I recently got my copy of Donald Vance’s A Hebrew Reader for Ruth back from a friend to whom I had loaned it as a resource for a class on Ruth in Hebrew.  I had purchased the text as a part of my doctoral research in Biblical Hebrew teaching methodology.  As I glanced back through the book, I was struck once again with the same reaction I had the first time I opened it.  “Why is this book called a reader?”  Every verse of Hebrew is interrupted by a translation of the verse followed by the parsing of every word in the verse.  This is NOT READING.

Don’t get me wrong.  I think translation is important and can lead to a much better understanding.  I think that interacting with current translations is great as well.  Indeed, I even lent Vance’s book to a friend for a course (it should be kept in mind that course focused primarily on translation).  But, regardless of any merits that this text may have and any benefits that may be gained from translation, translation is still NOT READING.

I don’t mean to single out Vance’s “reader.”  The First Hebrew Reader by EKS employs a similar misue of the term “read,” though probably not to the same extent.  The same could be said of the Yale University Press Readings in Biblical Hebrew (Also among Biblical Hebrew introductory textbooks the misue of the term “read” is widespread and rampant).   In this light, these texts should be referred to as something other than “readers.”  Call them workbooks, parsing guides, translation aids, or whatever.  But, can we please stop calling them “readers?”