Hey everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe,
Arizona with a strategy for learning biblical Hebrew. Now first of all, why learn biblical
Hebrew? Well, let me start out by saying that I don't believe that you need to read the
Old Testament in Hebrew or the New Testament in Greek in order to fully understand it or
to get a deeper meaning. I'm not one of these people that thinks that you'll lose something
in the translation. I believe that if you're saved, if you've got the Holy Spirit and you've
got a King James Bible, you can get everything that you need from the English Bible. It's
all right there. And if you're a pastor or preacher and you only speak English and you've
only got the King James Bible, that is enough for you to effectively preach the Word of
God and serve the Lord for your entire life. So don't misunderstand me that I think it's
somehow necessary to read it in these foreign languages. Okay, but I personally love learning
foreign languages. That's been a huge hobby of mine. And I know many other people are
the same way where they enjoy learning foreign languages. And another thing I love is reading
the Bible in foreign languages. More than a decade ago, I read the Bible cover to cover
in German a few times. I've read the New Testament in Spanish five times. I've read the New Testament
cover to cover in Romanian. So I just enjoy reading the Bible in foreign languages and
sometimes different things pop out at you when you're reading it in another language
anyway. But anyway, for a while now, I've been reading the New Testament in Greek, and
I've been really enjoying that. And, you know, I'm my second time through cover to cover
on that. But for a long time, I shied away from learning biblical Hebrew, because I just
felt like it was too hard. You know, that learning Greek is one thing, but that Hebrew
is just super hard because it's a non-European language. And so, you know, that kind of put
me off of it for a while. But after a while, I realized that it's actually not as hard
as I thought. And I want to give you a strategy for learning biblical Hebrew that will make
it doable, you know, that would actually make it an attainable goal. Now, if you're only
going to learn one or the other, obviously, I think it's more profitable to learn Greek.
And it's a lot easier to learn Greek because it's a European language. Now, why is it that
European languages are easier than non-European languages? Well, one of the reasons is that
they have what are called English cognates. Now, what is a cognate? Well, this is basically
a word in another language that sounds like a word that you already know. So, you know,
when you're learning Spanish, for example, there are just tons of English cognates. When
you learn that the word for sun is sol, then you're thinking of solar. And when you hear
that the word for the moon is la luna, you're thinking lunar, right? So there are all these
English cognates, even a word like leche, milk, you're thinking, okay, lactose. So there's
at least some connection. When you're learning non-European languages, however, there aren't
as many cognates. Sometimes there aren't any cognates at all. So that makes it a lot harder.
But here's the thing about Hebrew that'll surprise you. Even though it doesn't have
cognates with a lot of English words, what it does have is cognates with English people
names and place names. So you actually know a lot more Hebrew than you think. Just from
reading the Bible in English, if you know the Old Testament pretty well, you actually
know a ton of Hebrew words without even realizing it because there are so many Hebrew words
that are embedded in the people and place names. So once that kind of clicked with me,
I realized, you know what, this is actually pretty doable. And I really ramped up my study
of Hebrew. Now, I'm getting a little ahead of myself. So let me just start with the strategy.
