Greetings and Welcome to Fred Putnam.org!
Welcome to my website, and thanks for visiting. I hope that what you find here proves helpful or [at least] interesting.
For more than twenty years I taught Biblical Hebrew, Old Testament interpretation, Bible translation, linguistics, and various other things in seminary, as well as Hebrew, Greek, Shakespeare, and English literature to high school students, and various courses, workshops, and seminars in reading [understanding] the Bible for collegians in the USA and-during 2006-at Institutul Teologica Timotheus (Bucharest, Romania). My c.v. gives a fairly complete, if somewhat boring, rundown on my life thus far.
To learn more about me and my website, read on...
Toward Reading & Understanding Biblical Hebrew
Title: Toward Reading & Understanding Biblical Hebrew
Download Chapters (PDF*):
Grammar Part 1 (Lessons 1 - 4; pages 1-41)
Grammar part 2 (Lessons 5 - 9; pages 42-85)
Grammar part 3 (Lessons 10 - 14; pages 86-123)
Grammar part 4 (Lessons 15 - 17; pages 124-149)
Grammar part 5 (Lessons 18 - 21; pages 150-185)
Grammar part 6 (Lessons 22 - 27; pages 186-226)
Grammar part 7 (Lessons 28 - App. B; pages 227-276)
Grammar part 8 (Lessons App. C - F; pages 277-343)
Pages: 343
* Note: The Hebrew Grammar is in the PDF format; click here to get a free PDF viewer.
A Cumulative Index to the Grammar and Syntax of Biblical Hebrew
Title: A Cumulative Index to the Grammar and Syntax of Biblical Hebrew
Author: Frederic Putnam
Sample Pages: Coming Soon!
Table of Contents: View
Publisher: Eisenbrauns, 1996
ISBN: 1575060078
Pages: xii + 338 pages, English
Price: $24.50
Description: Beginning with Genesis and moving verse by verse through the entire Hebrew Bible, Putnam indexes the citations found in each major reference grammar to provide a wonderful time-saving tool for exegetes. Works indexed: Bauer and Leander, Historische Grammatik der hebraischen Sprache des Alten Testamentes; Beer, ed. by Meyer, Hebraische Grammatik; Bergstrasser, Hebraische Grammatik; Brockelmann, Hebraische Syntax; Davidson, Hebrew Syntax; Gibson, Davidson's Introductory Hebrew Grammar: Syntax; Kautzsch, ed. Cowley, Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar; Jenni, Lehrbuch der hebraischen Sprache des Alten Testaments; Jouon, translated and edited by Muraoka, Grammar of Biblical Hebrew; Richter, Grundlagen einer althebraischen Grammatik; Rosenthal, Grammar of Biblical Aramaic; Schneider, Grammatik des biblischen Hebraisch: Lehrbuch; Waltke & O'Connor, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax; Williams, Hebrew Syntax: An Outline.
Reviews: (See full details for reviews)
Where to buy: Eisenbrauns | Amazon Hardback or SoftcoverÂ
Hebrew Bible Insert: A Student’s Guide to the Syntax of Biblical Hebrew
Title: Hebrew Bible Insert: A Student’s Guide to the Syntax of Biblical Hebrew
Author: Frederic Putnam
Sample Pages: View
Table of Contents: View
Publisher: Stylus Publishing, 1996
ISBN: 1887070036
Pages: 64, English
Price: $5.95
Description: Intended as an insert for BHS (the Hebrew Bible), this guide is designed as a quick reference guide for Hebrew Syntax. Divided into five major sections this handy booklet covers Nominal Syntax, Verbal Syntax, Clausal Syntax, the Masoretic Accents, and [verb] Paradigms. This is a handy tool for reference when reading the Hebrew Bible and you don't have a reference grammar available.
Reviews: (See Full Entry for Reviews)
Where to buy: Westminster Bookstore
Card-Guide to Biblical Hebrew
Title: Card-Guide to Biblical Hebrew
Author: Frederic Putnam
Sample Pages: Coming Soon!
Table of Contents: Coming Soon!
Publisher: Stylus Publishing, 1996; rev. ed., 1997
ISBN: 1887070044
Pages: xii + 338 pages, English
Price: $3.95
Description: Coming Soon!
Reviews: (See Full Entry for Reviews)
Where to buy: Westminster Bookstore  | Fuller Seminary Bookstore
Survey of the Hebrew Bible: Lecture Slides (PPT and PDF)
About: The below series of slides contain talking points in regards to major events in the Hebrew Bible. The presentations are listed below (roughly) in chronological order.
Note: You will need the free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer (~2MB) or free Adobe Acrobat Reader (~27MB) to view the below files.
Download:
(PDF | PPT) -- Introduction and Orientation to the Hebrew Bible
(PDF | PPT) -- Beginnings: Genesis-Exodus
(PDF | PPT) -- Israel in the Wilderness: Leviticus-Deuteronomy
(PDF | PPT) -- Introduction to Biblical History Writing
(PDF | PPT) -- There was no King: Joshua-Ruth
(PDF | PPT) -- United Monarchy
(PDF | PPT) -- Divided Monarchy
(PDF | PPT) -- My Servants the Prophets: Prophecy
(PDF | PPT) -- Major Prophets
(PDF | PPT) -- Minor Prophets
(PDF | PPT) -- The "Other" Mode of Revelation: Poetry and Wisdom
(PDF | PPT) -- Post-Exilic Yehud
Reading Notes on Ruth
Download: Reading Notes on Ruth (PDF format; click here to get a free PDF viewer)
Pages: 10
Abstract: A verse-by-verse grammatical analysis of the book of Ruth to assist in reading Ruth in Hebrew.
Reading Notes on Jonah
Download: Reading Notes on Jonah (PDF format; click here to get a free PDF viewer)
Pages: 5
Abstract: A verse-by-verse grammatical analysis of the book of Jonah to assist in reading Jonah in Hebrew.
The Real Meaning of Genre: Some Thoughts & a Cautionary Tale
The Real Meaning of Genre: Some Thoughts & a Cautionary Tale
There are those writers-especially writers of books telling the rest of us how to read this or that kind of material (i.e., genre)-and that without knowing the genre of a work we can't "truly" understand or appreciate it, and are in fact prone to misinterpret it. This has become almost a dictum of biblical interpretation, especially in the Psalter, where numerous books on the hermeneutics [interpretation] of the psalms warn that the first step in understanding a psalm is to determine its genre.