Biblical Hebrew: Step by Step Volume. 1

Menahem Mansoor was the Chair of Semitic studies at the University of Wisconsin, and his book serves as their textbook for beginners in Biblical Hebrew. As a teacher of Sunday Bible classes, I have found this book the most valuable for beginners. Lambdin is a classic text and a good reference book, Weingreen is too dense, and Ross is good for intermediate students.The book reflects that Mansoor was a teacher for over 25 years, for the vocabulary is well-chosen, the exercises are excellent, and the lessons literally help you build your skills step-by-step. Once you learn the alphabet and the vowels, Mansoor has you reading simple sentences in Scripture within a few weeks!The book also provides the reader with a brief history of the development of the Hebrew language, with its relation to ancient Semitic languages such as Phoenician and Aramaic, as well as a brief commentary on modern Hebrew as well.There is a reason that Mansoor's Biblical Hebrew Step-by-Step is in its 24th printing!

Excellent tool for learning Biblical Hebrew. While it is good to have some background in Hebrew, this book is quite thorough and helps the student understand and identify the root words and withing the Biblical Hebrew making it less of a puzzle and easier to grasp fairly quickly.

This book may no longer be in print. I purchased it through one of the sellers on Amazon, and it came in excellent condition.It starts with a history of language including different styles through the ages. It has a few black & white photos of objects and scenes related to the Bible. It has vocabulary, grammar, study hints and exercises to do in each chapter. It has 40 chapters which are short.The book includes an index and has English and Hebrew vocabulary lists of the vocabulary words in the back of the book.

My professor loves this book because Mansoor does not overwhelm you by throwing everything at your face all at once for you to study and understand. He goes through the book starting from the most basic grammar you need to know step-by-step. I like the fact that he sometimes repeats important points using vocabulary that you are familiar with from the previous chapters. I've been going to the class for 4 weeks, and so far I like using the book. Very easy to understand. (Of course, I have to say my professor is so awesome, too! :-)

This book is very good in content and presentation. The only criticism I have is that the font size on the Hebrew letters and especially the vowelspoints is too small.

Had this book years ago, written well, and brings the subject matter to you in a much better way then a lot of your older Hebrew Grammars do. I for one get bogged down easily in these, but the Step by Step books feed the material as you need it, when you need it, and is easier for someone like myself to digest. Very glad books like this exist : )

There's really nothing wrong with the book's content; but I had to buy a pair of ridiculously powerful glasses to be able to distinguish the various vowel notations from one another. The accent marks are so tiny they look like a dagesh, or some other marking. If you're young with sharp eyes, no problem; but I'm ordering a different book after working painfully through 7 chapters of this one.

This is the FIRST supplemental text I suggest a student use in a college level course in Biblical Hebrew. A very good source of additional practices inn addition to those assigned by an Instructor. It provides for more extensive activities to set the basics of Ancient Hebrew in a student's mind. My recommendation is "Do All The Exercises" in ADDITION to those assigned in the class text.

I was hoping that this would be a very helpful start to learning Biblical Hebrew but found it disappointing. The main problem is that it sets questions but does not provide the answers to the questions. This means that there is no way of checking your progress. I later discovered that there is another book covering the answers but this is considerably more expensive. Without the 2nd book "Key to Biblical Hebrew Step by Step" this book is of little use. A great disappointment.