Over the past year and a half, I’ve been learning to read Biblical Hebrew. I should say that I don’t think anyone has to learn the original languages to benefit from the Scriptures — nearly everyone in the world now has the Bible available in his or her own language, either the whole Bible or [...]
Archive for the ‘Language and Linguistics’ Category
How I’m Learning to Read Biblical Hebrew
Posted in Bible, Hebrew, Language and Linguistics, Resources, tagged Bible, Bible reading, Biblical Hebrew, Hebrew, language, language learning, linguistics on March 20, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Did Biblical Hebrew Verb States Reflect the Long Lifetimes of Early Humans?
Posted in Ancient World, Bible, Great Flood, Hebrew, Language and Linguistics, Pre-Flood World, tagged Ancient World, Babel, Bible, deluge, flood, Hebrew, history, language, linguistics, verbs on December 3, 2010 | 6 Comments »
I’ve been intrigued by Biblical Hebrew’s lack of verb tenses (past, present, future) and what it might have to say about the psychology of the people who originally spoke it. Considering the Bible account, it seems likely that Hebrew or something like it was the original human language. According to one way of thinking, the worshipers of [...]
New Translation of Holman Bible Increases Use of Yahweh in Its Text
Posted in Bible, God, Hebrew, Language and Linguistics, Religion, tagged Bible, Christianity, God, HCSB, Hebrew, Jehovah, language, linguistics, Tetragrammaton, translation, Yahweh, YHWH on November 23, 2010 | 3 Comments »
I was impressed recently to see the ad shown to the right from Biblical Archaeology Review for May/June of 2010. In an age where most churchgoers effectively don’t even know the name of the God they profess to worship, it is impressive that translators would have the courage to include the name of the Bible’s divine [...]
Michael Ventris, the Decipherment of Linear B, and the Value of Cross-Fertilization (via A Thinking Person)
Posted in Language and Linguistics, history, Ancient World, tagged Ancient World, ancient writing, decipherment, history, inscriptions, language, Linear B, linguistics, Michael Ventris, scripts on September 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Al Bredenberg makes an interesting connection between the work of a great linguist and the value of collaboration: Reading Andrew Robinson’s fascinating book Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts (2002, McGraw-Hill), I recently learned the amazing story of the decipherment of the Linear B script by amateur philologist Michael Ventris in the [...]
Is Easter named after the pagan goddess Eostre?
Posted in Ancient World, Bible, history, Language and Linguistics, Resources, tagged Alexander Hislop, Ancient World, Bible, Christianity, Easter, Eostre, holidays, language, linguistics, paganism, resource, The Two Babylons, Venerable Bede on March 30, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Is the holiday Easter, so named in English and observed by many members of the churches of Christendom, in fact named after a pagan goddess? Up until recently, the primary reference I was aware of that made this assertion was The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop, a 19th-century Scottish protestant theologian. However, Hislop’s work has received [...]
Hebrew Inscription Supports Much Earlier Date for Biblical Hebrew
Posted in Ancient World, Archaeology, Bible, Hebrew, history, Language and Linguistics, tagged Ancient World, ancient writing, Archaeology, Bible, chronology, decipherment, Hebrew, history, inscriptions, language, linguistics, scripts on January 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
An inscription on a pottery fragment recently deciphered at the University of Haifa in Israel shows that Hebrew was in use during the 10th century BCE, much earlier than generally acknowledged by mainstream scholars. An announcement from the University of Haifa (see “Most ancient Hebrew inscription deciphered“) says the inscription appears on a pottery shard [...]
‘Teach Yourself to Read Hebrew’ great for beginners
Posted in Bible, Hebrew, Language and Linguistics, Resources, tagged ancient writing, Bible, Hebrew, language, linguistics, resource on October 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’m having great success using Teach Yourself to Read Hebrew, by Ethelyn Simon and Joseph Anderson. The book provides an easy step-by-step process for learning to read and write the Hebrew alphabet. Highly recommended. I’m using it in conjunction with my first reading of the Hebrew scriptures in the original language. ARK — 29 Oct. [...]
‘Origin of Speeches’ says Edenic language is programmed in our brains
Posted in Ancient World, Bible, Hebrew, Language and Linguistics, Uncategorized, tagged Ancient World, ancient writing, Babel, Bible, Hebrew, history, intelligent design, language, linguistics on October 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I recently finished reading The Origin of Speeches: Intelligent Design in Language, a fascinating book by Edenics scholar Isaac E. Mozeson. Edenics is a linguistics project undertaken to study the original human mother tongue called Edenic, the language given to Adam in the garden of Eden. Mozeson is the leader of a group of scholars [...]
Proto-Indo-European: A real language or a remnant of Babel?
Posted in Ancient World, Bible, history, Language and Linguistics, tagged Ancient World, ancient writing, Babel, Bible, chronology, history, language, linguistics, prehistory on September 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
From what I understand, Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is just a hypothetical construct — hypothetical because no writings in PIE exist and no scripts are known that were used to write it. PIE is reconstructed based on its supposed daughter languages. My question is whether some of the hypothetical daughter language groups — Proto-Germanic, Anatolian, Romance, Celtic, [...]
Ruhlen’s ‘The Origin of Language’ Points to Common Source for All Tongues
Posted in Language and Linguistics, tagged Babel, language, linguistics on July 6, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I recently finished reading The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue, by Stanford linguist Merritt Ruhlen. Ruhlen’s approach to language classification and historical linguistics is controversial. Ruhlen believes there is good evidence for a “Proto-Sapiens” language that existed 30,000 or more years ago and that it is possible to identify some lexical [...]
