Abstract
Some kind of familiarity with the structure and thought pattern of biblical Hebrew language enhances translation and improved ways of working with the language needed by students of Old Testament. That what the authors of the Scripture say also has meaning for us today is not in doubt but they did not express themselves primarily for us or in our language, and so it requires training on our part to understand them in their own language. The features of biblical Hebrew as combined in the language’s use of imagery and picturesque description of things are of huge assistance in this training exercise for a better operational knowledge of the language and meaning of Hebrew Scripture. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v4n1p129
Highlights
Hebrew language is the language of the culture, religion and civilization of the Jewish people since ancient times
Some names being borne by people today originated from Hebrew language -Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, Samuel, David etc
A small percentage of those who study the Bible can be experts in Hebrew, yet some familiarity with the structure and thought pattern of the language is essential for the type of biblical knowledge that a theology student should have (Brown, 1977)
Summary
Hebrew language is the language of the culture, religion and civilization of the Jewish people since ancient times. The word Semitic, according to Kitchen (1992) is formed from the name Shem, Noah’s eldest son (Genesis 5:32) It is an adjective derived from ‘Shem’ meaning a member of any of the group of people speaking Akkadian, Phoenician, Punic, Aramaic, and especially Hebrew, Modern Hebrew and Arabic language. It is the aim of this paper to examine some of the dominant features of this language with a view to highlighting the richness of the language in imagery and picturesqueness These features furnish the Old Testament student with the nature of the language which immediately accentuates his interest in studying it. This is significant because many who go straight into learning the language without this preliminary practice lose interest especially when difficult parts of the language, which differ remarkably from our familiar English language, are being taught or studied. Articulating the observations garnered from learning and teaching Hebrew constitutes the method of presentation and discussion of this work
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