A dense book, but worth the effort it
takes to read it. Saenz-Badillos reviews pretty much everything
written on the topic of Hebrew in its various forms (as evidences by
the nearly seventy-page bibliography in eight-point type). The text,
while academic and not meant to entertain, clearly and succinctly
summarizes the state of scholarship about Hebrew in its various
incarnations.

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Product Description

A History of the Hebrew Language is a comprehensive description of Hebrew from its Semitic origins and the earliest settlement of the Israelite tribes in Canaan to the present day. Professor Sáenz-Badillos sets Hebrew in the context of the Northwest Semitic languages and examines the origins of Hebrew and its earliest manifestations in ancient Biblical poetry, inscriptions, and prose written before the Babylonian exile. He looks at the different medieval traditions of pointing classical Biblical Hebrew texts and the characteristic features of the post-exilic language, including the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He gives particular attention to Rabbinic and medieval Hebrew, especially as evidenced in writings from Spain. His survey concludes with the revival of the language in this century in the form of Israeli Hebrew.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #685873 in Books
• Published on: 1996-01-26
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
"This book is without any doubt the most comprehensive and up-to-date history of the Hebrew language ever written....setting the linguistic developments against the corresponding developments in the historical experience of the Jewish people." Nicholas de Lange, Cambridge University

"...a bona fide reference work with a good index, a most extensive bibliography, and an overview of the central issues and debates in the field--past as well as ongoing, with opposing points of view faithfully and fairly represented....The writing is attractively styled, flowing smoothly and flawlessly; the translation is good enough to cause one to forget that the monograph was originally written in Spanish." Modern Language Journal

"The title of this volume does not prepare one for that breadth and depth of information to be found on ever page. Sáenz-Badillos has produced a scholarlytour de force that is as much a history of the study of the Hebrew language as it is a history of the language itself." Shofar

"...the most comprehensive history of Hebrew to date....a must for every Hebraist's bookshelf..." Hebrew Studies

"For students of Hebrew, this is an invaluable book, at once providing a large historical conspectus and a detailed analysis of the evolution of the language." London Review of Books

"...the starting point for serious students in the future....a sober and straightforward description of the data and the scholarship....an unpretentious and valuable contribution: a basic history that provides us with a firm footing." Language

"It is with great pleasure that scholars and students of Hebrew should welcome the appearance of Angel Sáenz-Badillos'A History of the Henbrew Language." Domes

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

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Customer Reviews

Excellent work, but not for everyone
This is an excellent work that reconstructs 3000 years of this ancient language. It is not however an easy read. the subject matter is rather arcane - the changes in pronunciation and usage throughout the history of the language. If you have a professional interest in dating hebrew texts using grammatical features, this book is indispensible. If your interest is more personal, you don't really need to be linguist to read this book, but two things are highly recommended--
1) At least one year of college-level biblical hebrew study.
2) A high interest in the mechanical and psychological details of language.
If you think this subject might interest you, but would like to start with something simpler but still top quality -- try William Chomsky's "Hebrew: The Eternal Language."

Excellent introduction
This is an excellent introduction into the internal linguistic history of the Hebrew language. The bibliography is 66 pages long, in rather small print, and is constantly referred to in the text. As a starting point to get an overview of this field of scholarship, it is probably without equal today.
As a technical work, presenting a summary of a highly technical field of study, it is astonishingly accessible to the non-specialist. Much more so than, for example, the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon, in that for citing examples only two alphabets are used: Hebrew, of course, and a Latin based phonetic alphabet defined in a table on page 19. It does not assume a knowledge of the scripts of Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, Aramaic, Akkadian cuneiform and so on. Even mastery of the Hebrew alphabet is not strictly necessary to use the work because all citations in Hebrew are accompanied by transliterations into the phonetic alphabet.
The author employs the terminology and methods of descriptive linguistics, but those who have had an introductory course in this field will have little difficulty with it. It is assumed that the reader knows what is meant by terms like phoneme, allophone, morpheme, grapheme, lexeme, isogloss, synchronic, diachronic, etc.

be not afraid
As a layman, neither linguist, theologian, nor Hebrew expert - just an amateur of the Hebrew Bible, I found Sáenz-Badillos book to be a challenging, fascinating revelation of a whole new level of scholarship which not only informed me, but inspired me to put it on my schedule for a re-read, and to take another stab at Genesius' Hebrew Grammar, the very opacity of which is a delight to the jaded who may have come to think they've seen everything.

The writing is wonderful; it has a crisp clarity of style that propels one through the sometimes difficult text. John Elwolde's translation is in and of itself a work of art. It seems impossible that the book was not written in English.

It would be a shame for anyone interested in the subject to miss this book.