Hebrew Textbooks: Update

Last August we announced here that our new textbook, Biblical Hebrew: An Illustrated Introduction (BHII), was entering into the testing stages and invited those interested in helping us in that process to contact us. The grammar has been well received through our test group and we have greatly benefited from their feedback on it.

Therefore we are happy to announce that we are now releasing the grammar in pdf form for use beyond the test group.

BHII Lessons

BHII Readings

We are releasing the 2-volume BHII (Lessons and Readings) now and will follow them up later this summer with the completed instructor’s manual and also a draft of the intermediate Reader, tentatively titled Biblical Hebrew: An Illustrated Reader (BHIR), which will include the Elijah and Elisha stories in Kings.

At the same time, the manuscript will be going to the publisher shortly so that we can provide a professionally typeset, bound version, along with (we hope) many other supporting materials such as an epub version, hi-resolution pdfs of the illustrations for electronic presentation use, and professionally recorded audio to use along with the materials.

Note that the PDF files posted above have been optimized due to size concerns. Those who sign up at our forum for BHII (bhii.proboards.com) will have access this year to the full size files, which maintain a higher resolution for course printing and electronic presentation. (Please contact us at bibhebii-[at]-gmail-[dot]-com for access to the forum.)

Our previously completed grammar, Biblical Hebrew: A Student Grammar (BHSG), remains freely available in pdf form. Thanks to some sharp-eyed users it has gone through another pass of corrections this summer.

Hebrew Textbook(s), Update

In a previous post, we announced the existence of a second Hebrew textbook we have created — one that uses more of an “immersive” learning experience by using comic-book style biblical scenes paired with graded Hebrew texts and asking students to read and answer in biblical Hebrew, and interact with each other and their instructor in Hebrew. This second textbook is titled Biblical Hebrew: An Illustrated Introduction (BHII), which complements the different (more traditional) pedagogy of our first textbook, Biblical Hebrew: A Student Grammar (BHSG).

Our New Biblical Hebrew Textbook

We are very excited to report that we have just finished a draft of our new biblical Hebrew textbook:

Biblical Hebrew: An Illustrated Introduction.

Why, you might be asking, have we written a second Hebrew textbook? The answer has to do with pedagogy

Our first textbook, Biblical Hebrew: A Student Grammar (which has its own page above and here and has been positively reviewed here), is in the mold of the grammar-translation model of language learning. That is, after each lesson, the exercises focus on producing a few forms (such as inflected verb) and then translating examples taken from the biblical text. This model of teaching and learning biblical Hebrew—indeed, all ancient languages—is the overwhelmingly dominant approach. Now, for some students this approach works very well; for more students, this approach to language learning results in PHSD (‘post Hebrew stress disorder’). Our own teaching experience confirms that the following description reflects many students’ assessment: “Grammar translation method: A dull, dry, and ineffective teaching method.”