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In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language
 
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In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language (Paperback)

by Joel M. Hoffman (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
Price: £12.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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  • This item: In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language by Joel M. Hoffman

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    Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
    This item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

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Product details

  • Paperback: 263 pages
  • Publisher: New York University Press; New edition edition (1 Mar 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0814736904
  • ISBN-13: 978-0814736906
  • Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 687,209 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"Hoffman has a flair for explaining how languages work." - Times Literary Supplement "Hoffman does a good job of pointing out the different traditions of biblical Hebrew that existed in antiquity." - Jerusalem Post "Strikes the right balance between thoroughness and accessibility." - Jewish Book World"


Product Description

Joel M. Hoffman's "In the Beginning" follows and decodes the adventure that is the history of Hebrew, illuminating how the written record has survived, explaining the significance of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and ancient translations, and trying to determine how the ancient language actually sounded. He places 3,000 years of developments into a historical context, and shows their continuing impact on the modern world and on writing today. This sweeping history traces Hebrew's development as one of the first languages to make use of vowels and also covers the dramatic story of the rebirth of Hebrew as a modern, spoken language. Easy to read and packed with scholarly insights, "In the Beginning" is essential reading for anyone interested in Hebrew, the "Hebrew Bible", or languages and writing in general.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Did the Masoretes get it wrong?, 3 Dec 2008
By C. Dixon "Uomo universale" (Devon, UK) - See all my reviews
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After the first couple of chapters I thought that this was going to be a really annoying book. Hoffman bigs up the contributions of the Hebrews to the development of alphabets and writing, choosing to dismiss the contribution of Phoenician and Aramaic which would almost certainly have had a far greater influence on the development of writing than Hebrew. I almost thought that Hoffman was going to credit the Hebrews with finding a cure for cancer and forever ridding the world of poverty.

It subsequently picks up though. The sections on the development of the Masoretic text, the Septuagint translation, and the Qumran texts are fascinating in their analysis of the differences between them. There are plenty of discrepancies between the three, not really seeming to show any sort of pattern. The upshot seems to be that the Masoretes, in their attempt to recreate Biblical era Hebrew in standardising the Tanakh, at best were inconsistent, and at worst may have got it very wrong. Why the discrepancies are so inconsistent will probably remain a mystery.

A basic familiarity with the Hebrew alphabet is helpful but not essential. Certainly an opinionated and biased book, and indeed a short history (I ploughed through it quite quickly - Hoffman advises A History of the Hebrew Language for a longer treatment), but worth reading.
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