I first studied biblical Hebrew in college forty years ago. Hebrew is so very different from Western European languages that it was hard for me to wrap my mind around it. Dobson's book aims at making the study of Hebrew fun and at giving the student success each step of the way. He aims to get the student reading worthwhile sentences and many of them as soon as possible. It is still the learning of a language, so it is not a "for dummies" project. But, Dobson presents the most frequent verb forms first and gets those drilled into the student's mind so they become very familiar. He does this rather than the approach used by Weingreen in my college class in which the student memorizes all forms in a paradigm and then later tries to pull some meaning out of the paradigms in the experience of translating. I especially like the audio CD. It allows the student to engage hearing as well as seeing in fixing a lesson in the mind. Dobson attempts to use current understanding of how one learns in order to make the material familiar territory for the student. I think I might not have let my Hebrew lapse over the decades had I learned with an approach like Dobson's the first time.

I have the advantage of using this book for a review and refresher. I already remember some vocabulary and some grammar. I can tell that makes using Dobson's book easier than it might be for a newbie to Hebrew. I would be curious to observe someone with no Hebrew who learns it with Dobson's approach. Still, the results he describes in the introduction are impressive. He speaks of students who struggled with Hebrew winning awards for their progress when they began to use his approach.

Mr. Dobson teaches in a way that is both very informative, and often humorous. By the completion of this book, I had translated the book of Jonah, as well as passages from nearly every book in the Old Testament. I would highly recommend this book to someone who wants to learn Biblical Hebrew, even if you (as I did) already have some knowledge of the language. This is truly a profound book. I learned much more than I expected to learn when I bought this book. My only complaint, is that the meanings listed for words are in (abstract) english, such as the Hebrew word "chai" which Mr. Dobson says means "life" which it does, but the word actually means "stomach" and was a Hebrew sign of life. Though you would rarely even consider translating the word as "stomach" it is nice to know the ancient meanings behind the Hebrew your reading... still, a very good book.