An Interview with the Editors of A Reader's Hebrew Bible | Part 1

In March of 2008, Zondervan released its publication of A Reader’s Hebrew Bible. This book has been in the works for a number of years and is patterned after Zondervan’s A Reader’s Greek New Testament (now in its second edition). The editors of this biblical languages tool are Dr. A. Philip Brown (Ph.D., Bob Jones University) and Dr. Bryan W. Smith (Ph.D., Bob Jones University).

I consider myself blessed to have had the opportunity to study the biblical Greek under the instruction of both of these men. I am now benefiting from their labors in the Hebrew language.

Prior to the release of this biblical languages tool, I contacted both Phil Brown and Bryan Smith to congratulate them on the completion of this project. I also sent a series of questions, asking them to describe this project to me. They both responded to my questions and gave me permission to share them with you. I would like to present their responses in two parts. Part 1 is the Q&A with Phil Brown. Part 2 will be the Q&A with Bryan Smith.

I’m very excited about this project and trust that this Q&A will help—not only to illuminate the usefulness of this book but also to encourage us all to be better students of the Word. I believe every seminarian and pastor who has not yet mastered biblical Hebrew ought to get a copy and put it to use. Those who are thinking that this book is not for you ought to mention it your pastor. Better yet, buy him a copy—it’s affordable. You’ll receive great spiritual benefit from his increased skill in the Word.

A Reader’s Hebrew Bible. Edited by A. Philip Brown II & Bryan W. Smith. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008. Italian Duo-Tone™, 1,680 pages.

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Q&A with Dr. Philip Brown

A. Philip Brown II (Ph.D., Bob Jones University) is associate professor of Bible and Theology at God’s Bible School and College in Cincinnati, Ohio.

QUESTION: What exactly is a reader’s Bible?

ANSWER: A “reader’s Bible” contains a Greek text of the New Testament or the Hebrew text of the Old Testament like a regular Greek or Hebrew Bible. In addition, a footnote number is placed at the end of words that occur infrequently, and at the bottom of the page a gloss or “definition” for that word is given after the appropriate number. If you are familiar with Armstrong, Busby, and Carr’s A Reader’s Hebrew-English Lexicon of the OT, then just imagine having the glosses they provide at the bottom of each page in the Hebrew OT, and you have the idea. A Reader’s Hebrew Bible (RHB) glosses all Hebrew words that occur less than 100 times, and it has a glossary in the back that gives the most common meanings of all the lemmas that occur over 100 times.

Q: What led you to pursue this project?

A: 1) I love Hebrew. 2) I want to be able to read the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew/Aramaic. 3) I especially wanted to read Psalms and Proverbs in Hebrew. I am in the young-child parenting stage of my life, and I’m convinced that Proverbs is the most extensive example of biblical wisdom-training for children in Scripture. I want to get all I can out of it, and that requires intimate acquaintance with the Hebrew text. 4) I want to read extensively in Hebrew, but my limited vocabulary (perhaps most words that occur down to fifty times) requires me to make frequent reference to a lexicon, which slows me down sufficiently that it is easy to get discouraged. RHB eliminates all the lexicon-time, and frees me to use my Hebrew Bible anywhere I can carry it. 5) There is no way to gain a “feel” for Hebrew except by repeated exposure to the language across the length and breadth of the OT.

Q: Will this tool be useful to preachers who want to learn Hebrew, or is a working knowledge of the language required?

A: If a person has no Hebrew language training, this volume will not teach them Hebrew. Since it glosses all the words that occur less than one hundred times in Hebrew, a person needs a working vocabulary of at least the five hundred most common words in Hebrew, and he needs a minimum of a year of Hebrew grammar and syntax to be able to make sense of what he is reading.

Q: Would you be willing to share a lesson or two you learned from working through the Hebrew texts so closely for so long? I’m wondering how this project has affected your estimation of the Hebrew text and/or how this project has affected your preaching and teaching.

A: As Dr. Michael Barrett said on more than one occasion, “The niftiness of an exegetical insight is often inversely proportional to its exegetical accuracy.” I can’t think of any “brand-new” lessons, but my work has reinforced and provided experiential backing to numerous principles I learned in grad school.

Much of language learning is the erecting of exegetical guardrails to keep the exegete out of ditches and on the straight and narrow. A person, who merely dips into selected Hebrew texts and fails to expose himself to large segments of Hebrew prose and poetry (books!), is much more prone to discover “new (invalid) insights never before seen” than the person who has expended the effort to read widely.

For example, I was reading a book on child rearing recently, and the author asserted that the Hebrew verb gadal “really” means “to twist into greatness.” Really? I’ve certainly never seen that. Where is he getting this? I checked Holladay, HALOT, BDB, DCH, NIDOTTE … nobody supports his contention. Then I thought to check Strong’s Hebrew lexicon. It reads,

A primitive root; properly to twist (compare H1434), that is, to be (causatively make) large (in various senses, as in body, mind, estate or honor, also in pride): advance, boast, bring up, exceed, excellent, be (-come, do, give, make, wax), great (-er, come to . . estate, + things), grow (up), increase, lift up, magnify (-ifical), be much set by, nourish (up), pass, promote, proudly [spoken], tower.

