What is "Aibreet?" This is a word, spelled "ayin, bet, rawsh (resh), yood (yod), tau," for the "Hebrew" language or script. If you need help or wish to learn Aibreet (Hebrew) from Scripture and an ancient pictographic perspective, feel free to meet with us on Skype or Paltalk. You can join in on our weekly Paltalk festival celebrations as well. Contact us by email if you need help. For some songs we have done pdf files on in Aibreet (Hebrew), see our Music page.
People often ask "Why is Hebrew so important? How can I start to learn?" Plainly
and simply, translations fall short. In order to make an understandable
English translation, translators have to change the order of words in
the original sentences sometimes. Thus, "the guy walked his dog" may end
up as "his dog walked the guy." And when you have a certain belief
system, be it Jewish or Christian, the English translator may
deliberately alter a text, such as the Christian translation of "aylmeh"
to "virgin" in Y'shaiYahu (Isa.) 7:14. See our article on Aym'nu'Al (Emmanuel) and the Virgin.
Moreover, there are lots of things that are so much clearer in the
original text of the TaNaK (OT) than in English. For example, the word
for "eye" is "ayin." The word for "well" or "spring" is the same word.
The ancient Aibree (Hebrew) understood the "well" or "cistern" to be the
"eye" of the desert. Much like our eyes shed tears, so also the "well"
or "cistern" sheds water to a thirsty person. Things like that are not
conveyed in any English translation. If you are interested, you can check out Our TaNaK.
Ultimately,
a person’s most valuable study tools when it comes to Scripture are
history, context, and language. History and context commentaries and
references are abundant on the internet and in books. But when it comes
to language, we find that most people simply rely on the so-called
trustworthiness of the English translation, the pastor or rabbi’s
exegesis (taking out of the text based on the original words), or using a
concordance. But there is a problem with this practice, because a
concordance will only give you the root word of what the text is
referring to, not the actual word. For example, the first word of the
TaNaK (OT) is "B’rasheet," meaning "in (B) the beginning (rasheet)."
The Strong’s concordance doesn’t have a reference for the letter "bayt"
(b) in front of "rasheet" (beginning) in this case. It is evident,
listening to many pastors or so-called "Messianic rabbis" that they are
unable to read the original text, because the words they reference in
their preaching, teaching, and writing are cut from concordances.
So,
PERHAPS YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO READ SCRIPTURE FOR YOURSELF. You may ask
"Where do I start?" Truthfully, you have taken the first step. You have
realized that you have a need. Your next step will be to learn the "Al
Bayt" (most commonly seen as "alef-bet"). This is where we get the word "alphabet" from. It means the Strong/Ox (al) House (bayt (commonly "bet")). Letters are the building blocks of the
words. So you first need to learn the 22 letters of Aibreet (Hebrew
script), and how to tell what vowels to put between them. For that, I
humbly suggest you could print off a copy of our document in this
regard. This document talks about the Name of the Almighty and a few
other names in Scripture. It shows how we know what the Name of the Most
High is, and some of the problems that have occurred in the
past. People in past centuries believed the Name of the Most High to
be pronunciations like "Yahweh" or "Yehuweh" or "Yehovah." We show in our article on Al-Bayt, Names and Vowels why we believe the Name of the Almighty is “YaHUAH.” You
will also learn about the letters of Aibreet (Hebrew script), the
evolution of language, and why seeing these letters as symbols can often
help our understanding of Scriptural words, names, and places. Lastly,
you will learn about vowels in modern Aibreet (Hebrew script). You may check out our new article also regarding Restoring Ancient Aibreet (Hebrew), which deals with the ancient versus
modern text, and some changes we can make to restore a purer text. We also have now a list of Ancient Aibreet Terminology which will be expanded/updated regularly.
Once
you learn how to read the letters and pronounce the vowels, you can be
on your way to reading through the TaNaK (OT). Most people start by learning in modern "Ibrit" as Orthodox Judaism calls it. You can proceed to read this pdf file regarding the "Basics of Biblical Hebrew." This is produced by Gary D Practico and Miles Van Pelt. Warning, Gary
hasn't learned that terms like "God" or "Lord" or other terms used in
his document have false origins. Thus, we do not use them in our
articles, website, daily life and worship. Nonetheless, it is a
great document if one wanted to learn modern Masoretic Aibreet (Hebrew). It is somewhat necessary when wanting to return to the ancient script. As you become fluent in learning the letters and
their vowels, you will notice that a lot of the time, the Masoretic
scribal vowel-pointing betrays the original text of the TaNaK (OT).
Thus, some people will say "David," believing the "waw" to be pronounced
as a hard "v" sound. Whereas some, like us, prefer to leave the "waw"
as a harder "w" sound, like "Dah-weed." Some use "Da'ood" (Daud) and say that this is preserved in Arabic. However, in ZakarYaH (Zech.) 12:10 we see that the name of Daweed (David) is spelled with a yood (yod) before the dalat. When the yood is not present, we agree that it ought to be "Da'ood."
Once
you learn the letters and vowel points, you need to start reading your
TaNaK (OT). We suggest you order a copy of the “JPS Hebrew to English
TaNaK.” That is the best we can suggest while we are working towards publishing our own version of the TaNaK using the ancient script and an accurate English transliteration and translation. The JPS contains helpful footnotes, a decently accurate English
translation, and no garbage rabbinical commentary. While we also have
another version called “The Stone Edition Tanach” which does contain
rabbinical commentary, we find that most of the time the commentary is
not related to the original text, and often blasphemes by adding and
taking away from the words of YaH. For example, regarding B’rasheet (Gen.)
23 and the death of Sh'rah (Sarah), they have a footnote saying that Sh'then (Satan) told
Sh'rah (Sarah) that Y'tsakheq (Isaac) was dead, slaughtered as an offering by
Abrahaym, which so grieved Sh'rah (Sarah) that she died. That is complete
falsehood and adding to the words of YaH. Anyway, you can get a "JPS Hebrew
to English TaNaKh" from www.amazon.com.
Now
once you start reading your TaNaK (OT), you will have troubles with
certain words, vowels, and understanding. Granted. This takes some time
and dedication. But, if you have troubles with a particular word, you
can listen to each chapter of your TaNaK using Media Player (even slow
it down if they read too fast) by going here:
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/ptmp3prq.htm.
OR you can see a decently direct English transliteration by going here:
http://www.qbible.com/hebrew-old-testament/genesis/1.html#1.
You
should be on your way with these tools. Happy trails. You will see how
badly the English translators have often changed words to suit their
Jewish, Christian, or Messianic Jewish biases. Mind you, the Jewish
translation in English is much better than the Christian or Messianic
Jewish ones. And yet there is still much to be done to produce a proper work.
Some
people have also asked us what the difference is by going back to the
ancient "early Semitic script." The only difference is that the ancient
script looks more like the pictures that they originally portrayed. For
example, the letter "al" (alef) literally looks like an ox head ("kine" in
Deut. 7:13). In our
view of things, not much has changed from ancient script until the
modern script, excepting how the letters are written, and the traditions
that have formed over "bet" (as Orthodox Judaism calls this letter) versus "vet" (v) or "waw" (w) versus "vav"
(v), or "pay" (p) versus "fay" (f). They make no explanation as to how these changes came about. We seek to restore them. Thus, we use only bayt (b), waw (ooh or oo-ah), pay (p). Please see our document on Restoring Ancient Aibreet (Hebrew) as stated above.
Shalom,
Sha'ul and Alish'bai
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