Beginning Biblical Hebrew

by Mark David Futato

Achieving the right balance of amount of information, style of presentation, and depth of instruction in first-year grammars is no easy task. But Mark Futato has produced a grammar that, after years of testing in a number of institutions, will please many, with its concise, clear, and well-thought-out presentation of Biblical Hebrew. Because the teaching of biblical languages is in decline in many seminaries and universities, Futato takes pains to measure the amount of information presented in each chapter in a way that makes the quantity digestible, without sacrificing information that is important to retain. The book includes exercises that are drawn largely from the Hebrew Bible itself. Fourth printing, 2012.

Genres: Language, Christian, Reference, Academic, Theology

351 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2003

About the author

Mark D. Futato (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary; MA, PhD, Semetic Languages and Literature, The Catholic University of America) is professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando campus. He has written widely on creation and the natural world in biblical studies.

Reviews

[Joshua Biggs]

Devoted 2024 to learning Hebrew through an organization called Kairos Classroom! They used this textbook as a guide; I found Futato’s material very intuitive in its order of presenting new information. I’m sure part of the reason I feel that way is because I had weekly lectures with a live instructor and classmates to learn with. If I went through this textbook on my own I might feel differently.

Also, if anyone wants to learn the biblical languages but doesn’t want to pay seminary prices just to watch prerecorded lectures, Kairos is your answer. You get seminary level teaching but with a live instructor and small class sizes which are conducive to active learning. Truly couldn’t recommend them enough.

[Joshua Schwisow]

This is a fairly easy to use textbook for learning Biblical Hebrew. The explanations can be a bit sparse but at least it makes for lessons that quickly move to practice. It is more approachable than an old classic like Weingreen.

[Christian Barrett]

The lessons in Futato where often unhelpful due to their brevity and this book would make little to no sense if the lectures were not included. However, the lectures were also often dated and the program used to record and play on was often glitchy. Even though the chapters themselves were a disappointment the assignments from each chapter were helpful, especially the parsing ones.

[Benjamin]

Decent introduction to the language.

[South Asia]

I learned Hebrew from this book and recommend it. The only thing I would recommend is auditory help either from a teacher, tutor, or online to learn how words and letters are (thought to be) pronounced.

[Sean McGowan]

Great introduction. Very helpful and clear.

[Joel Opificius]

Seems like a fair beginning grammar to refer back to for introductory issues. Very simply laid out with little clutter. The drawback is that Futato is missing a lot of important information about how the forms are modified. The beginning chapters in this grammar have a lot of explanation, but the later chapters are primarily just charts. Futato does not thoroughly explain how the weak verb forms are created. That should be of vital importance in a beginning grammar, seeing that over 85% of all verbs in the Hebrew OT are weak.

[Samuel]

This is probably a fine beginner Hebrew textbook, but I never seemed to gel with it. The progression and layout of the lessons, the format of the exercises (if you don’t want students to cheat, don’t put the answers right next to the questions!), and the lack of explanation in the lessons all caused me some frustration. If it weren’t for the video lessons I had while I was studying in seminary, I wouldn’t have been altogether happy with this textbook.

[Kendall]

Weak.

[Samuel Kassing]

A solid introduction to Biblical Hebrew.

[Logan Webster]

Too morphology-heavy for an intro grammar in my opinion.

[Eric]

טונ הספר

[Stephen Buerger]

Rating a textbook is hard.

[Joy L]

It feels a little odd rating a text book, but I have thoroughly enjoyed learning the basics of biblical Hebrew from this book.

[Nelson]

Much better than that other one published by Yale. It's plainer and uses the vocab soon after introducing them.

[bs]

This book needs an editor badly. Teaching Hebrew is a tough proposition. This book goes about it in an arcane way thus making it even more difficult. In its favor it has a good build up of exercises that will enforce learning in spite of itself.

[Seth Thomas]

Yup. Done with this one.