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Blog for the online professor

Beginners’ Global Biblical Hebrew in Nairobi

2026-05-06

In June we move on to the second module of Beginners’ Biblical Hebrew at PAC University in Nairobi. The focus is still also to aim at training of potential trainers.

Participants in the second reading course

Group photo from the second reading course with my old friend Elly Gudo visiting

After the successful Intensive Biblical Hebrew project in the Spring we are now ready to take the next step to roll out Global Biblical Hebrew and BibleOL at PAC University

Evaluation from PAC

I am very pleased that Deputy Vice-Chancellor Diphus Chemorion recently officially summarized the appreciation of the university for the pilot project:

“Thanks be to God for the wonderful ministry of teaching Hebrew. I have received very good feedback on the Hebrew course that you facilitated recently. May I take this opportunity to thank you and my colleagues in the School of Theology for the splendid job.”

It is an encouragement to me that I am now invited back and that we together can plan for improving training of teaching assistants and students.

Collaboration with fellow teacher Dr Victor Lonu

The future of the project is now in the good hands of the local teacher responsible for teaching Biblical Hebrew at PAC, Dr Lonu. He is not only an excellent Hebrew scholar, but he also takes an interest in learning technology and specializes in training for Africa.

In June we will start planning on how to best implement BibleOL and the course material into his curriculum for Hebrew I-VI at PAC. Another goal is to figure out how to set up local a learning group at the university and how to train assistants for this new way of learning.

The content of the intensive course in June

During the intensive week from June 1-5 the goal is to cover the beginners’ grammar and vocabulary.

I will introduce:

  • GRAMMAR: the inflection of nouns, how prepositional and other phrases are formed and function, the combination of nouns into construct phrase and the most frequent verb for of Biblical Hebrew.
  • VOCAB: the 101 most frequent vocabulary items
  • TESTS: the final tests for the beginners course

It is not too late to join

In order to be able to benefit from the class participants must know the alphabet and have some skills in reading. We can still help you improve these skills.

In a parallel track my assistants and I will help learners to deepen their mastery of reading Genesis 1 on an individual basis and in teams.

Participants will in addition have access to online support Mondays at lunch time.

Long term plans

I plan to go into basic grammar by September or whenever it fits into the schedule at PAC. During the summer you will have sufficient time to improve your reading skills and catch up on the tests to join the learning group at PAC.