Abstract
Biblical Hebrew: A Compact Guide and The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic add to the wealth of resources already complementing Pratico and van Pelt’s Basics of Biblical Hebrew Grammar (3rd edition). In contrast to the hefty Grammar itself, the Compact Guide is conveniently portable (c.16cm x 10cm x 1.5cm). It provides at-a-glance, succinct reminders of major grammar points, often illuminated by helpful examples and tables. It follows the basic order of the Grammar, but refrains from slavish summary. Indeed, sometimes it deletes, reorders, or adds material, and it can stand independently.
The Compact Guide covers most main topics in basic biblical Hebrew, though some over-simplifications and omissions are inevitable. Readers will decide for themselves if these are judicious (e.g., there is little mention of vowel reductions for nouns with suffixes, or of the formation of jussive and cohortative). Its three major sections focus on basic phonology; the nominal system; and the verbal system (beginning with qal weak and strong, and progressing to derived stems). For derived stems, the emphasis is on recognising diagnostic markers, rather than memorising paradigms. Appendices give verb tables, and a Hebrew-English lexicon.
On the negative side, the Compact Guide can be somewhat difficult to navigate. The chapter breakdowns in the contents page do not always correspond to the level of granularity within the main body, and neither chapters nor subsections are numbered. Cross-references between sections are not given. This may hinder its use as a reference work.
The Vocabulary Guide is very useful, accessible, and clearly presented. The first and most important section provides a glossary of all Hebrew words occurring 10 or more times in the Hebrew Bible (excluding proper names), ordered by frequency. If frequency is a rough-and-ready guide to usefulness, judicious use of this list can maximise the value of vocabulary learning. The pay-off is significant: the 1,903 items together comprise 90% of the text in the HB (x). Each entry gives a brief selection of glosses, and sometimes other information too, e.g. inflected forms, alternative spellings, common phrases, distribution across biblical books. For verbs, it gives the meanings in different binyanim, but not the binyanim’s relative frequency (which may give a false sense of their parity).
Subsequently, alongside a list of all Aramaic words in the Hebrew Bible (ordered by frequency), the Vocabulary Guide provides various recategorisations of the Hebrew vocabulary already given. Amongst these are a list of Hebrew words which share common roots (e.g. פָּרָה ‘to bear fruit’ and פְּרִי ‘fruit), and a list of homonyms (e.g. פָּרָה ‘to bear fruit’ and פָּרָה ‘cow’). The former list emphasises that words of similar form often have similar sense; the latter shows that this is not always the case. The homonym list may be slightly confusing, however. Some apparent ‘homonyms’ could be polysemic variations of a single word (e.g. בער [piel] ‘to burn’ and ‘to purge’). For verbs, only the qal pf 3ms form is considered, even if this is rare in the HB (e.g. אוֹר as a qal verb, homonym to אוֹר as a noun). This seems to violate the use of frequency as the guiding principle.
After the homonyms come lists of nominals: nouns with common gender, endingless feminine nouns, segolates, adjectives, and prepositions. And finally there are verbs, organised according weak root type: I-נ, I-י, I-Guttural, I-Guttural and III-ה, II-Guttural, III-ה, III-ע/ח, III-א, biconsonantal, and geminate. The noun and verb lists will be very useful for instructors as they exemplify a particular phenomenon, and for learners as they practice it.
Overall, these are very useful resources for biblical Hebrew. Though they are designed for use alongside Pratico and Van Pelt’s Grammar, students will make excellent use of them as independent works too.