What's the strategy for learning biblical Hebrew? Well, number one, first of all, is that you've
got to learn the alphabet. That's step one. If you can't take the time to learn the alphabet,
well, maybe you're just not cut out for reading the Bible in Hebrew. So step one is learn the
alphabet. Now I already did a video many years ago, where I teach the Hebrew alphabet. And I
think that's a pretty understandable video. It's pretty easy to follow. Most people really liked
it. So I will recommend that video. I'm going to put it in the in the link in the description. So
step one is that you're going to just learn the alphabet and follow that 45 minute or so video
to do that. Okay, now I'm going to give you the three pronged approach to learning biblical
Hebrew. So my strategy is a threefold approach. Okay, so let me start by giving you the first
prong of this strategy. Number one is you're going to need some kind of a comprehensive Hebrew
course. Okay, because you need to learn the whole language. And so I'm going to give you three
options for a comprehensive Hebrew course. And I'm going to give you the pros and cons of each
of these. Okay, first of all is Duolingo. Now Duolingo is great because of the fact that it's
free, it's easy to download on your smartphone, you can do it on your desktop computer. And so
you know, that's something that I like to use for a lot of foreign languages. And so the pros
of Duolingo are that it's free. And number two, it's pretty fun. It's pretty entertaining. It's
enjoyable. So you kind of feel like you're playing a little game. So it's not that hard to get
yourself to do it. Okay, so those are the pros. Here are the cons, though. For other foreign
languages, I would say there are no cons. It's just a great software. The problem that I have
with it for Hebrew, though, is that it doesn't have the vowel markings. Usually it rarely
includes any vowel markings. Well, that makes it hard for a beginner. Because when you're a
beginner, you really need those vowel markings, because the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet
are all consonants. So it makes it hard in the beginning to not have those vowel markings. Now,
once you get a little better at Hebrew, then I think Duolingo is definitely profitable to come
back and crank through some of the Hebrew material in Duolingo. But I don't think it's good for
absolute beginners because of the lack of vowel pointers. Okay, another great program for your
comprehensive Hebrew learning is Pimsleur. Now the great thing about Pimsleur, let me give you
the pros and cons. The pro is that it's all audio. So you can actually do this multitasking. You can
take a walk, you can be driving in the car, you can be working around the house. So Pimsleur is
something that you can do while you're doing other things. And you don't have to be tied to a phone
or tied to a computer. Now it does take 100% of your attention. You have to focus during that
half hour a day that you do your Pimsleur lesson. But you can physically multitask,
you can exercise or do physical work that doesn't take a lot of brain power. Okay,
here are the negatives about Pimsleur. Number one is that it costs money. It's kind of expensive. So
paying for Pimsleur is the negative about that. Although sometimes you can find it at your local
library and get it that way for free. And then the other negative about Pimsleur is that it
can tend to be a little bit boring. And it's pretty fun at first, but I find that it's kind
of a chore to get through my Pimsleur lesson. I have to kind of force myself to do it sometimes
because it gets old and it gets boring. So that's the negative. It's not as fun as Duolingo. Or the
third option would be Rosetta Stone. So again, for the first prong of the biblical strategy for
learning Hebrew, you need some kind of a comprehensive Hebrew course. And the three
courses I'm comparing and contrasting are Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, and Pimsleur. Okay,
so we talked about Duolingo. We talked about Pimsleur. How about Rosetta Stone? Well,
the positives about Rosetta Stone are that it's comprehensive. It teaches you everything. I mean,
obviously not everything, but it teaches you all the basics and it'll get you to an intermediate
level. The other pro about it is that it's easy. The vowel markings are there. It's fun.
It's entertaining. It's not as much of a chore to sit down and do it. What are the negatives
about Rosetta Stone? Well, the negative would be the cost, but the cost has actually gotten a lot
cheaper. They used to charge just hundreds and hundreds of dollars for this stuff. Sometimes
you'd see them selling the whole course for like 600 bucks. It's these crazy amounts of money.
But the great thing is that now you can just get it by the month. You can get a monthly
subscription. I think it's like 60 bucks gives you three months. Well, here's the thing. Three
months is enough to go through the whole course if you're dedicated. So if you're actually dedicated
and buckled down, you can get through Hebrew levels one, two, and three in only three months,
and then you're getting a lot of money's worth just for $60 out the door. So with that monthly
subscription, if you're actually going to take it seriously and hit it hard, then that's a really
good deal for 60 bucks for the three months. Okay, so prong number one in our strategy is
a comprehensive language learning course for Hebrew, whether that be Duolingo, whether that
be Rosetta Stone, whether that be Pimsleur, and any of those is going to do it for you if you
work the program. Okay, number two is flashcards. I'm a strong believer when you're learning any
foreign language that vocabulary is the most important thing. And I think one of the mistakes
a lot of people make when they start learning Hebrew and Greek is they just start delving into
really difficult grammar from the beginning with any foreign language. They just delve into this
heavy grammar. The problem with that is it's discouraging. It's mind-numbing. And not only
that, but it's not the way that we learned the grammar of our original language. The way that
we learned English grammar was just by using English. So we just kind of picked up grammar
a little bit at a time. Then once we were already fluent in our language English, then we went to
school and actually learned the finer points of grammar. And so I think you should do the same
thing with a foreign language. Start out by focusing mainly on learning vocabulary and just
pick up the grammar as you go. As you go through Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur, you're going
to pick up grammar as you go. So just pick it up naturally as you go along. Then once you get to
the point where you can already speak the language and you already know the language, then learn the
finer points of the grammar. Learn the complicated grammar last because then it'll be a lot easier
since you've already been exposed to it naturally organically as you went along. Okay, so because
vocabulary is so important, that's why I bring up the flashcards. The flashcards are really helpful.
