Beginning Biblical Hebrew.

• Author: Kaye, Alan S.
• Position: Book Review

Beginning Biblical Hebrew. By MARK D. FUTATO. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 2003. Pp. xii + 351. $35.

This work, another introductory textbook of Biblical Hebrew in an apparently insatiable market, claims to have "an easy-to-learn format" plus the advantage that "familiarity with English and Hebrew grammatical terminology is not presumed" (p. ix). It is a well-organized book with some strengths over its competition, e.g., good use of blue color for headings and a pleasing look. Other strategic assets include limiting the vocabulary section of each of the forty chapters to just ten words, which allows students to master these four hundred items while simultaneously concentrating on the rudiments of grammar. Moreover, numerically keying the vocabulary to Raymond B. Dillard's Hebrew Vocabulary Cards (Springfield, Ohio: Visual Education Association, 1981) is quite beneficial.

Not everything in Futato's text is new, however. For example, the section listing the verb paradigms (pp. 253-81) takes up many pages, and they can be found in numerous other Biblical Hebrew textbooks and grammars. Furthermore, they are also to be found in the text itself in the grammatical sections of the forty lessons. Thus, e.g., geminate roots are the subject matter of chapter 40 (pp. 249-52) and can also be found on p. 281. Is it necessary to present this material in both places?

The total vocabulary is presented alphabetically--not under the triradical root system (pp. 282-90). This is a pedagogical advantage in that beginning students will find words faster, since they have but little knowledge of the intricate morphophonemic system of the language. On the other hand, students will eventually have to learn the morphophonemics in order to use one of the standard lexicons, so why not introduce them to it from the beginning?

The last part of the book contains the answers to the practice drills (pp. 291-351). Since Biblical Hebrew is a dead language, it is not surprising to see that the traditional grammar-translation genre has been employed. Thus there are many exercises involving translation and morphological parsing. Unfortunately, modern foreign language teaching methodologies have not progressed very much in the teaching of dead languages.

Let me now turn to a few details:

p. 3: It is erroneous to equate the Biblical Hebrew [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] with the [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in English rug. According to Gary A. Rendsburg (in Phonologies of...