The First Hebrew Primer: The Adult Beginner's Path to Biblical Hebrew

I shopped around for a number of texts to pursue self-study of hebrew with the goal of being able to read (with dictionary assistance) biblical texts and understand prayerbook liturgy. This text - with the answer book which is a separate purchase - is what worked for me.The approach is to cover the grammer at a high level to allow an over-all translation competence at the end of the book, while blurring some of the fine points (especially the patterns of vowel changes). This has worked well for me. It is necessary to do all of the exercises to make this work, altho I have skipped the english-to-hebrew exercises, since I'm only interested in translation. I also found it necessary to buy the accompanying set of flashcards to drill myself on the vocabulary constantly. I've taken about a year to go through this in my (little) spare time, but I'm almost done and I'm impressed by how much I am able to read.When done, I'll go on to studying individual texts with dictionary and more advanced grammers for reference as issues arise.If you are self motivated to learn to read biblical hebrew and are willing to spend a bit more for accessories (answer book and flash cards) this is the best self-education system I found - and I bought at least 3 other "introductory" grammers.

I'm currently teaching Intro Hebrew and have looked at a number of books on this topic. This Primer is the best text for this purpose that I've found by a long shot. Lessons are well arranged and, though simple, are not simplistic. Students have the opportunity to progress at a very high rate. The selection of vocabulary is wonderful with every word being a high-frequency word in the Hebrew Scriptures.The downfalls of this text are: 1) use of non-standard terms for grammatical features of the language - this is both a positive and a negative: positive in that it keeps the intimidation factor down for new students; negative in that for those students who go on from this book (and I suggest many will want to do so) need to learn the standard terms used by nearly every other grammar and text. 2) that's it; no other real downfalls.For what this text purports to be (A First Hebrew Primer) it succeeds magnificently! This book will not leave the student proficient, but that's not its purpose. My wife learned Hebrew by using Seow's Grammar for Biblical Hebrew - a great intro grammar, but horrible as an intro text. She can tell you about the minutiae of Hebrew, but has no love for it. I learned using the Primer and have seen many others who have learned by using it. The common factor is that a high-percentage of us now LOVE Hebrew, and couldn't wait to learn more about the finer points found in Seow.

Studying Hebrew can be a terrifying prospect for seminary students, and because many of the textbooks (such as Kelley, Weingreen, Mansour) are so inaccessible, lots of young pastors immediately forget most of what they learned. "The First Hebrew Primer" offers Hehrew without tears. Students who use this book (and it is used in many seminaries, but not enough) will learn easily and without pain. The book assumes students don't know the alphabet, then goes from there. Each day's work builds easily on the day before. If for each chapter one spends an hour with flashcards and two hours doing some of the exercises, one should have no trouble at all earning an A. The book has a whole year of Hebrew in a one semester textbook. The trick is leaving out a lot of the explanations for the many exceptions in Hebrew (often rare). The result is very fast progress. With every lesson the Hebrew Bible opens wider. In ten class periods my class was reading through Genesis, haltingly, but recognizing 50% to 75% of the words. By semester's end . . . reading just about anything with the help of a dictionary here and there. One could go through this by oneself, but it really is easier in a class. It's nice to have a teacher to answer questions and force one to prepare for a quiz. It's worth the tuition fee to have that help. But the nicest thing is that it's such an easy book to use that students don't feel their brains have frozen, leaving them unable to comprehend anything else. The person below who complained of gutterals not being called gutterals will be happy to hear that has changed, though if one isn't careful, one can learn about constructs, waw-consecutives, and various tenses without learning what they're called. A minor problem. It's true that one might like more examples from the Bible to translate, but when it comes down to it, we all have the Bibles anyway, so why not sinply turn to the source? Someone earning a Ph.D. in Hebrew would want something more detailed, perhaps, but when it comes down to it relatively few scholarly papers dealing with Hebrew actually require that level of expertise. Even the experts tend to turn to Hebrew grammars when they're working on that level.

If you must learn Biblical Hebrew in your college, grad school or seminary, and you are a complete beginner, and the "intro" course there does not use this book (investigate!), heed my warning: WORK COMPLETELY THROUGH THIS BOOK BEFORE YOU TAKE THAT COURSE! You can do it in a quarter or semester if you're disciplined enough, especially (as another reviewer says below) in a study group.Your sanity will thank you as you help the classmates who are writhing in agony around you.I have yet to find another "Hebrew Primer" for adults that effectively helps the complete beginner.This book is not college-level, and it won't enable you to "test out" of Hebrew Intro, but it wasn't designed for that. College (or higher) level introductory Biblical Hebrew will be manageable AFTER you finish this book.

This book is a stand alone product- it teaches one how to read the letters and then proceeds to explain the grammar. However, if one needs to learn more slowly I recommend the following sequence. #1 Teach Yourself to Read Hebrew #2 Prayerbook Hebrew the Easy Way and then read this book. There will be some redundancy and it is time consuming but your brain will handle it all better. If you already can read Hebrew letters, then you can skip step #1. This is a well constructed book with passages from the book of Ruth as well as old children's fairy tales translated into hebrew for your learning pleasure. The book is self contained and one never has to use a dictionary to understand the hebrew in the book. Buy this book and you'll be ready to tackle the Bible yourself. (with a dictionary)