עברית Hebrew
Hebrew is the language of much of the Hebrew Bible and a central thread of Jewish literary and religious history. Learning it connects you to inscriptions, classical texts, and (in its modern form) a living speech community.
Family: AfroasiaticBranch: SemiticPeriod: 1st millennium BCE → present (biblical/classical focus in many resources)
Region: Levant (modern Israel/Palestine and surrounding regions)
1st millennium BCE → present (biblical/classical focus in many resources)
Link legend: links marked “(archived)” open an Internet Archive snapshot because the original site is down or unreliable.
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Typing help
Hebrew is easy to type with a Hebrew keyboard layout; for occasional use, copy/paste is often enough.
Dictionaries
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: This links to the portal page for the large work, not to the file itself.
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Semantic Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew
- Notes: A useful online source.
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Targumim, Talmud, and Midrashic Dictionary
- Notes: An extremely useful book.
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- Access: Font
- Notes: Searchable in different ways; requires a Hebrew font.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: An older PDF book.
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Hebrew-English Index to Gesenius
- Notes: For use with Gesenius’ lexicon.
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- Notes: More for our friends the Germanicans!
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- Notes: Everything in Hebrew.
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- Notes: Lots of other resources.
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- Notes: For both Hebrew and Greek.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: Indexed by Strong’s number, without Hebrew characters.
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- Notes: Words are grouped by frequency, so this can be very useful.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: Translations are in French.
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Ancient Hebrew Research Center
- Notes: With Strong’s numbers and the ancient spelling.
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- Notes: Lots of names and terms.
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- Notes: Very old.
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- Notes: Discussions of various words and phrases.
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- Notes: Sometimes, you’re just glad that someone else did it.
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Hebrew Philosophical Dictionary
- Format: PDF
- Notes: A very, very large PDF file.
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- Notes: You’ll have to translate from the French, but it’s very easy to use.
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- Notes: Via the Wayback Machine.
Grammars
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: A smallish PDF file - 3.41 MB.
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- Notes: Another option for reference.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: A good summary of some points, but not for beginners.
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- Notes: The original Gesenius.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: Starts from the most basic level.
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- Notes: Some of the pages aren’t ready yet.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: Has lots of differnet lessons and can be accessed in PDF format as well.
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- Notes: Contains other resources as well.
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- Format: Video
- Notes: This link goes to the first lesson, and you can check the other videos on this channel for more lessons.
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- Notes: For many different topics and sections.
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- Notes: Includes people who don’t know the language.
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- Notes: Also a very old book.
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Illustrations of Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar
- Notes: For use with Gesenius; see above.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: Very useful!
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- Notes: By Wood.
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Handbook to Old Testament Hebrew
- Notes: An elementary grammar of the language. Copious exercises!
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- Notes: Don’t learn that artificial stuff. You want all-natural, 100% pure.
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- Notes: By Wijnkoop and Biesen.
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Practical Introductory Hebrew Grammar
- Notes: Dispenses with all the niceties.
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Grammar of the Hebrew Language
- Notes: It’s what we’re all interested in, right?
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- Notes: There must have been a lot of impractical grammars at one point.
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Another Grammar of the Hebrew Language
- Notes: Only older.
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- Notes: “By an inductive method.” So there’s that.
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- Notes: Wijnkoop and Biesen return.
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- Notes: As part of an introductory grammar.
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- Notes: “Memoirs of a Linguist.”
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- Notes: In the Old Testament.
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- Notes: Hebrew has only two verb “tenses,” if they can even be called that. It’s a very interesting aspect of the language.
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- Notes: Not long.
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- Notes: “der hebraischen Sprache.”
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- Notes: It comes from Harvard, so you’ll be smarter if you read it.
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- Notes: In German.
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- Notes: Also in German.
Charts & Aids
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: Does not include any irregular verbs, but still good.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: This can be very, very difficult at times, so this guide is welcome.
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- Notes: For irregular verbs and other aspects of the grammar.
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- Notes: Very useful for both regular and irregular verbs. Links are at the top.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: The basics.
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Hebrew Noun and Verb Charts Galore
- Format: PDF
- Notes: For all different situations. Amazing!
Texts
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- Notes: With many other versions as well.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: A French site with a very convenient side-by-side Bible with Hebrew, French, English, Latin, and Greek. Can also produce PDF files. An excellent site.
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- Notes: Bible texts online in many languages with parallel viewing.
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- Notes: Easy to use, useful even for beginners.
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- Notes: Easy navigation, no vowels.
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- Notes: Book names in Hebrew. Text has vocalizations.
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- Notes: The old text in various forms, with some parallel works as well.
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- Notes: Choose a passage to view in a number of languages. Contains an embedded lexicon.
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- Notes: Another multilanguage biblical comparison tool.
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- Notes: Easy to navigate, not easy to download.
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- Notes: Read the original.
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- Notes: A zip file; unzip and place all files in the same folder to navigate.
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- Notes: Includes audio codices and audio recordings.
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Papyrus of the 10 Commandments
- Format: PDF
- Notes: Very useful article with edited Hebrew of the text.
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- Notes: Some older files, requires the djvu viewer.
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- Notes: A collection of links to various Hebrew manuscripts.
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- Notes: Translations of various Gnostic texts.
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- Notes: View the texts online.
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- Notes: The real deal.
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- Notes: In photograph form.
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- Notes: You’ll need to have some background knowledge in order to make meaningful use of this site.
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- Notes: Hundreds of years old, in fact.
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- Notes: Written in French; useful for understanding what the Talmud contains.
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SHEBANQ Text Database of the Hebrew Bible
- Notes: So good that Ricky Martin sang about it in 2000: “SHEBANQ! SHEBANQ! Looking up those Hebrew verbs, the verbs…” Anyway, it’s an open access and open source text database for the Hebrew bible. If you’re serious about the Hebrew Bible and computational lexical resources, this is for you.
Other Resources
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Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Judaism
- Notes: The real deal. Search this page for “encyclopaedia of judaism.”
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- Notes: From 2006.
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- Notes: Lots of resources for Biblical languages and study.
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- Notes: Many traditional Jewish texts in English.
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- Notes: Many sites available, plus audio and textual criticism.
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Dead Sea Scrolls and other links
- Notes: Links to sites with Bible resources, as well
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- Notes: The full, unedited text.
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- Format: PDF
- Notes: A very nice, concise explanation in PDF format.
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- Notes: A list of historical milestones.
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- Notes: Year by year, apparently.
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- Notes: Many different topics.
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History of the Jews in Modern Times
- Notes: A more contemporary resource.
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Bibliography of Hebrew Grammar
- Format: PDF
- Notes: In the 20th century. Includes Ugaritic.
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- Notes: Many books and resources for the study of Hebrew and Semitics.
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