So here's a box of flashcards that you can get for Hebrew. I think they were only like
10 bucks or something, Amazon or wherever I got them. And you can get the same thing for Greek.
But these are the flashcards for Hebrew. And let me go back to what I was saying earlier about the
English cognates. As you're going through the Hebrew flashcards, try to think of a trick for
remembering each word. Okay, what do I mean by that? Well, let's take for example, the most
basic word I think this is like card number one in the in the stack is the word for man,
which is Adam. Well, obviously, that comes from Adam, it's era, excuse me, Adam comes from that
word Adam. So when we come to that vocabulary word, that's gonna take about five seconds to learn.
It's so easy, because how can you forget the fact that that means man when the first man's name was
Adam. So you've got Adam, but then not only that, you've got the word Adam, which means red. Well,
that's pretty easy to remember. Because remember Esau's name was changed to Edom, because he came
out all red and hairy. So he was called Adam. Right. So basically, that teaches us two words
right there. Then there's another word that occurs a lot early in the book of Genesis, which is Adamah
which means the ground. So the ground or the earth is Adamah. It's a different word than,
you know, God created the heaven and the earth. That's Haaretz. But Adamah is a word for the ground
and it's used a lot in the early part of Genesis. What are some other ones? Well,
here think about some people's names in the Bible. Like there was an Ethiopian guy in Jeremiah
who pulls him out of the pit and his name is Ebed-Melek. Well, that guy's name actually
means something. The first part of his name, Ebed, means servant. Melek means king. So Ebed-Melek,
servant of the king. That makes perfect sense because that particular person, Ebed-Melek,
is a eunuch. So he is a servant of a king. Then other place names like, for example,
Samuel called the place Ebenezer. It says he rolled a great stone and said,
hitherto hath the Lord helped us. So he called the place Ebenezer. Well, Eben means stone and
Ezer means help. So stone of help, Ebenezer. So basically, or how about the word for the sun?
Shemesh. Well, you know, you read about in the Old Testament a place called Beth-Shemesh.
So I think it was them of Beth-Shemesh that buried Saul. So Shemesh. And then even Beth means
house. Bethel, house of God. So in Hebrew it's gonna be bite or bait,
but still you can see the connection between bite or bait and that English spelling Beth.
El. God is El. Okay. And then you've got also Beth-Shemesh, which is the house of the sun.
Shemesh is the sun. So anyway, you get the idea. I could go through a bunch more examples, but just
as you're going through your Hebrew flashcards, look for cognates with people and places
in the Bible and that's going to help you learn the words. Or sometimes it doesn't even have
anything to do with it. Like for example, the word for dove, like where Noah sends out a dove from
the ark. The word for dove is Yonah. Well, that's also the name of the biblical prophet Yonah or
Jonah. So Jonah's name means dove. Well, that just helps you remember it when you put those
things together. We've also heard of Hebrew holidays throughout our life like Yom Kippur.
Well, Yom means day. So there you go. It doesn't take you long to learn that because you're like,
oh yeah, that's like that holiday. Or another holiday that you'll see on the calendar a lot is
Rosh Hashanah. Well, Rosh means head and Hashanah means the year. Head of the year, top of the year,
top of the inning, top of the ninth. What does that mean? It's the new year. So Rosh Hashanah.
Then you learn, okay, Shanah means year. Rosh means head or top. So anyway, I could go on and
on and on and on with examples, but this is going to be your best strategy for learning vocabulary
is to start out by learning all the words that remind you of place names and people names in the
Old Testament. That's going to give you a fast track toward learning a ton of Hebrew vocabulary.
So prong number one is your comprehensive course, whether that be Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur.
Prong number two is your flashcard vocabulary memorization. Now this pack contains 1000 flash
cards and those are the 1000 words in the Bible that are used the most. So if you learn those
1000 words, you'll actually know like 85% or so of the vocabulary of the Old Testament and the rest
you'll be able to pick up from context. If you know 85% of the vocabulary, because there are,
you know, technically over 5000 different Hebrew words that are used in the Old Testament,
but many of them are only used one time and that's also just counting names of people and places
that might only be used once or twice. So the 1000 words that you'll learn in this box,
you know, that's 85% of the vocabulary and plus you're going to learn a ton of other words through
your comprehensive course. So, you know, if you do your comprehensive course, learn the 1000 words,
the rest you're going to be able to pick up from context when it comes to vocabulary.
