Read the Old Testament book of Ruth in Hebrew. No Experience Required. This new class starts June 22nd, 2010. Pastors: Please consider setting aside some time on Tuesday nights to prepare a sermon series on Ruth. This course is for pastors, but it is also for anyone who loves Christ and his Word. This is …
Category Archives: Languages
Memory Maps for Mastering Biblical Hebrew Verbs
With three specially crafted picture-maps, you can become a living Hebrew verb parsing machine. With these three pages of instruction and only two hours of time, you will quickly master the strong form of the Hebrew Imperfect, Infinitive, Imperative and Participle. Best of all, this is free — everything you need is in the downloadable …
Translating Merneptah’s Egyptian Victory Hymn
You may not know about Merneptah, but he was king of Egypt during an important time of great upheaval in Canaan — a time when Israel was settling in and taking land. Merneptah’s reign overlaps the Biblical record of Israel in Canaan; best of all, he is the first one (outside of the Bible) to …
New Discovery: Ancient Hebrew Text about Widows and Orphans
A piece of pottery with ancient Hebrew writing was recently found. When I say ancient, I mean from around the time of King David (1000 BC). It was found at an archaeological dig in Israel (read page 1 and page 2 of the official Qeiyafa Ostracon Chronicle). From the picture below, you can see that …
Hebrew, Kline and Redemptive History
Come learn Biblical Hebrew at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City. Covenant theology and Biblical Hebrew merge as we study redemptive-history through various passages with an emphasis on Genesis and its vocabulary. Listen to this MP3 recording of why Pastors need the Biblical languages! Classes meet from 8:00am to 9:15am on Tuesdays and Thursdays. …
Wingreen English-to-Hebrew Answer Key and Software
I have been working on Hebrew software that lets a student type in English and Hebrew and build their own English-to-Hebrew database. The reason for this is a way for them to quickly complete the English to Hebrew exercises in Weingreen’s Practical Grammar for Biblical Hebrew. It lets the student build on previous work and …
Download Sofware for the Greek Old Testament
How do New Testament passages quote Old Testament passages? Is it possible that a New Testament author made his own immediate translation of the Hebrew (i.e., not quoting from a Greek manuscript, but translating on the fly)? If that is the case, is is possible that some Old Testament allusions have been missed by readers …
Download Ugaritic Software
I have been working on the Ugaritic language, and I wrote a software interface that lets me access nearly 1400 tablets. You can be a beta-tester of the software if you have a copy of Cyrus Gordon’s Ugaritic dictionary. If you want to use the tool and help test, download the program and email me …
Hebrew Grammar: Sheva-Glue and Moving Accents
The sheva of Hebrew is a great little marker. If you are learning Biblical Hebrew, I want to pass along a basic observation that may be helpful in your study of the language. There is a pattern of sheva usage which I call sheva-glue. When endings are attached to words, the sheva (simple or complex) …
Old Testament Manuscripts and 18 Tiqqune Sopherim
To analyze and explore a passage of the Old Testament, one must first establish the particular text (i.e., identify exactly what it is they are translating and exploring). To that end, one must know where to find the most relevant manuscripts. This article catalogs various Old Testament manuscripts with emphasis on online sources (for free …
The Old Testament Aleppo Codex: Vowels Added after Consonants
The standard edition of the Hebrew Old Testament is Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS). BHS is based off of a manuscript called the Leningrad Codex (B 19A) which dates to AD 1008. The Aleppo Codex is like B 19A, only older (AD 920), and partly missing (and so B 19A is more widely used). High resolution …
Israel in Egypt
In the November/December issue of Biblical Archaeology Review there is an article about Israel and the formation of the nation. The article starts with a discussion of the Merneptah Stele. This stele has Egyptian writing that contains the earliest known non-Biblical use of the word Israel (it also refers to Gezer). It is hard to …
Masoretic or Biblical Hebrew vs. Modern Hebrew
I studied Modern Hebrew first. I took classes at the local Jewish Community Center in preparation for my first trip to Israel. I also use the excellent Pimsleur audio program. When I got back from Israel, I then enrolled in a Biblical Hebrew course at Midwestern Seminary. Biblical Hebrew is also called Masoretic Hebrew. The …
Efficiently Using Greek, Hebrew and English Fonts
In American Biblical studies, one often needs to switch between the basic three languages of Greek, Hebrew and English. What concerns me here is how to communicate electronically in those languages with Windows-based software, such as MS-Word, without resorting to Latin transliterations. I assure you, the task has been made routine by fonts and keyboard …
Looking under the hood of the Bible
You likely have an English Bible. The Bible, of course, was not written in English. So I have a few questions for you: 1) Who translated it? 2) Where did they get the manuscripts to translate? 3) What manuscripts are available to the translators? I gave two presentations on the manuscripts behind the modern translations. …
Ancient Manuscripts of the New Testament
The New Testament is a compiled collection of ancient books and letters. The original copies of those books and letters are lost. However, we have copies that date close to the time of the originals. In fact, we have so many ancient manuscripts, that a numbering system was invented to inventory all the various scraps …
A Nebuchadnezzar Artifact
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. Daniel 1:1; 2 Kings 24:1 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, is recorded in the Bible (mentioned here in Daniel 1:1) and outside of the Bible. Using a cuneiform system of writing, a formula bearing …
Epigraphic or Archaic Hebrew
When I am working on a paper or research project, I often go to Amazon and find some of the books I need. I then add those books to a wish list (not because I wish to own them, but because I wish to keep track of them). Then I create names for different lists …
God’s Name Found outside the Bible on the Mesha Stele/Moabite Stone
The name that God gave himself — Yahweh (YHWH) — is found in the Hebrew Bible and also in other ancient documents.
Byblos Part III: Decrypting a Dead Language
In two earlier entries, I discussed software, theories and methods about the decrypting of an ancient language called Byblos (with Byblos being an ancient city just north of Israel): Part I: Chasing Byblos, Decrypting a Dead Language Part II: Encoding Byblos Signs The time gap between this post and those does not indicate inactivity on …
Hebrew Online
Listen to Modern Hebrew online: http://www.ualberta.ca/~ebenzvi/Hebrew_Bible/hebrewbibstudy.html The Psalms: http://www.shma-israel.org/narrations.php
Encoding Byblos Signs
Running the Byblos texts through software means encoding the inscriptions. Here are four lines of Text D:
Chasing Byblos – Decrypting a Dead Language
This series of articles is going to seem completely self-serving and I am afraid completely irrelevant. It may come off as self-serving in the sense that I will be using this space to report on my own ongoing research, and then irrelevant in the sense that casual readers could view this research as seemingly heady …