Forget the Channel » Hebrew

Anki Greek and Hebrew flashcard resources

Lionel — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:39:35 +0000

A message about some of the latest language flashcard resources from my friend Rene Hamburger:

If you were planning to revise your Greek or Hebrew vocab or grammar, using Anki might be a great help!

Anki is probably the best and most popular free flashcard testing program that is available for a large number of platforms (e.g. Windows, Max, Linux, iPhone, Android). One of the great advantages over other programs is that it supports an automatic sync over the internet. So you can use it at home or on your smartphone on the go, and your flashcards will always be in sync!

If you are using paper cards, you might well want to stick with them. But there are actually several advantages testing software like Anki has over paper cards. Firstly, it is much better than us in keeping track of when certain cards should be reviewed next, so you are less likely to waste time reviewing cards you know very well (which will be a few hundred cards even after the first year of Greek or Hebrew) and less likely to forget cards, you didn’t review early enough. Secondly, there are lots of mnemonics on the vocab cards I uploaded, which again will make the memorisation much easier. Thirdly, it may save you time creating your own flashcards (which is, of course, not a bad way to learn them…).

If you want to give it a go:

Download Anki
Download one of the shared decks I put online (“File | Download | Shared Deck” on the desktop version of Anki):
- “NT Greek Vocab (Oak Hill College)” Vocab following lists from Duff & Trenchard (about 1200 words)
- “Biblical Hebrew Vocab (Oak Hill College)”: Vocab following lists from Kelley & Mitchel (also about 1200 words); this appears to be currently the only Hebrew vocab list available for Anki that works on Android.
- “NT Greek Grammar (Oak Hill College)”: Grammar summary of Duff, so very basic
- “Biblical Hebrew Grammar (Oak Hill College)”: Grammar summary largely following Kelley. This file does not work on Android yet, but the other three do.
For fonts you may need or for how to set it up on Android, follow the instructions which can be found in the “shared deck” download dialog and on the first card of the deck.

Enjoy!
Rene

Hebrew Verbs and the Sovereignty of God

Lionel — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:32:35 +0000

Great insights here by George Athas on God, Jonah, and the Benefit of Hebrew. George looks carefully at the Hebrew verbs in Jonah and finds:

It seems that the narrator wants us to understand that Yahweh is in complete control of the situation. Although Jonah is on the run, trying to avoid his divine commission, Yahweh has already taken pre-emptive action, seemingly knowing that Jonah would be on his way to Tarshish rather than Nineveh. Yahweh is, therefore, not chasing after Jonah, as though Jonah might get away from him. And the storm at sea is not Yahweh’s Plan B. Rather, Yahweh had already placed the storm at sea, knowing full well that Jonah would be heading that way instead of heading to Nineveh. God had ‘snookered’ Jonah in advance.

A Hebrew Reader of BHS – on its way

Lionel — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:12:40 +0000

I’m eagerly awaiting the publication of this Hebrew Reader of the BHS. Learning and keeping the Hebrew language should be a joy rather than a burden; this publication is designed to lift the burden and share the joy:

The reader is designed to enable students of Biblical Hebrew to read the text without continual recourse to another resource in order to get the meaning of words. It is a tool that does not spoon feed, but rather gives enough information for the reader of the text to figure things out on their own, and to do so relatively quickly. We hope that this tool will get people reading the text, acclimatising to the language, improving their reading proficiency and comprehension skills, and feeling generally more comfortable with the Hebrew Bible.

George is a friend and colleague of mine, and was also my first Hebrew teacher. He certainly knows his stuff.

Seow Hebrew vocabulary resources from David Reimer

Lionel — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:56:52 +0000

David Reimer, from Edinburgh, has provided two very helpful resources for students using C. L. Seow’s Textbook A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew.

This Vocabulary List contains the entire vocabulary list from Seow, sorted by “alephbet”. A good reference glossary.
This Flashcards – Seow Hebrew (Unicode) is my original Hebrew flashcards program with the Hebrew words converted to Unicode format. Unicode is a more universally accepted and portable font standard – which means that there should be no problem with displaying the font on Macs or new Windows machines.

Thanks David!

Reader’s Version of Greek and Hebrew Bible

Lionel — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:57:14 +0000

This Reader’s Version of Greek and Hebrew Bible is an excellent resource for those who have learned Greek and Hebrew and want to keep up their language skills. You can customise it to provide you with as much or as little help as you need. I recommend small doses every day to keep your languages humming along.