I’m sure the author was well-intentioned, but not only did he assert something that is flatly untrue about the Hebrew word, he also misread Strong’s entry, which I would argue is incorrect as well. Strong does not say that the word means to “twist into greatness.” His phrase “properly to twist” most likely is a statement about his view on the etymology of the word. Even if Strong was right about the etymology of the word, its etymological meaning has nothing to do with its usage as a verb in the Hebrew Bible. Much less is there an implicit theological message that in order to be great in God’s eyes one must be twisted against the sinful nature!

Having issued the above caveat, here’s one discovery I’ve made that has been significant to me:

Deuteronomy 6:7 reads in the NASB, “You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” The concept of “diligent teaching” in my way of processing English calls to mind images of classrooms or tutorial sessions, earnest voiced exhortation, careful analytical explanation. As a father of a one-year-old and a three-year-old with attention spans of fifteen seconds (slight exaggeration), I was frustrated most every time I tried to put into practice my understanding of this verse.

When I read this in Hebrew, I discovered that instead of the standard Hebrew verbs for “instruct, teach” like lamad or yarah, Moses used the verb shanan. This is the only place where this lemma occurs in the piel. HALOT regards it as the only occurrence of this lemma and glosses it “repeat.” This verb, in combination with the verb dabar “talk,” HALOT suggests means “to speak, or to recite again and again.” Without addressing the question of whether this is really homonym 2 (cf. NIDOTTE’s discussion), this completely changed my conception of what I was supposed to do.

I take Moses’ primary point to be that we are to repeat the commands of God constantly to our children. This implies Scripture memorization for the parents and children. As parents constantly recite the Word of God, it is ingrained in the children. As the children get old enough to ask questions about the meaning of Scripture, teaching will be the natural consequence. In response my discovery, we have embarked on a Scripture memory program for our three-year-old. We quote the verse together in the morning, my wife works on them through the day with Allan, and I pick up the mantra at supper and bedtime. I’ve been making up bedtime stories to illustrate the verses we are learning: Proverbs 3:5-7.

As to how this has affected my preaching and teaching: I now require this as a textbook for my Hebrew I students! If I were not very proficient in Hebrew, I imagine this would encourage me to check the Hebrew more frequently and carefully as I prepared. As it is, the most significant change has been the ability to sit down in my easy chair and read Isaiah. Without RHB, reading Isaiah would be a task to be tackled and worked at. With RHB, it is much less of a chore and more a joy and delight.

Q: Is it necessary for preachers to know the biblical languages in order to be effective interpreters? If not, why? If so, what argument(s) would you use to persuade a preacher of this need?

A: Is it necessary for a doctor to know human anatomy and physiology to practice medicine? Yes, of course, but intimate knowledge of the human skeleton, muscle names, layout of the nervous system, etc., probably won’t play a significant role in diagnosing the common cold, stomach flu, or many other common ailments. But when a doctor has to deal with accident victims, infectious diseases, or strange symptoms, all of his or her knowledge of the human body becomes vitally relevant. The more doctors know, the less likely they will misdiagnose an illness or prescribe irrelevant remedies. There are good reasons for specialists in medicine—the scope of knowledge is too vast for a comprehensive knowledge of all relevant information. But a good doctor knows his limitations and refers his patients to those who know more.

Much of God’s truth lies open to the diligent reader of good vernacular translations (English in our case). But when the pastor has to deal with the wreckage of sin in the forms of divorce, remarriage, homosexuality, incest, and the many ravages of sin, the more he knows of the original languages, the more likely he is to provide an accurate remedy to the spiritually needy. God has not gifted all His servants equally with ability to learn languages. The good pastor will know his limitations and make good use of those who know more. But surely we should want the spiritual equivalent of an M.D. as the primary care physician of our soul. We should not be satisfied to have LPNs or RNs in primary care positions. Those who disdain knowledge of the original languages and sanctify ignorance do God and His Kingdom a deep disservice.

JASON: I would like to thank Dr. Philip Brown for laboring diligently over the production of this excellent tool and for taking the time to sharing these responses with me. Next, I will continue this discussion with Dr. Bryan Smith.

Jason Button received a B.A. in Bible from Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and has begun work on an M.A. in Theology. He serves as the Book Review Editor for SharperIron and is the creator of TheoSource, a project to compile comprehensive lists of recommended books for Bible study. Currently, he is a layman serving in various roles at West Ashley Independent Baptist Church (Charleston, SC). He is married to Tiffany, and they have two children, Caris Joelle and Asa Livingstone.