is to drill that into our subconsciousness and once we get into the Hebrew our goal throughout this first semester is to begin to think like the ancient Hebrew thought as they began to speak this language and of course our main goal is an increased appreciation for the Old Testament and I use the term Old Testament unapologetically I know that many to be politically correct today change that just say Hebrew Bible but we are Christians and we have two Testaments in our Bible and we hold to the totality of all 66 books as being the Word of God and therefore I refer to the Old Testament or the older Testament just as often as our if you refer to the Hebrew Bible and we want to demonstrate the spiritual benefits if we're going to get into the Word of God we want to have some spiritual benefits of being in the Word of God anytime you open the scriptures for any purpose whatsoever it ought to be devotional and it ought to be an opportunity for it to have a spiritual impact upon your life and upon my life and that goes for Hebrew as well Hebrew is not just purely an academic exercise when we read the Hebrew text even as a worksheet assignment or even as an illustration or an example as we look at it as we're learning the Hebrew grammar we do not want to hinder the Holy Spirit from using his word to speak to our hearts at any time if you'll approach the biblical languages whether it's Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic in that fashion you'll find that it'll be much easier to learn because you have a higher purpose and reason for reading the Word of God in those languages it's not just so that we know them up here it's that we might have an impact here in the heart and show it in our lives I'm not teaching Hebrew just to hear myself speak I'm not teaching Hebrew just to make you miserable just to give you work to do just to keep you busy just to put you through the act paces so you can get a degree a piece of parchment with your name on it that says you graduated that's not the purpose of this at all we're here to learn more about God through the word he gave and if we cannot learn more about God if we cannot have Spiritual Exercises as we go through then we're miserable that's a terrible way to approach this whole thing we're preparing to preach and teach the Word of God and to do that we need to stay close to God and we need to have the spiritual benefits that come from the study of the original languages we'll read the Hebrew Bible out loud because if we don't read it out loud we will miss some of the key elements of the Word of God when we go to a passage like Isaiah chapter 5 verses 1 through 7 we have the song of the vineyard and the song of the vineyard as you read it and you hear it it has the lilt of a love song you can hear it in the cadence of the words and the sounds that are formed by the consonants and the vowels together it has the lilt of a love song and then it moves into the working part of the psalm where the Lord talks about what he did for his vineyard and you can hear the solid Cadence's of work and labor it changes from a lilt to kind of a plotting and a striking form and then at the end it moves into the lament when he looked for fruit instead of good grapes it brought forth the sour bitter grapes of a bad crop and the disappointment shows the sounds within the Hebrew text itself are imitations of sounds that people make when they dislike something or disapprove of something we make sounds in English we say when we think someone's been naughty we say ouch if we're hurt and we sometimes groan because of the problems of exhaustion or of pain or of illness those sounds that we have within our language the onomatopoetic imagery that we create with our voices and our words is created in every language and it's true of Hebrew as well and we cannot understand that unless we see the picture overall there's a passage in the in the prophet name that describes the destruction of the city of Nineveh and you can read that in any language other than Hebrew and you will not get the picture that's in the Hebrew because in the Hebrew the picture is that Nineveh is going to be washed down the drain by the Euphrates River and disappear and part of that imagery is using an onomatopoetic collection of three different verbs that give the actual sound of going down the drain the Hebrew uses the word for example buk buk buk buk is the word for bottle now nowadays we have plastic bottles and all these different things we used cans aluminum cans for sodas but if you take an old-fashioned glass bottle take a liter bottle take the cap off and turn it upside down what kind of sound does it make glue glue glue glue glue right that's to imitate that sound in Hebrew using Bach buk buk buk it's that same kind of sound that is made in the book of Nahum of the destruction and washing away of the city of Nineveh you don't get that picture reading and translation you see that you hear it only if you read the Hebrew Hebrew poetry is very expressive as you read through the Psalms many of the Psalms