A Modern Grammar for Classical Hebrew

A Modern Grammar for Classical Hebrew. By Duane A. Garrett. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2002, vii + 395 pp., n.p.

Duane Garrett has made a fine contribution to the realm of teaching Hebrew grammar. he arranges 62 relatively brief lessons or sections (anywhere between 1-9 pages each) under six headings: the alphabetics and phonetics of Hebrew; nouns, adjectives, prepositions, and the basics of verbs; the Hebrew verb system in summary; the QaI stem in detail; the derived sterns in detail; and additional details and introduction to advanced issues. The volume concludes with several appendices that provide a listing of Hebrew-English vocabulary, a smaller English-Hebrew vocabulary, a list of proper names, a glossary, answer key, and several paradigms.

The bulk of each lesson or section introduces the student to another set of new grammatical issues followed by a vocabulary list, exercises, and a brief chapter summary that provides hints for memorization. Numerous helpful charts are interspersed throughout the volume. Garrett introduces his readers to the verbal system initially in section 6 and then more fully in sections 8 and 9, compared to lesson 12 in the grammars by Kelley (p. 80) and Pratico and Van Pelt (p. 121). Consequently, students using this volume read at the clause level relatively soon after starting their venture into learning the Hebrew language.

Garrett's volume is distinctive in that he introduces his readers to basic concepts of Hebrew poetry, Hebrew text linguistics, strategies for reading biblical law, proverbial and prophetic literature, and textual criticism. Another feature that students will enjoy is the PDF file located on the publisher's website that provides a companion workbook containing all the exercises with more space between each problem. This provides the student with more workspace without unnecessarily adding to tbe volume's cost and provides a convenient way for professors to collect their students' work (if desired).

Another great feature of the book is that it requires the user to translate various blocks of OT Hebrew text: Gen 5:1-32; 8:3-7; Exod 19:1-8, 7:25; 20:1-17; Deut 6:4-5; 1 Kgs 17:1-24; 2 Chr 13:1-16:13; Pss 87:1-6; 112:1-10; Prov 14:8-15; Isa 2:1-11; and all of Jonah. In addition to these blocks of text, the exercises include individual verses from all parts of the OT.

After introducing the Hebrew verbal system (perfect, imperfect, imperative, infinitive, and participle), Garrett introduces the student to the derived stems and weak verbal roots in broad terms. he then introduces the QaI stem in detail, as it appears with various weak roots. The fifth section of the book gives attention to the derived stems with weak verbal roots.

In addition to the features mentioned above, Garrett's provision of an answer key serves as a great tool. Although professors of Hebrew will continue to debate the ultimate value of answer keys for students, in my years of teaching Hebrew grammar I have found a good answer key relieves a good deal of frustration and enhances learning for most students.

As the above overview indicates, I have found Garrett's grammar textbook helpful and enjoyable. Presently teaching through it for the third time, I also have a few suggestions that would improve its usefulness. Apart from differences in teaching/learning philosophies (that would affect the way something is presented) and idiosyncrasies all Hebrew professors have about certain points of grammar, Garrett's text desperately needs a comprehensive subject index to help teachers and students find where a given grammatical concept receives treatment. The number of vocabulary words and the ones Garrett chooses also can be burdensome. If a student memorizes all the provided words, he will learn about 400 words each semester. One could significantly reduce and focus these lists by selecting those words that occur 75 times or more. Also, the parsing sec tions of the exercises can be tedious because of the repetition of the same forms. I would agree repetition is essential to learning a new set of forms introduced in a given lesson. However, the introduction of a bit of variety might hold the students accountable to remember other forms as well.

Although one can see that section six serves as a place to attend to certain untouched grammatical features, a few of them could be moved forward with great profit. Since certain key accents are so helpful to recognizing clause structure (and thereby helping the struggling student see key breaks), accents deserve attention as early as the verbs are introduced. The jussive and cohortative forms demand attention when the imperative is covered. In light of the frequency of verbal forms that have pronominal suffixes, they deserve attention after the student has been exposed to the Hebrew verbal system in general (about midway through the volume as with Kelley's and Pratico and Van Pelt's grammars). Finally, Hebrew students would greatly profit if the feminine gender of nouns were consistently marked (in light of the numerous "cloaked" feminine forms) and if adjectives were marked as such (given the potential substantival function of adjectives).