Category Archives: Hebrew

In Memory of J. Alan Groves (17 December 1952 – 5 February 2007)

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groves.jpgThere has been a lot of mention of the passing of the New Testament textual giant, Bruce Metzger, among the biblioblogs, and it was great to see the latest Biblical Studies Carnival dedicated to his memory.

Another biblical scholar also passed away this month, J. Alan Groves. His death was mentioned by some bloggers and I was meaning to post on it, but I ended up getting sick. I would like to now honour his memory.

I didn’t really know Alan Groves. We met at SBL once or twice and exchanged a few emails occasionally, but that was the extent of our relationship. I doubt if he even remembered meeting me. That being said, his pioneering work on the electronic Westminster Leningrad Codex and the Groves-Wheeler Westminster Hebrew Morphology has touched my life enormously. A day rarely goes by when I do not look up something in the Hebrew Bible on my computer, perform a morphological or syntactical search of a Hebrew construction, or cut and paste a verse of the Hebrew Bible when making up a test for one of my Hebrew classes. These electronic texts are used by virtually all biblical studies software programs, including Accordance, Logos, BibleWorks, Gramcord, among others. Last December, the Board and Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary appropriately renamed the Westminster Hebrew Institute the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research.

Alan and his family kept a blog that narrates his year-long struggle with cancer. It contains many moving posts; I encourage you to peruse it. His obituary is available here, while a more academic obituary may be found here.

lan Groves was a true servant of God who did a lot of his work behind the scenes.

May his memory be for a blessing.


Biblical Hebrew Dictionaries and More

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John Hobbins over at Ancient Hebrew Poetry has a good post highlighting the top Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew. He notes the same major Hebrew-English lexicons that I discuss in my “An Annotated Bibliography for Mastering Biblical Hebrew,” but also helpfully notes some non-English dictionaries such as Meyer and Donner (Hebrew-German) and Alonso Schökel (Hebrew-Spanish).

jouon_muraoka_rev.jpgOn related note, I just received my copy of the new edition of Paul Joüon and Takamitsu Muraoka, A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Revised English edition; 1 vol.; Subsidia Biblica 27; Pontifical Institute, 2006; Buy from Eisenbrauns.com).

There are a number of things that I quite like about this volume, not least of which is its binding. I find it far easier to prop open on my desk than the previous two-volume edition. I haven’t had much time to actually compare the content with the previous editions, though I like the fact that Muraoka’s additions are integrated with Joüon’s original text, the notes are cleaned up, and there is a great bibliography included. I wish they would have updated some of the charts in the volume, however.


HBRW WTHT VWLS (Hebrew Without Vowels)

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When I am teaching about the Hebrew Bible, the fact that Hebrew was originally unpointed often comes up. And at that point I will provide some sort of example with English, such as the title to this post: HBRW WTHT VWLS.

Well, Mississippi Fred MacDowell (that’s a great name!) over at English Hebraica has an interesting post entitled, “Ravens and Arabians: Hebrew with and without points in English,” in which he provides an example where the English and Hebrew actually coincide; here’s an excerpt:

This interesting book, The Parchments of the Faith by George Edmands Merrill published in 1894 by the American Baptist Publication Society, does the best job I’ve ever seen of it because it combined words in English as they would be in Hebrew (“and the ravens” are three words in English, but just one, וה×?רבי×?, in Hebrew–“nd th rvns” less accurately shows what Hebrew is like than “ndthrvns”). In addition, the vowel letters are formatted the way nekkudot are, dotting the consonants.

This is a great example; take a gander at it.


Hebrew or Israeli? Linguistics and Zionism

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Reuters has an article by Dan Williams (no relation) on maverick scholar Ghil’ad Zuckermann, entitled, “Hebrew or Israeli? Linguist stirs Zionist debate.” Zuckermann argues that modern Hebrew should be renamed “Israeli” and give up any claim to pure descent from the Hebrew of the Bible.

Here are some excerpts:

Israelis are brainwashed to believe they speak the same language as (the prophet) Isaiah, a purely Semitic language, but this is false,” Zuckermann told Reuters during a lecture tour to promote his soon-to-be-published polemic “Hebrew as Myth”.

“It’s time we acknowledge that Israeli is very different from the Hebrew of the past,” said Zuckermann, who points to the abiding influence of modern European dialects — especially Yiddish, Russian and Polish — imported by Israel’s founders.

…

Some critics throw Zuckermann in with revisionist academics who made their names questioning the justice of the 1948 war of Israel’s founding in what had been British Mandate Palestine.

Early Zionists were quick to assume Hebrew as part of an ancient birthright to land also claimed by Palestinian Arabs.

“His attitude toward modern Hebrew is less that of a professional linguist than of someone driven by the agenda of post- (if not anti-) Zionism,” wrote an Israeli contributor to the American newspaper Jewish Daily Forward.

Professor Moshe Bar-Asher, president of Israel’s Hebrew Language Academy, likened Zuckermann to Noam Chomsky, a renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist who in recent decades became a freewheeling critic of U.S. foreign policy.

“I think Zuckermann is a very good scholar, but he risks wasting his efforts by mixing up linguistics with politics,” Bar-Asher said. “He stirs up a lot of antagonism.”

There is continuity and discontinuity between Modern and Classical/Biblical Hebrew, so while I think differentiating between the two as scholars do is necessary, I’m not sure that calling “Modern Hebrew” “Israeli” is the best solution. Perhaps, akin to “Canadian English” or “American English”, “Israeli Hebrew” is a potential option.

Do my Jewish/Israeli readers have any opinions?