title: Graded Reader of Biblical Hebrew: A Guide to Reading the Hebrew Bible
author:  Miles V. Van Pelt 
description: A Graded Reader of Biblical Hebrew is the ideal next-step resource for the student who has completed a year of elementary Hebrew, or it can be used as a refresher for the pastor or scholar whose language skills have diminished due to lack of use. Immersion in the language is the best way to reinforce what you have already learned and to gain greater proficiency in using the language for exegesis and preaching. A Graded Reader of Biblical Hebrew is a structured introduction to the reading of biblical Hebrew texts. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> Through these readings, you will be able to review basic Hebrew grammar, become familiar with issues of intermediate grammar, and gain confidence in handling the Hebrew text. The readings chosen for inclusion, which are arranged generally in order of increasing difficulty, span the whole of the Old Testament and represent some of the most important Old Testament texts from the standpoint of biblical history, theology, and exegesis. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> The many notes that accompany the text include information on grammar, exegetically significant constructions, vocabulary words, idioms, bibliographic information, and more. Parsing exercises are included with each reading, and there is room for you to write your own English translation.
zlib_text: 34
  Hebrew
  Robert Hetzron
  Revised by Alan S. Kaye
  1 Introduction
  The importance of the Hebrew language is not to be measured by the number of its
  speakers at any time in its history. It is the language of the Jewish Bible, the Old
  Testament of Christians. It also has a very long continuous history. Kept in continuous
  use by Jews from antiquity to modern times, its reformed version, in an unprecedented
  process of revival, became the ofﬁcial language of the modern state of Israel.
  It is futile to ask whether Modern Hebrew is the same language as the idiom of the
  Hebrew Bible. Clearly, the difference between them is great enough to make it impos-
  sible for the person who knows one to understand the other without effort. Biblical
  scholars have to study the modern language if they want to beneﬁt from studies written
  in Hebrew today and Israelis cannot properly follow Biblical passages without having
  studied them at school. Yet a partial understanding is indeed possible and the simila-
  rities