Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
By far the best way of learning biblical Hebrew, 27 Mar 2008
I have been trying to learn Hebrew as a part of my theological education at university, but so far in vain. The material used in class focuses mainly on grammar and less on reading and understanding, and I find it extremely difficult to learn parsing, rules, exceptions, etc. by heart. And fortunately I don't have to any more. I bought Dobson's excellent book, and as stated on the cover, I was reading and understanding passages from the Hebrew Bible after only two hours. It wasn't easy, but still a lot easier and infinitely more fun and motivating than the university approach.
Dobson teaches words and their use, and when topics of grammar arise, he explains by means of examples, exercises, etc. And in my opinion this practical approach to grammar is a lot easier to understand, compared to learning an endless number of rules. The grammar drills include using certain word forms in a number of ways, and translating sentences from Hebrew to English, and (probably more important for learning purposes) from English to Hebrew. The pleasure of being able to translate actual sentences into Hebrew after only a few hours of studying is hard to describe.
One of the brilliant things about Dobson's book is that the student almost immediately gets the feeling of being able to read, understand, and even translate. At first, only simple phrases and sentences, but pretty soon long and rather complex narratives. The lessons take approx. 2 - 3 hours each, and after lesson 25 I can actually read and understand the bulk of the Hebrew Bible, as well as discover and understand interesting grammatical points, word plays, etc. I cannot recommend this book enough. I have been through 5 or 6 books on the subject, but absolutely nothing compares to Dobson's. In my opinion, this is by far the best way of learning biblical Hebrew.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good book for learners, 5 May 2004
This is an excellent book for those learning Biblical Hebrew. It uses a more inductive approach than other textbooks, giving examples and exercises to help the learner see and understand how Hebrew grammar works rather than focussing on memorising of formal and rather abstract grammar rules. For the current generation of students who have not much knowledge of formal grammar, having never studied Latin or Greek in grammar school, this is a much better book than most others. I attended an intensive "Hebrew in a week" course using this book and we learnt more Hebrew in five days than most seminary students learn in a semester.One question: The previous edition came with a casette tape. This contains reading exercises from the book and is an essential accompanyment to it. Does the 2003 edition come with a casette or CD?
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply the best, 12 Mar 2008
Dobson has applied his acclaimed inductive method to Hebrew following the runaway success of his NT Greek course. I wouldn't agree with the reviewer below who thought this was a good reference book. What makes this approach so attractive is that Dobson applies modern approaches to language acquisition to classical Hebrew. Hebrew sentences are presented which are subtly varied and built upon so that the student can develop a sense of how Hebrew conveys meaning. Certain types of people are used to learning languages the way we learned multiplication tables. People with certain personality types love learning tables, and then quickly 'calculating' sentences as if they were solving equations. Old-style language teaching encouraged people like this. However, they are a minority, and for most people, complete fluency is better/only achievable by the inductive method used here by Dobson, assimilating grammar in a more natural way. I have no hesitation in recommending both of Dobson's textbooks - NT Greek and Biblical Hebrew. As for the CD - the function is integral to the method. Learning to read an ancient language is not at all the same as learning to survive in a modern language. Hence the CD is not about 'shopping' or 'passport control', but readings of the exercises. Why? Because becoming familiar with a new alphabet is hard, especially one like Hebrew which reads Left to Right, and uses 'points' (dots) instead of normal vowel characters. Dobson's recordings are massively helpful in getting over the first hurdle of fluency in the alef-beit. Go Dobson!
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