are built not only upon the visual imagery that they project through the metaphors not just the vocabulary that describes situations but by the very sound themselves the auditory senses are piqued and utilized to get the message across so we must learn to read the Hebrew aloud to read it smoothly to read it well to read it accurately so we can accurately identify those types of situations and of course we want to translate we don't want to just read it we want to translate it these are some of the aims that we have the goals that we have in studying Biblical Hebrew why we come to a class like this while you're taking 5:03 while technic y you will take next semester 504 why you will go on to take a third and fourth semester hopefully a fourth semester of Hebrew exegesis of a book study so that you have the opportunity to apply what you've learned and to practice and to see what it does and see the riches the treasures that are mined from the Word of God how important is a study Biblical Hebrew how many of you are married okay most of you are married when you last kissed your wife did she still wear the veil that she was wearing when you married her in fact when you married her did you kiss her through the veil but that's what a lot of people are doing because reading the Bible and translation is like kissing your bride through a veil that's what rabbi hiyya Nahum Bielek said in Poland over a hundred years ago you see if we really want to know what the Word of God says we've got to read an original language is not in translation translation puts it at arm's length away from us there's a gap there there's a distance we've allowed someone else to come in between to tell us what the text says rather than us interacting with the text directly it's kind of like watching a black-and-white TV when you could have a color one all right it just is not as expressive so stop kissing your bride through a veil learn the biblical languages and go to them directly in the introduction part of your textbook we have a diagram there that talks about the fact that Hebrew is a Semitic language and I've giving you there the branches many languages Hebrew is the one that we're learning now and as you're looking at Hebrew as you look at any script you'll see here the picture that's on the screen the first thing that stands out in your mind in looking that is what what do you see there that is a characteristic that just stands out just jumps off the screen at you Scott okay it's backwards you can see that by the spacing for the paragraph on the third line occurs on a different side on the right-hand side rather than on the left-hand side what else stands out to you as you observe that use all of your senses there look at it carefully what else stands out yes okay there are spaces between the words good what else seems like it's upside down why give a reason why oh good very good very good all right notice the long tail on this letter right here that letter is the letter l' ammad the equivalent of the English L phonetically the llama is the only letter in Hebrew that goes above the line and you can always identify it and see it and you can thereby identify whether or not the plate in a book has been published in the correct orientation I've picked up books where the plates were turned around backwards and you see that tail is on the other side and I've even had some that were backwards and upside down so the tail was on the bottom that meant that someone who didn't know Hebrew manipulated the plate when they inserted it into the production and put it the wrong direction so that is a good clue by the way observing things like that and writing to publishers and telling them that a picture has been published backwards upside down or inverted sometimes gets you free books or at least free replacement pictures I've done that a number of time with great effects Akkadian is a language spoken in Mesopotamia Akkadian is what we call cuneiform writing it wedge writing it was written by stylus in clay and it looks very different from the Hebrew roots like this there at the bottom of the screen where we have Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon written across there now obviously that is the artist depiction of it because it have to be an imprint to be able to actually show how this is imprinted within the clay it's indented into the clay but that is Akkadian that's cuneiform writing be glad you're not studying Akkadian there are thousands of cuneiform symbols that need to be learned in order to read Akkadian and each of those particular symbols are used here there are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 of them each of those 12 can have as many as 30 different sounds or meanings that means a huge puzzle to try to undo in order to translate Akkadian you can ask Brian Murphy about that next semester as he takes Akkadian from Aramaic the 2nd biblical language the Book of Daniel chapter 2 verse 4 through chapter 7 verse 28 sections of the book of Ezra a verse in the Book of Jeremiah words found in Genesis