User:Klezmeryeled/Hebrew lessons

Biblical Hebrew Lessons 

This series is designed to help people who have already begun to master the Hebrew letters and vowels, to begin to learn the essential vocabulary found in the Hebrew Bible (the Tenach) and the Torah (the Pentateuch or the Five Books of Moses), also known in English speaking countries as the Old Testament. Since the books of the Hebrew Bible were written over several hundred years, by different people, several locales and in several dialects of Hebrew and Aramaic, these lessons will focus on the core language words.

The lessons will be approached from a scholarly, middle of the road point of view, avoiding as much as possible, contentious religious interpretation.

The books were used as source documents for information:

Baltsan, Hayim. Webster's New World Hebrew Dictionary. Wiley Publishing, 1992. ISBN 0-671-88991-5.

Bolozky, Shmuel. 501 Hebrew Verbs. Barron's Educational Series, 1996. ISBN 0-8120-9468-9.

Jacobs, Jill Suzanne. Hebrew for Dummies. Wiley Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-7645-5489-1.

Ross, Allen P. Introducing Biblical Hebrew. Baker Academic, 2001. ISBN 0-8010-2147-2.

Zilkha, Avraham. Modern Hebrew-English Dictionary. Yale University, 1989. ISBN 0-300-04648-0

Sephath Emeth (Speech of Truth), Order of Prayers for the Whole Year. Hebrew and English. Hebrew Publishing Co, New York, (ca. 1948) (No author provided).

‎Tanakh; The Holy Scriptures, The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text‎. The Jewish Publication Society of America. Philadelphia, [year xx].

Only short passages of Biblical Hebrew text will be quoted in compliance with fair use guidelines. It will be taken from:

Friedman, Richard Elliott. A Commentary on the Torah, with a New English Translation and the Hebrew Text. HarperCollins Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-06-050717-9 (paperback, 2003). In turn, Friedman includes the entire text of the Torah from the German Bible Society's (Deutsche Biblegesellschaft) Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 1983.

A few words about pronouns and language: The Torah was written in a completely different culture from the Western culture in which we find ourselves today. It was much more androcentric and ethnocentric for example. As much as possible the generic, inclusive definition will be listed first, followed with a more literal definition in (parentheses).

Some examples:

[ melech ] means ruler, but literally means (King). Our definition would look as follows:

[ melech ] = ruler (king),

similarly,

[ Iysh ] is the most commonly used word in the Hebrew Bible for man, but can also mean humankind (mankind), husband, one, or person.

[ Iysh ] = man, humankind (mankind), husband, one (pron.), person.

Lesson One 

The following six words are among the most common words found in the Torah (Ross, Chapter Three, pp. 46-47).

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