So that'll really get you on your way if you do those two things. And, you know, how do you learn
1000 words? Well, you just break it down, figure out what your goal is, figure out your time frame
when you want to be done, and then figure out how many words you need to learn each day and just
learn that many words each day. You know, be realistic, obviously, don't go crazy or anything.
And then what's the third prong of the approach? Besides the comprehensive course, besides the
flashcards is going to be the actual Bible reading itself, reading the Hebrew Bible itself.
Now, obviously, before you start reading the Hebrew Bible itself, you're going to need to
get a little ways into your comprehensive course. And you're going to need to get a little bit into
your flashcards and at least learn vocabulary. Otherwise, you're not gonna have a clue what
you're even reading. But even if you don't understand a lot in the beginning, I would
still at least read a couple verses, just because at least you'll be practicing how to pronounce
the letters. Now, how do you know you're pronouncing it correctly? Well, what I do is I go on YouTube
and I first listen to it on audio. So I'll just type in, you know, for example, when I first started,
I just typed in Genesis 1 Hebrew. And I just listened to it over and over again. Just listen
to it every day, just that one chapter just over and over again, every day, every day, until I
started to be able to kind of predict what it was going to say next. So I kind of got a feel for the
way it sounded. And then I, you know, Genesis 2, Genesis 3, Genesis 4, just kept going forward,
listening to it on audio. Make sure you're listening to a native speaker, not one of these,
you know, Bereshit, Bara Elohim, you know, one of these English speakers that has like a really
American accent, these scholarly, you know, seminary guys who sound like a cowboy
when they read ancient scriptures in Greek and Hebrew. What you need to do is actually,
you know, listen to a native Hebrew speaker. And if you're learning Greek, listen to a native
Greek speaker, read the New Testament in Greek. So get a native speaker from YouTube,
listen to it a whole bunch of times. Then when you're done with that, then actually open
your Hebrew Bible and read it after you've already heard it a bunch of times. That way,
when you come to the words, you'll know how to pronounce them. Or at least you'll know how to
pronounce a lot of them. That way you're getting it right. And then that'll really help drive in
that material anyway. And you'll start to just pick up what words mean from the context. And
the great thing is Genesis 1 is such a basic chapter, and it has so much repetition in it.
Genesis 1 is like the perfect chapter to start in. And really just the early part of Genesis,
the whole thing is great for a beginner. So it's a great beginner book. In Greek,
you'd be better off starting in the book of John, because that's your simplest language. But in
biblical Hebrew, Genesis is a great place to start. And there's your three-pronged approach.
So you got your comprehensive course. You got your vocabulary. And then the Bible reading
itself, which you're going to do a combination of listening to the audio on YouTube to prepare you,
listen to it as many times as you can, then physically actually picking it up and reading it.
Anyway, I hope this video is helpful if you have any interest in learning biblical Hebrew. And if
you have no interest in learning biblical Hebrew, that's okay. That's no problem. I don't think that
this is for everybody. Some people have the gift of tongues and some don't. But there are a lot of
people who would enjoy this or profit from this. And it is cool reading the Old Testament in the
original language. It is cool reading the New Testament in the original language. It didn't
give me a new doctrine. There weren't any surprises for me when I read the New Testament cover to
cover in Greek. But it's pretty fun to do. And it does help you learn the Bible because anytime
you're reading the Bible in any language, as long as you're reading the right Bible,
you're learning and you're getting closer to the Lord. So anyway, it's not for everybody. It's not
necessary. Don't feel like you're a second-class Bible student if you're only doing it. Look,
if you just are on that King James and reading it and studying it, you are every bit as much of
a Bible student as somebody who reads in a foreign language. But that being said,
if you're interested, I think that these tools that I'm giving you here will help you.
And like I said, if you're only going to learn one or the other, I would say that
you know, learning biblical Greek is a higher priority. It's more profitable,
much easier because it's a European language. Or better yet, learn Spanish, you know, so you can
win souls to Christ in Spanish and read the Bible in Spanish. God bless you. Have a great day.