Why is Holy Language offering a Hebrew grammar course?

If you are familiar with our ministry, you know our flagship course Hebrew Quest, which introduces our students to Yeshua and our Jewish Bible.

Hebrew Quest was designed to get students into the Hebrew text as quickly as possible, with minimal focus on learning rules. For many of our students, this approach is quite successful. We noticed that many other students started to drop off between lessons 12 and 16, after the Aleph-Bet lectures. For some students, these lessons were too much Hebrew grammar too fast, and for others, it was not enough Hebrew grammar.

As a result, several of our students have asked us for a grammar resource to supplement Hebrew Quest.

As we searched for a resource to recommend to these students, we noticed that they tended to fall into one of two camps:

  1. A workbook or a series of videos that are entirely self-paced/self-directed
  2. Academic/Seminary level textbooks and courses

These two are often opposite extremes. Self-paced courses can have too little structure and often provide only a superficial review of Hebrew. In the end, the student may only be slightly more prepared to read the Hebrew Bible than if they had not done the course. There are also limited feedback opportunities as these courses are designed for independent learning. On the other hand, seminary courses and seminary-level textbooks are usually incredibly rigorous with copious amounts of reading, rote memorization of paradigms, lectures, and exams. Academic courses are fast-paced and high-stress.150 Seminary textbooks generally are much more detailed and advanced than most of our students need (or would enjoy)151

Additionally, with either option, our Holy Language students would incur additional fees to purchase these materials. Many of the resources we researched are top-notch. Depending on a student’s goals, we would not hesitate to recommend them. It’s just that they were not quite what we were seeking for the majority of our students.

See the next section to learn how Hebrew GRAMMAR Quest is distinct.

  1. For example, in a seminary course, the 36 lessons in Basics of Biblical Hebrew are usually completed in 16 weeks.↩︎

  2. For example, there is usually an emphasis on writing Hebrew and conducting English-to-Hebrew translations. While these may be important skills to become fluent in Hebrew, one does not need these skills to read and understand the Bible, especially from a spiritual or devotional perspective.↩︎