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| A Reader's Hebrew Bible | 
 enlarge | Creators: A. Philip Brown Ii, Bryan W. Smith
Publisher: Zondervan
Category: Book
List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $27.50
You Save: $22.49 (45%)
Buy New/Used from $27.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  (23 reviews)
Sales Rank: 15090
Languages: Hebrew (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Leather Bound
Edition: Bilingual
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1680
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.8
Dimensions (in): 9.9 x 7.2 x 2.1
ISBN: 0310269741
Dewey Decimal Number: 296
EAN: 9780310269748
ASIN: 0310269741
Publication Date: March 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Hebrew Bible Review June 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a most excellent resource for Hebrew scholars. It not only gives you the Hebrew text but it gives you clear references as to the varying meaning of the words in the text when there is differening opinions. A good resource for a Hebrew scholar. A must buy.
My 2nd semester Hebrew classmates agree - 5 stars! May 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
My hermeneutics prof. recommended the Greek Readers' Bible so I thought I would see if there was a Hebrew version. I ordered it on that basis and was extremely pleased. After struggling with the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, I found the font to be much easier to read. Also, the addition of word translations (if word occurs less than 100 times) meant I wasn't going back and forth to Hebrew dictionary - made translation so much more enjoyable I found myself wanting to read beyond assigned passages! Perhaps more advanced students might find it lacking in scholarly references, but 2nd semester students agree - Reader's makes reading Hebrew fun!
 A Good Resource with Some Quirks May 19, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
"A Reader's Hebrew Bible" is the sort of book that can provoke strong reactions, both positive and negative. While some will condemn it as a crutch that will hinder learning, many others will find it a useful tool for rapid reading. I have in mind developing students or students whose skills are on the mend.
Consider the mechanics of rapid reading practice (or as I like to term it: "rehearsing text"). You need a Hebrew text, a vocabulary resource, and (usually) an English translation to check yourself. You can actually construct such a tool through the magic of word processors and text exporting, but even at best it's a painfully slow process. An alternative is to figure out a way to incorporate either Armstrong, Busby, and Carr's "Reader's Lexicon" or Owen's "Analytical Key" into your technique, but you're still left with juggling three books just to practice your rapid reading, which is rapidly becoming less rapid. (Some of my peers use software programs such as BibleWorks to get around this issue, but I can't stand that much computer screen time.) This is where "A Reader's Hebrew Bible" really shines; two of those books have been compressed into one.
This is not to say that the format of "A Reader's Hebrew Bible" is perfect. The vocabulary notes are lumped at the bottom of the page rather than arranged in columns, so one has to search to find the gloss for a particular term. The reason for this arrangement is, of course, size; the physical size of "A Reader's Hebrew Bible" is already bigger than 6x9 inches at about 1.75 inches think. I would ideally like a format for the notes that is more easily consulted, but then I also prefer to do my weightlifting at the gym and not while I lug around my book bag.
Quick Pros:
(1) Ready made tool containing words of frequency 100x or less. Sources of glosses are accepted standard lexicons (usually BDB and HALOT).
(2) Personal names are indicated through gray font.
(3) Readable size of text.
(4) Use of text that you will likely see (virtually same as BHS, and the font is similar to BHS).
(5) Nice price point.
Quick Cons:
(1) The physical book is created for a confessional setting (tan faux leather cover, silver edged pages). I'm not sure who made that choice (I suspect it's the publisher), and I don't know what to make of that since it's hard to imagine someone bringing this book to a church or other religious service to follow along when Bible is read.
(2) The execution of the binding is suspect in one way--the boards under the "Italian Duo-Tone" are quite light and take a crease quite readily. Otherwise, it's o.k. (the binding is Smyth sewn and the paper isn't excessively thin; one can see some printing from the other side of the page, but it's not bad).
Personal Gripes:
The authors/editors are unabashedly confessional in their prefaces (with Smith's being the more helpful statement in my estimation; he explains that the process of making the book helped him recover some of his waning Hebrew proficiency). The presence of confessional commitments isn't the issue I'm concerned about in itself. The work of the editors is really the creation and verification of vocabulary notes. I would like to see a commitment on the editors' part to keeping their work accessible to all readers of the Hebrew Bible rather than implicitly driving away those who don't share their commitments. This book could help a lot of people, and it's likely not going to reach those people because teachers in non-confessional (or differently-confessional) environments will bypass the book because of the editors' stated commitments and the physical appearance of the book.
Essential Hebrew Tool for Intermediate Students April 30, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a must own for any intermediate Hebrew student. It removes the excessive crutches and dangers that you often face when using an interlinear bible, but provides enough vocabulary help to encourage the student toward proficiency. It is an ideal resource for Hebrew students striving to read the text, but possessing a limited to moderate Hebrew vocabulary.
The aesthetics of the book are excellent. Like A Reader's Greek Bible before it, the book is made of beautiful Italian Duo-Tone. The Hebrew font for the book is a slightly modified, yet highly readable, version of the BibleWorks Hebrew font. The Hebrew text follows the Westminster Leningrad Codex. When minor differences between WTC and Biblia Hebraica Struttgartensia occur they are marked and can examined in Appendix B.
Link
The book is a reader, meant to enable students with a working knowledge of Biblical Hebrew but a limited vocabulary to increase their proficiency with the language. To that end the book works marvelously. Every Hebrew word occurring 100 times or less and every Aramaic word occurring 25 times or less is footnoted in a gloss at the bottom of the page. The footnote/gloss system is intuitive and easy to use. The gloss utilizes The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT) and The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (BDB) as its primary lexical sources for the definition of the rare words.Each gloss contains the following pattern: (numerical footnote superscript) HOMONYM#, LEMMA, STEM: HALOT; BDB; ALTERNATE.
Another convenient function is that the massive amount of rare proper nouns (less than 100 and 25 again) are printed in gray but not footnoted. This helps the reader to identify that a strange word is a proper noun, while not clogging down the glosses with the severe number of proper nouns present in the Old Testament.
The RHB also has a convenient glossary containing all Hebrew lemmas with a frequency of 100 times or more in Appendix A. The definitions are again based on BDB and the Appendix is arranged according to the Hebrew alphabet.
The one negative is that the RHB does not contain a text critical apparatus. For this a student will need to consult a source like BHS.
In summary, the RHB is a great resource that should prove valuable for intermediate students in generations to come. It is an excellent companion to its Greek counterpart.
A Treasure! April 22, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This tool is superb. It is large, but not too heavy. I really like the leather binding and gilt edges -- very attractive.
As far as being useful, the only fault is with my knowledge of the vocab. There are enough helps with glosses that an intermediate student is enabled to increase the speed of his reading without becoming lazy. This will not, and is not intended, to replace the standard critical text. This tool is very useful for devotional reading and even carrying to church. I'm very glad to have this tool at my side.
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