Hebrew Voices #128 – Why Study Hebrew

Transcript

Hebrew Voices #128 – Why Study Hebrew

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

David: This is a new verse in the Bible that’s not in the King James, it’s not in the Hebrew. So, where did this come from? Why is the NRSV and others adding this verse into the Tanakh?

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. This is Nehemia Gordon, and I'm here once again with Rabbi Dr. David Moster, and we are going to be discussing the difference between the Bible in English and the Bible in Hebrew. Shalom, Rabbi Dr. David Moster. It's great to have you on the program.

David: Yeah, thank you. I think this is our fourth time together.

Nehemia: Fourth time, and I want to encourage people to go back and watch the other episodes. We did an episode called “Chinese Origin of the Sukkot Etrog,” “Toilets in Ancient Israel,” and “The Mishnah and the New Testament,” which just from that, it shows that you have quite an eclectic array of things that you teach about. You have the Institute of Biblical Culture, you have a YouTube channel called “Biblical Culture,” and your website is biblicalculture.org.

And you told me something which I was really excited about, that you're actually going to start doing a course where you teach people biblical Hebrew. I get people all the time who ask me, “Where can I study biblical Hebrew?” I don't know if you know this, I taught biblical Hebrew to a Christian Pastor and later taught it to a well-known football player, Reggie White. And so, people come to me all the time and say, “We heard you taught Reggie White Hebrew, would you teach us Hebrew?” And I'll be honest, right now, I don't have time to do it.

But you've made time out of your day and out of your week to do it. What a blessing to people. I want to give them your background, so they understand what a big deal this is to come study Hebrew from you. You have an ordination, meaning semikhah, a rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University. You have three Master's degrees. I only have one Master's degree, albeit it’s from Hebrew University. You have an MA in Jewish education from Yeshiva University. You have an MA in Biblical Studies, or Tanakh, from Yeshiva University. And you have another master’s degree from NYU, New York University, in Ancient Israel. You also have a Bachelor's in Jewish philosophy from Yeshiva University, and maybe most important of all, from my perspective, is you have a PhD, you actually have a doctorate from Bar Ilan University in Biblical Studies. That's quite the education you have there, so I think you really do have the ability to teach people biblical Hebrew, or certainly the background. Why do you want to teach people biblical Hebrew? Tell us about that.

David: This is an excellent question. What is the difference between studying the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the Tanakh, in Hebrew. What is the difference between studying this in Hebrew and reading your translation in English, no matter what translation it is? So, there's a group called "Academic Biblical" on Reddit, and what I asked here was a question. And it said, “If you read biblical Hebrew, what is something you notice or appreciate that gets lost in translation? What's something that gets lost between the Hebrew language and the English language?” 175 people uploaded it.