We at Aleph with Beth believe that biblical Hebrew should be the new normal for discipleship. For too long it has been something for people with a lot of money, for the “spiritually elite,” or just for pastors and leaders and priests. But we now live in a time when God has given us new tools and technology to make biblical Hebrew available to everyone in the world—for free. You can read more about this philosophy here.
When people try to learn the Hebrew of the Bible, not very many succeed, and the few who do make progress struggle to retain and use what they’ve learned. The fact is, most people in the world weren’t designed to learn a language by using a textbook and memorizing lots of rules. Instead, we learn a language best by using it: hearing and speaking it. While only a few can achieve eventual success through a traditional seminary course, everyone has the innate, God-given ability to learn a language in the natural way they learned to speak their mother tongue as children. If you think about it, your parents didn’t begin by teaching you the alphabet and grammar while you were in the cradle. They simply spoke to you. You listened, you started understanding and then speaking little by little, and then you were ready for the alphabet. Aleph with Beth tries to approximate this natural, immersive style of learning, slowly building your comprehension as you watch. This natural way of learning a language is far more enjoyable, and more effective over time, as the sounds and grammar of biblical Hebrew work their way into your long-term memory through repetition and use.
In America we have an “embarrassment of riches.” We have thousands of biblical resources one click away, but, meanwhile, there are millions of people in other countries who don’t even have a Bible in their language. So our goal empower the global church with the biblical languages, as well as train people who will be involved in Bible translation. In order to do that, it has to be as accessible as possible to anyone of any language. That’s why you’ll never hear English or any other language in the videos. Just as your parents never translated what they were saying to you as a baby into some other language to help you understand it, our videos let you experience the same kind of environment.
So we invite you to join us on this journey into the language of the Hebrew Bible! Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t you miss out on new lessons, and please share with friends from other countries and language backgrounds who may be interested in learning Hebrew.
Who Are We?
Beth (Bethany) was always fascinated with languages since she was a child (you can tour her crazy language notebook from high school here). She also has gift for art (which you can see on her Instagram here). Her interests led her to get a masters of Linguistics from the University of North Dakota, and now she is working on a PhD in biblical Hebrew through the University of the Free State in South Africa. She served for five years in Colombia teaching future missionaries things like Second Language Acquisition and Phonetics. After that she went to study Hebrew at the Jerusalem Center for Bible Translators, where she met Andrew. Now they live and work in Oaxaca, Mexico where Andrew grew up.
What about Andrew? In short, he’s is a translation consultant who has written a lot of music, a handful of books, created some prayer apps, runs a podcast, and served in Equatorial Guinea. Now he and Beth live and work in Oaxaca, Mexico where Andrew grew up. Feel free to follow us on Facebook here.
Shalom!