words found in the Gospels are in Aramaic Aramaic is a sister language of Hebrew Aramaic is a language that was spoken actually in Mesopotamia before it was spoken anywhere else it was there that the Hebrew people during the Babylon exile picked up the Aramaic alphabet and took it back home with them to substitute it that alphabet for the old paleo Hebrew script in which the Scriptures had originally been written topic is a Semitic language some have thought it was had midok but it is considered now to be a Semitic language a fascinating language there in the Horn of Africa an Arabic Arabic is a Semitic language in fact it has so many ties to Hebrew that in the lexicon of brown driver and briggs aramaic or excuse me Arabic was utilized as one of the keys of identifying terms that were found only one time in scripture and G our driver used Arabic to try to describe the operation of the Hebrew tenses and that's part of the reason why we have had a misdirection on Hebrew verbs over the last century is due to the attempt to tie it all to Arabic because there's so much the vocabulary is identical to that which is in Hebrew the chart of Semitic languages you have that in your book you can see that there's the Western and the eastern a blight the language spoken at habla the modern site of Telmar Deacon Syria is still being debated but there are many who now are saying that belongs in the Western group as opposed to Eastern the eastern group is a Syrian in Babylonian which includes the ur Akkadian and the north western group out of the Western is the Ugaritic the Canaanite or finition the Hebrew and the Aramaic and the Aramaic divide into Western and Eastern and the South West Semitic group is ithi optic and Arabic these languages are those that are all related to Hebrew and are used from time to time to help us understand word that might be used only once or twice in scripture and its context is ambiguous we're trying to identify the meaning you'll see there the scribe with the chisel and hammer in hand writing a bait the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet the letter to the right of that is olive turn the olive in your mind about 90 degrees to the right what does it make a capital A you see the paleo Hebrew script is identical to the ancient Phoenician script the Phoenician script is the source of the Hebrew I'm excuse me the source of the English and of the Greek alphabets and therefore you'll see many similarities with the old paleo Hebrew this is why we again say we're using a different script for Hebrew now than was ever used before the Aramaic script and it's what has caused all the difficulties if we were stuck with the old paleo Hebrew script we might have some of the letters at least that are recognizable like the olive there we associate with a in English or the Alpha in Greek this is a ABC Dury an ABC Dury is a writing of an alphabet ABCD the term alphabet is derive the same way the first two letters alpha beta or olive baked in Hebrew and we talked about ABC Dury it is usually a aid and aid a help to learning an alphabet or to inscribed an alphabet or to have it written down and this is Ugaritic Ugaritic a cuneiform language but unlike Akkadian it's cuneiform has letters and the letters are almost identical to that of Hebrew we talk about the pronunciation of Hebrew we have the ancient Samaritan pronunciation of Hebrew from the time of the captivity of the first ten tribes from northern Israel in 722 BC all the way down to the finalizing of the Samaritan Pentateuch around 100 BC we have the Samaritan pronunciation the non Samaritan pronunciations include Tiberian in northern Israel Palestinian in Israel proper the Babylonian over in Mesopotamia and then we have under the Babylonian the Yemenite which is far to the south at the heel of the arabian peninsula and then in Palestine itself there are two different kinds of print sephardic in Ashkenazi Sephardic translation or Sephardic kazumi pronunciation has to do with a native a geographical group of people surviving from the nation of Israel living in the land of Palestine who continued to pronounce Hebrew differently than all of the relatives who had fled to Europe and lived in the ghettos through Poland and Germany and all other places Russia elsewhere those who lived in Germany especially began to pronounce the Hebrew a little bit differently and developed the Ashkenazi pronunciation in this class we from time to time we'll use Ashkenazi but most the time we're using the Sephardic pronunciations in reality however classical Hebrew is probably closer to the Yemenite pronunciation in 98 I was in Israel with our seminary group and I was at the Wailing Wall and as I stood at the Wailing Wall with the yarmulke on and I had a Hebrew Bible in my hand I didn't want to stand out like a sore thumb so I stood there with Hebrew Bible open and I actually began to read it because I thought you know while I'm here I'm going to have the full experience and I'm not going to pray like these people are and in the way they're praying