Keeping Your Hebrew 1: Great Expectations.

This is the first in a series on keeping up your Hebrew after seminary (or even while in seminary).

My first recommendation is that you buy and read Con Campbell's book Keep Your Greek, as most of what he suggests works for Hebrew as well. That being said, I don't intend to repeat what he has already said so well.

My first recommendation is that you not expect more from your first-year Hebrew class than it can actually deliver. In some seminaries, first-year Hebrew is intended only to give you enough Hebrew so that you you can make reasonable use of the electronic resources. Such a course is not designed to enable you to begin learning to read Hebrew.

Assuming that your Hebrew course is intended to help you begin the process of learning to read Hebrew, keep some things in mind.

First, remember first grade? When you learned the alphabet, and began to learn how to sound out words, and spell? In first-year Hebrew, you're back in first grade all over again. At the end of your first year, you'll have a modicum of vocabulary (usually around 400 words--everything that occurs more than 100 times in the OT). You'll also have a modicum of grammar and syntax; enough to help you make sense of most narrative sentences. That would be great if the OT were written in first-grade Hebrew, like those old Dick and Jane books were written in first-grade English.

Second, remember that you did not, at the end of first grade, begin reading Great Expectations. However, many people who want to use their Hebrew after finishing first-year Hebrew have great expectations about reading the Hebrew Bible. It's an understatement to say that such expectations are unreasonable. It is like setting a second-grader to reading Dickens. He might be able to do it, but it would happen very slowly, with frequent reference to a dictionary, and there would be many passages that he would be uncertain about. And that's "reading" a book written in his native language.

So. You have finished first-year Hebrew and you pick a passage, maybe a favorite passage in Isaiah, and you realize you have no idea what it says. You look up all the words and you still don't know what it says. Don't blame your first-year course. You're just not ready for Isaiah yet.