INCORPORATING ANCIENT ISRAEL’S WORLDVIEW INTO THE TEACHING OF BIBLICAL HEBREW

Abstract

Modern language instruction always includes a cultural component – students do not learn just isolated words, morphology and syntax, but rather the cultural context of the language and its speakers. The teaching of Biblical Hebrew, however, has usually taken place in a cultural vacuum without reference to the cultural concepts that permeated ancient Israelite society. In this paper we describe an initiative to embed the teaching of Biblical Hebrew within the cultural world-view of ancient Israel in accordance with modern language pedagogy. Because South Africa is a multi-cultural society, we pay particular attention to the differing cultural backgrounds that our students bring to the learning of ancient Hebrew.