ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a comprehensive introduction to Biblical Hebrew language and texts. It presents the essentials of biblical grammar and vocabulary in an engaging and systematic way. The chapter examines all the topics expected in a first-year Biblical Hebrew course, including the Hebrew writing system, pointing rules, nouns and adjectives, parsing, mastery of strong and weak verb paradigms and full attention to syntax. Hebrew is a member of the Afro-Asiatic language family, which is a large group of languages spread throughout much of northern Africa and the Middle East. The chapter talks about pual, which is characterized by a strong dagesh in the second radical. However, it is easy to distinguish the pual from the piel because the first radical of the pual is always pointed with qibbu. As in the piel, the preformative is always pointed with vocal shewa. Pual forms exhibit the same occasional loss of strong dagesh in skin em alive letters seen in the piel.