I'm not going to roll up a prayer on a piece of paper and stick it in the cracks of the wall I'm just going to read so I started reading from the Psalms and pretty soon a man came up behind me and it happened to be the rabbi taking care of the library that's underneath kind of a area protected area there next adjacent to the Wailing Wall the western wall the temple and I stopped and turned and greeted him and he said you're reading Hebrew and I said well you must have known or be surprised by that because my accent betrays that I am American he says no I'm not surprised by that he says I knew you were American before even started reading but he said your pronunciation is y eminent and I said that's interesting I said I always thought it was Sephardic he says well it's it's basically Sephardic but he says it's more purely Yemenite and so I asked him I said well why do you say that and on what basis would you identify that and is that a bad thing do I need to change and he says well you're not pronouncing it as in modern Hebrew he says you're pronouncing it in what many considered to be the purest form for classical ancient Biblical Hebrew he said the Yemeni he said probably preserved not only the scrolls the law that were delivered from Jerusalem when the Romans attacked and perhaps even before that during the time of the Babylonian invasion but he said the Yemenis he said have preserved in the Jewish elements down there the oldest traditions of pronunciation of Hebrew that we know of so I said if you're intending to try to imitate biblical or classical Hebrew he said keep doing what you're doing and keep teaching your students the same so I'm still doing it all right there's this brief introduction in your textbook to the rabbinic literature the Midrash from - the Hebrew meaning to interpret it's an interpretation of the biblical text using illustrations and stories that Talmud builds on that and Talmud is a word that means learning from Lamade he learned or he taught it's the word that's used of a student as well and the Mishnah which is a form of the Talmud from Sharna which has to do with the second teaching or the second Torah the second revelation that they believe has been given to them to give them the meaning of the text all of these are explained to you in your textbook there's not going to be anything about this as far as exams are concerned it's just for your information to help place Jewish literature in a context these materials are written in what is called Mishnah Hebrew mish nake comes from Mishnah Mishnah Hebrew or middle Hebrew is that Hebrew that began to be used and spoken after the Babylonian exile after the completion of the books of the Hebrew Bible it was that which was the rabbinic Hebrew found its fullest development around 100 B see to 400 AD and finds itself in many of these productions the camera also involved there got mer what we want to do now is learn the Hebrew alphabet 22 letters we want to begin with those as we again with them the very first one is I'll lift every one olive olive is what's used it when we talk about alphabet in Hebrew it's olive bait olive bait you can see the name even is very similar to the Greek letter alpha Aleph alpha they have the same basic origin and so as you're looking at that that's part of the reason for you look at it you say but that looks nothing like an a looks nothing like a alpha this is the Aramaic font and the arm Aramaic script and so the olive is that way we'll learn a way of writing them first we'll work on recognition of them then we'll work on how to write them out and there's a place in your manuals to practice the writing but don't fill those in until we go through it in class on Thursday on Thursday we'll talk about how to write them but this is Olaf the second letter is Beit everyone bathe now it looks like up there I've written Beth but it's not a hard it's not a or should I say a soft th and it's not a short e it's like the Spanish e and saying you're all right so it is bait and so that T sound is there but you allow an aspiration at the end there's an explosion of air at the end bait all right bait so what's the first letter okay the next one is gimel gimel gimel the fourth is doll it okay doll it hey and this one is the one that has the differences in pronunciation and I teach you two pronunciations because the fact that you have to get along in current Hebraic environment and most he braced today you use the German pronunciation the Yiddish pronunciation the modern Hebrew pronunciation volve but it is actually Wow in the classical Hebrew that's one of the differences in pronunciation so Wow just like wow say you've already got six letters of Hebrew let's go back and do these first six again okay pronounce them olive bathe gimel dalet hey Wow also known as valve right the seventh is Zion Zion eighth that H actually is usually translated with a dot under it or a rocker arm under it to get that guttural thing like when you're pronouncing the name ba Johann Sebastian Bach it's like the CH and German Kyra Church