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The Biblical Hebrew Verb: A Linguistic Introduction
This book relates to the most basic task of biblical understanding and interpreting the ancient text. John Cook, a leading expert in Biblical Hebrew, describes the system of Hebrew verbs in a way that provides students with an understanding of the grammar and develops their skills at interpreting and translating the Hebrew of the Old Testament.
Cook has spent a quarter of a century working on the Biblical Hebrew verbal system. Building on and simplifying the author's much-discussed technical work, this book offers an accessible linguistic treatment of the Biblical Hebrew verb in all its facets. Cook illustrates the analyses with over 250 example passages, plus many more footnoted references. The examples range from individual clauses and verses to longer portions to show how the verb forms interact with each other in larger stretches of text. A glossary of linguistic terms further facilitates understanding of the book's linguistic analyses.
The Biblical Hebrew Verb will be useful as a supplementary textbook in both grammar and exegesis courses.
Cook has spent a quarter of a century working on the Biblical Hebrew verbal system. Building on and simplifying the author's much-discussed technical work, this book offers an accessible linguistic treatment of the Biblical Hebrew verb in all its facets. Cook illustrates the analyses with over 250 example passages, plus many more footnoted references. The examples range from individual clauses and verses to longer portions to show how the verb forms interact with each other in larger stretches of text. A glossary of linguistic terms further facilitates understanding of the book's linguistic analyses.
The Biblical Hebrew Verb will be useful as a supplementary textbook in both grammar and exegesis courses.
352 pages, Paperback
Published November 19, 2024
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April 20, 2025
First you bear down and memorize all kinds of grammatical forms in order to make sense of a language. But then it is best to dig a little deeper to ascertain why all those forms look the way they do and why they are translated as they are.
Biblical Hebrew is by no means an exception to this trend, and resources like John Cook’s The Biblical Hebrew Verb: A Linguistic Introduction (affiliate link; galley received as part of early review program) helps to provide a deeper, more enriched understanding of our understanding of Biblical Hebrew.
While the subheading declares this book a linguistic “introduction,” it is by no means a basic level foray into Biblical Hebrew. It is an introduction inasmuch as it does not go into as much scholarly detail as the author can, and has, done in other occasions.
Instead, it is an overview of the Biblical Hebrew verbal system for the intermediate to advanced student of Biblical Hebrew. The author is well versed in Biblical Hebrew, historical linguistics, and has dedicated himself to the study of the verbal system.
Disclaimer: I am well acquainted with the author’s material; he was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before me, and Cook’s and Holmstedt’s introductory grammar was used in our curriculum. Thus, I was already somewhat familiar with many of the arguments in this book which many might see as controversial.
This work does well at its purpose: it well covered, synchronically and diachronically, the various forms of verbs and verbal-adjunct forms in Biblical Hebrew, what the various binyanim are all about, and how the verbs and verbal-adjunct forms are marked, especially for tense, aspect, and mood (TAM). The author goes into significant diachronic depth into how each TAM-marked form developed and became what it was, and argued well for how they should be translated in many instances.
Throughout the author liberally provides examples from the Biblical text; the final chapter features verbal analysis of whole sections to demonstrate all the principles fully adumbrated before.
If you are well-skilled in Biblical Hebrew, go get this work if you haven’t already.
Biblical Hebrew is by no means an exception to this trend, and resources like John Cook’s The Biblical Hebrew Verb: A Linguistic Introduction (affiliate link; galley received as part of early review program) helps to provide a deeper, more enriched understanding of our understanding of Biblical Hebrew.
While the subheading declares this book a linguistic “introduction,” it is by no means a basic level foray into Biblical Hebrew. It is an introduction inasmuch as it does not go into as much scholarly detail as the author can, and has, done in other occasions.
Instead, it is an overview of the Biblical Hebrew verbal system for the intermediate to advanced student of Biblical Hebrew. The author is well versed in Biblical Hebrew, historical linguistics, and has dedicated himself to the study of the verbal system.
Disclaimer: I am well acquainted with the author’s material; he was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before me, and Cook’s and Holmstedt’s introductory grammar was used in our curriculum. Thus, I was already somewhat familiar with many of the arguments in this book which many might see as controversial.
This work does well at its purpose: it well covered, synchronically and diachronically, the various forms of verbs and verbal-adjunct forms in Biblical Hebrew, what the various binyanim are all about, and how the verbs and verbal-adjunct forms are marked, especially for tense, aspect, and mood (TAM). The author goes into significant diachronic depth into how each TAM-marked form developed and became what it was, and argued well for how they should be translated in many instances.
Throughout the author liberally provides examples from the Biblical text; the final chapter features verbal analysis of whole sections to demonstrate all the principles fully adumbrated before.
If you are well-skilled in Biblical Hebrew, go get this work if you haven’t already.
Displaying 1 of 1 review