Many Americans find foreign languages really intimidating, and assume you need to be some kind of brilliant in order to study biblical languages. Especially since they’re languages with entirely different alphabets from ours. People react like I’m a genius just because I studied Hebrew and Greek in school.
No; genius would be if became fluent in both those languages after I spent a weekend with the textbook. I’m not a language genius. Nor am I fluent. I work at it. I dig out the textbooks and dictionaries whenever I translate, just like I did in college.
And you too can work at it. All you need is time, motivation, and a couple thousand dollars for college tuition.
…Well, maybe not the tuition. There’s a whole section of the iTunes store called “iTunes U,” where you can download college courses for free. Download the iTunes program here if you don’t have it already, because the links below to the classes will try to open iTunes.
Because you’ll only be learning these languages enough to read them—not so that you can speak them, and have entire conversations in ancient Hebrew—you’ll actually find them a lot easier than you were expecting. They don’t even focus all that much on pronunciation… as you’ll probably notice when they try to say Hebrew and Greek words with heavy American accents. (If you actually want to get the pronunciation right, you’ll have to study modern Hebrew and Greek. But then you will have to learn them conversationally. Sorry.)
Hebrew classes. You can download the following ancient Hebrew classes:
Hebrew I & II with Rick Hebron, Seattle Pacific University’s School of Theology. (Audio only.)
Fundamental Biblical Hebrew, with Dr. Andrew H. Bartelt, Concordia Seminary. (Audio and video.)
Beginning Hebrew: Ruth with Dr. Steven Schweitzer, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. (Video.) This class actually teaches you enough Hebrew to translate Ruth.
Greek classes. You can download the following ancient Greek classes:
Elementary Greek, with Dr. James Voelz, Concordia Seminary. (Audio and video.)
Elements of Greek I and Elements of Greek II with Dr. Michael Burer, Dallas Theological Seminary. (Video.)
Textbooks. Yep, these classes are going to recommend you get textbooks in order to keep up with them, and that probably wouldn’t hurt. The most popular textbooks by far are Gary Pratico and Miles Van Pelt’s Basics of Biblical Hebrew and William Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek.
My own textbooks in college were Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar by James D. Martin (handy, but outrageously expensive) and Greek to Me by J. Lyle Story and Cullen I.K. Story (which has useful little mnemonic pictures to help you memorize stuff).
Let me pass on a little tip I learned from my French professor about textbooks: The current edition usually costs a lot, even used. So buy the previous edition. Unless it’s a science book, most of the changes are minor little tweaks that the publishers insist on making every few years (especially since they don’t make any money when students buy used books). Since very few people know this, they never buy previous editions, and you can find those editions for pennies on the dollar. You’ll save a bundle. (You’re welcome.)
If you have no intention of going through a class, and are actually self-motivated enough to just buy a textbook and plow through it, feel free. There are actually some free textbooks on the Internet… in the public domain, of course. On Google Books, there’s James Kennedy’s Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, Joseph Maggs’ An Introduction to the Study of Hebrew, Edward Mitchell’s Hebrew Introduction, and Hebrew grammars by Andrew Bruce Davidson, or William Gesenius, or Samuel Ransom, or Hermann Strack, or Moses Stuart, or Charles Wood and Henry Lanchester. On the Greek end: Greek grammars by Peter Bullions, or Philipp Buttmann, or William Goodwin, or Herbert Smyth, or Evangelinus Sophocles, or John Thompson, or Chauncey Goodrich and Caspar Hachenberg, etc. There’s really no shortage.
But—if I haven’t lost you completely by now—if all you want is a really, really basic introduction to biblical languages, and don’t care to learn much at all about them the best book I can recommend is Do It Yourself Hebrew and Greek by Dr. Edward W. Goodrick. It’s as elementary as you can get. With that, and a decent computer bible or concordance, you’re set.