alright so you have that hey faith okay make it sound like you're clearing your throat hey faith right now notice the difference between the hay and the faith notice that this has three complete sides and the hay on the left side there has a gap between the top and the leg the left leg don't confuse them alright next is Tate Tate Yoda Yoda is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet when you read in the Gospels that what not one jot or tittle will pass away from the law that word jot is from the Hebrew Yoda as a smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet alright let's go back to the beginning and let's do from all of through yo the first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet Olive day gimel dalet hey Wow Zion hate tape yard okay then we go to the 11th letter is COFF COFF now notice the cuff as compared to the bait as we look at the bait we see something a little bit different right here we have on the bottom right hand corner what looks like a little protrusion at the letter bottom letters a little ledge that peeks out there at the bottom but when we go down to the eleventh letter of the Hebrew alphabet instead of having that it is the same as the top it's rounded off there is no ledge that is what in Matthew 5:18 is called the tittle tittle or in the Greek Carolinas which means a horn and in the Hebrew is called the same thing the carom the horn of the letter it's what distinguishes the bait from the cuff the cuff doesn't have that horn that tittle and the the bait does then you know this letter you saw that with a long tail on it the LA mid la mid maim noon Tomic I in alright let's go back to the beginning and go that far as we go through it you want to try to learn all of these and get the sound sealed in our minds all with let's all put us together okay I'll live bait gimel dalet hey Wow Zion late tape your cough LA mid Maine noon Tomic I I in okay let's go from there the next letter is pay everyone pay it's what you do for this class pay alright pay it's ha day again Sade notice that Sade is almost like the ioan but the ioan has a smooth rocking arm that comes the top and along the right side and the bottom it's smooth but that Sade has not that smooth goes in and then back out all right so that Sade is different it looks very similar but it is different Sade Cove not COFF remember the coffee's different cope cope this is the only one of the Hebrew letters of the 22 basic letters that goes below the line as you'll see later on Rach scene not sin seem alright it's a sin to say sin it's seen ok seen Sheen what's the difference between scene and Sheen follow the bouncing ball over the left horn it is seen over the right horn it is shiiin shiiin shiiin shiiin shiiin okay and the last letter tau tau in modern hebrew is pronounced as Tov okay now let's go back to the beginning and go through all of them one more time 22 letters the Hebrew alphabet you have them in chapter one of your textbook and we have them up here as well alright let's go through all of them all if bathe gimel dalet Hey Wow Sian faith tape Yoda cough lawmen name noon Sonic iein pay Sade Cove rash scene Sheen Tao now if you're keeping track you say but wait a minute you said twenty two letters but those are twenty three because the scene and Sheen are counted as one they're counted as one so 22 letters actually have two forms for the sibilant that is known as scene or sheen now there are words that you can learn to recognize by means of these first of all know that the names of the letters give you the sounds of the letters all of begins with a vowel but we're not learning vowels we're learning consonants that means it is a silent consonant the olive is silent the bathe takes the sound at the initial part of it the but it's the B gimel is AG Daleth is a D all right hay is an H Wow is a W or Bob sometimes taken as a V in modern Hebrew but not in classical Hebrew okay the Zion is a Z cough is a que la MIDI is an L MAME is an M noon is an N I in is the same as olive it begins with a vowel therefore it is a silent consonant iein is a silent consonant pay is a P Tod a is like a TS it's like a TS sound Sade okay Cove is actually the equivalent of Q all right as in quiche okay Rach is an our scene is an S Xin is SH and the towel is a t and so you see they're two T's tape and tau are two T's so the letter name if you learn the letter name you know the sound so let's take a look at these five letters what is the first letter yo the smallest letter the Hebrew alphabet now you can see that when it's put alongside the other letters of the Hebrew alphabet what is the second one remember reading right-to-left seem good over the left horn the dot is what's the third letter rash what's the next letter the olive is going to be silent isn't it and the last one la mid Y s are silent L what does that remind you of yeast that I L everyone say it yeast i L we don't say is real it doesn't begin with a vowel in Hebrew it begins with a consonant a Y sound yeast that il everyone yeast by L so you're already