Page H. Kelley (1924–1997)

One of the barriers involved in teaching students of biblical Hebrew about the Masorah is the lack of introductory literature on the subject. Although a lot of information about the Masorah is available in print, most of it is in technical professional journals or encyclopedia articles. Scattered about in disparate sources, often not in English, this literature is easier to ignore than it is to incorporate into introductory Hebrew classes. As a result, most students of biblical Hebrew complete their studies without any background on the Masorah.

This volume fills this gap by providing an introduction and glossary to the Masorah of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Although the volume could be used by any student of the Hebrew Bible, it is specifically designed to be helpful for students who are just learning Hebrew. Thus it can serve as an important parallel text for second semester or second year Hebrew courses.

The introductory chapters give an overview of the field of Masoretic studies and explain the mechanics of using the Masorah of BHS. The annotated glossary provides students with definitions and explanations for most of the terms used in BHS, including examples.… (altro)

After over a year with this book, I am glad to say I've finished it!

Advantages of Kelley's book:
I love how he combed through the Bible and found actual verses for the exercises in each chapter. It gives a feeling of authenticity to the book, and the joy of working through the Bible rather than fabricated textbook examples. Each chapter has a LOT of helpful exercises of many different kinds, particularly verb identification. There is also an answer key (sold separately) which makes this book ideal for self-study.

Disadvantages:
I thought the way he handled weak verbs was unhelpful. His book is very step-by-step: he teaches almost everything about nouns, then moves into verbs, then weak verbs. So there are 10 chapters at the end of the book that focus on weak verbs alone. Some of these chapters were unnecessary, such as certain types of weak verbs that don't lose any of their root consonants - only the vowels change, but one can intuit these pretty easily. Other chapters he overcomplicated immensely, focusing on intricate phonological rules that don't seem necessary to understand biblical Hebrew.

Given the verbs are the most difficult thing about Hebrew morphology, I feel he should have introduced them from the get-go, introducing individual weak verbs along the way and treating them as special irregular cases. Then one is dealing with strong and weak verbs while learning everything else rather than slapping them all at the end of the textbook.… (altro)