reading unpainted Hebrew that's the way the jerusalem post is published by the way they don't use vowels because the hebrew can be read without the vowel pointings the first letter here on the right she notice the dot over the right hand horn Sheen the second letter the third letter Wow Wow Bob okay someone's saying WOW for those two or three of you that knew so soon all right the last letter is a trick letter it's actually a final form of the main in Hebrew some letters take a different form at the end of the word than they do at the beginning or in the middle we'll talk about those letters later so that's a MAME okay so you have la hmm Shalom the Wow becomes a vowel there Oh along Oh Shalom meaning peace the third one the first letter yo second hey third Wow fourth Yad hey Wow hey Yahweh Yahweh the Tetragrammaton the name of the Lord one of my pet peeves is those who write this as capital L lowercase Ord as though it were a benign confusing the names of God is inexcusable confusing Adonai with Yahweh as inexcusable Adonai it'd be it'd be like confusing your names would be like calling Scott Greg and Greg Scott alright we don't do those type things we shouldn't confuse the names of God either Yahweh is not Adonai he is a deny but Adonai means Lord master Yahweh has to do with the one who is the eternal ever-existing covenant-keeping god who has a special relationship to his people totally different meaning different exegetical emphasis and focus never never never confuse the two and never never never write them the same find a way to write them either write the tetragram town as Yahweh or as a cat our captain letters yhw H or as Jehovah if you have to that's kind of 2nd or 3rd best but it's better than nothing all right or all capital L o rd capital L capital o capital R capital D in writing to make certain people understand which title of deity is being used please keep the titles of deity straight you say well the Jews don't pronounce Yahweh well that's where you're wrong we'll talk about that another time we have a Orthodox rat lay rabbi friend who may visit the class some time he'll tell you that they pronounce it that's just that in some situations it's not to be pronounced okay all right now what we want to do with the Hebrew alphabet next is to sing it so listen to this as always stated give adalat he and Valen tsiyon heat attainted you did cough and love admittance of a Hyatt P inside a cool Federation scene and Shina top of a new Shalom Shalom Shalom Aleichem a live Pete and gimel dalet he involving Zion gate and didn't you did coffin lama dream noon Sami hyypiä tardy Confederation scene and Sheen and top javi knew Shalom Shalom Shalom Allah hem okay got it let's try it all right and after we've tried to keep up with her and you're breathless at the end and you're stumbling all over everything will slow it down and do it without her the next time around okay let's try it okay everyone ready till she starts right off o datum give adalat a bow in Zion they sent a ten-year-old and cop in LA midlane islamic guy in pay and sod a confederation scene and Tel Aviv Shalom Shalom Shalom Aleichem all estate and young dollar teens on eye and taste and taste and Yoda and coughing Lama day new sonic eientei and Sade go Federation Tina scheana Tom javi do Shalom Shalom Shalom Aleichem all right let's slow it down a little bit okay let's hear it one more time I always have problems with a tune because I keep trying to put it to something else and I think it's actually most must be the Burger King song about hold the bait hold the onion hold the lettuce special orders don't upset us I keep getting it confused you see so let's listen to it again okay and then we'll try it on our own and slower olive bait and give adalat a involving Zion heat attainted you did cough and love admittance only kyod pee inside a confederation scene and cheetah top of a new Shalom Shalom Shalom ahem al if beaten gimel dalet he involving zion hater didn't you did coughing love admittance of Mihai in psi D Co Federation scene and cinta havi new Shalom Shalom Shalom ahem ok so try it all if faith in gimel dalet Eyvind vow in sy and Nathan Nathan Yoda and coffin Lama Dame noon sama Chi in pay and Sadiq o Fenris Sheen and Sheen and top of they knew Shalom Shalom Shalom Aleichem got it let's try it one more time ok all of faith and gimel dalet hey and bow in cyan - teeth immune and coffin lawmen maintenance army guy in pay and Sadiq ofen Gresh and Sina Chien and ha ha they did birth of a new Shalom Shalom Shalom all right I'll tell you these songs with alphabets always throw me ask my grandchildren I have a hard time to an ABC song I'll live B to give doll okay and allowance I and - yo did happen monatomic IM gay inside a collaboration Sheena Sheena Todd they do show him our giggle Dalek am now inside take the donut talkin Amin baby zombie Ryan k inside a coconut teenage Cena top puppy new sha sha sha mommy yeah now how are you gonna practice that at home oh come on now you gotta practice at home and I've got a practice at home we'll all practice at home and keep this to where we can finally do it without anything else and we're on tuned all the way through which may be hard for some of us including me to stay on tuned but we'll get it done alright and again the way to get to that is to go to my website you can get to my personal website either by going to www.redcross.org back to some of the Hebrew here I want to go to the in slide here and I want to teach you another song I don't have the tape here for it so you just have to bear with me this is from Zechariah 2:10 in the English and it bronie means shout its command shout the idea of shouting for joy or shouting and triumph this sim he is and rejoice and be happy but see own is daughter of Zion a title for the city of Jerusalem key is because he Nene is behold and that's repeated he he naina ki he Nene vah vah is coming behold I am coming Vesak auntie and I shall dwell depth o cake in your midst okay it sounds a little bit like this okay roni roni vit some ki baat see own roni roni vit some ki baat see own roni roni vit some ki baat see own roni roni vit some ki baat see on t he nee nee ki he nee nee ba vishakan t vet okay t he nee nee keen a neva vishakan t vet okay roni roni vit some key vitsin ki baat see own roni roni vit some ki baat see own roni roni vit some key fit some ki baat see own roni roni fit some ki baat see own and i need to bring that up a little bit so that we can sing it a little bit higher i think get too low there might have a lot of bases here but might not show up very well so I'll raise the register a little bit okay try to follow along with me this time and we'll stop at the end of that section and repeat it again to make certain we've got roni roni vit Sam he bought seoane roni roni vit Sam he bought Seon roni roni vit subkey baat seoane roni roni vit Sam he bought see on t he nee nee t he Nene ba the shock on T there Toki ki he nee nee ki he nee nee ba the shock on TV okay roni roni vit some key vit some key baat see on roni roni vit some ki baat co hone roni roni vitsin key bit some ki baat see on roni roni vit some ki baat see on okay now what is saying rejoice and be glad daughter of Zion because I am about to come and dwell in your midst now something that we're going to learn later on is that this is a very special statement because the way this is said behold I am about to come it's what we call the immediate future it will happen so soon that's as though it had already happened it's the words that is the same construction God used when he told Ezekiel Ezekiel I'm about to take your wife from you she died that night it's the same thing that Moses used to tell Pharaoh I'm about to bring the plagues on you and some cases it happened as soon as he left Pharaoh's presence it's immediate future here Israel in the time of sakura is told that the coming of the messiah to dwell in their midst is imminent as imminent as the death of Ezekiel's wife as the inman as imminent as the plagues on Egypt they were to live in the light of an imminency of the coming of the Messiah in his first coming the way we are instructed to live in the imminency of his second coming where not the first generation of believers on planet Earth to live with that kind of imminency involved and this song from that acid helps us to remember that reach reach out for joy and be glad Oh daughter Zion because I am about to come and dwell in your midst alright let's sing it one more time and then we'll go to Chapel roni roni vatsim ki baat co roni roni vit some ki baat seom roni roni vit some ki baat seoane roni roni vit some ki baat seom ki ki nee nee tee hee nee nee ba vert shock on TV okay kee kee nee nee keehi nee nee pas the shock auntie Verto cake roni roni vit some key vit some key but see on roni roni vit some ki baat co home roni roni vit some key vitsin ki baat see own roni roni vit some ki baat seom who are we waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ even so come quickly Lord Jesus gentlemen I hope that through today's singing not only if you've got a leg up on the alphabet but you've also learned at least one or two vocabulary words will stick with you the rest of your lives as we sing these songs that's one of the purpose of these songs is to build vocabulary recognition by sound by ear and getting your tongue and voice and lips around them so you know how to make those sounds in pronouncing it that's the goal we have and so we'll have many different songs will sing throughout the course of this semester and from time to time will repeat them and we'll go over them we're going to learn another one hava nagila have a hard time keeping your seats for that one but we'll do it you

Channel: The Master's Seminary

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Keywords: Dr. Bill Barrick, The Master’s Seminary, Learn Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew Grammar, Hebrew, Old Testament Language

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Length: 72min 56sec (4376 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2012