Jump to content

Bibles (and possibly other texts) read aloud


Peter Brylov Christensen

Recommended Posts

Yesterday I had a chat with a fellow student, and he asked me if I knew of any good audiobooks for the Bible. He said that he simply learns and memorizes things a whole lot better when they were read aloud. While it is different for me, I do acknowledge the fact that a text comes to life when being read aloud - reading it "normally" provides only one dimension of the text. Anyway, I recommended that he checked out Mechon-mamre.org seeing that it has sound recordings of every book and chapter for the Old Testament in Hebrew. However, I don't know of a similar webpage for recordings of the New Testament in Greek, so I was at a loss there.

 

At any rate, it gave me this idea. I don't know if the sound files in question would take too much space, but is it possible in theory to add a feature for the Greek and Hebrew Bibles in Accordance (and other texts, should they be requested) where you can click on a word,passage, chapter or even book and then have it read aloud in Greek/Hebrew? I know that you'd be dealing with many phonological anachronisms here due to the fact that Modern Greek and Modern Hebrew is in no way identical to Ancient Greek/Biblical Hebrew. But I figured that it still might serve to be a good helping tool both for getting into the Biblical languages and also for strengthening the understanding of the Bible itself. After all, both the Old and New Testament were meant to be read aloud in the first place, right?

 

With kind regards

 

Pchris

Edited by Pchris
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, if you don't care about pronunciation, you can go all the way and have the computer system voice read a selection to you. It sounds pretty terrible, though.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, if you don't care about pronunciation, you can go all the way and have the computer system voice read a selection to you. It sounds pretty terrible, though.

 

Hahaha, very good! That reminds me: I once had the computer voice say different lines from various Monty Python sketches. Hours of fun right there.

On a more serious note: I guess I'd prefer native speakers of Hebrew and Greek (for obvious reasons), although even they won't be able to recreate the original pronunciation. In that way, they'd be no better than the computer voice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey PChris,

I've used this recording http://www.amazon.com/The-Greek-Audio-New-Testament/dp/1598566326 by John Schwandt when I was trying to get a grip on Erasmian. I then switched to pronunciation more in line with Randall Buth's teaching and he also has some recordings. But as Buth's system is very similar to modern Greek (I understand this to be so but have not personally checked it) various modern Greek readings of the NT are available. Buth does not have a full NT reading for sale but does have the Gospel of John plus Epistles of John. There is a web site kicking around which I used once which is a modern Greek pronunciation of the whole NT but I am having trouble finding it now. I'll ping back if I find it.

 

Thx
D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Daniel!

Many thanks for the link and the names - I'll definitely go check it out. And that website you mention at the end of your post sounds very interesting too. It would be very cool to have a New Testament equivalent to the mechon-mamre webpage at one's disposal..

 

With kind regards

 

Pchris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BTW, this is Buth's page : http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/books-products/koine-greek/

Oh try this also : http://www.letsreadgreek.com/resources/greekntaudio.htm

 

I've not looked at it much but there are a couple of names I've heard of like Spiros Zodhiates who is the one I think I was thinking of earlier.

 

Thx

D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks again Daniel! I'll check out these webpages, too..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, if you don't care about pronunciation, you can go all the way and have the computer system voice read a selection to you. It sounds pretty terrible, though.

The custom voices (e.g. Allison, Alex, etc.) are better, but far from perfect. And they will not work with Greek or Hebrew. Not even the Greek-specific voices (I tried Nikos) will work with Greek. (interestingly, I can use a custom American English voice to read French, but that's akin to fingernails on a chalkboard for me.) There are no Hebrew custom voices, at least not available in the US.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mac OS has a lot of voices. For many languages more than 2, but Accordance does only support "Alex" But it has for Greek a male and a Female voice.

 

It would be nice if Accordance support other voices.

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The custom voices (e.g. Allison, Alex, etc.) are better, but far from perfect. And they will not work with Greek or Hebrew. Not even the Greek-specific voices (I tried Nikos) will work with Greek. (interestingly, I can use a custom American English voice to read French, but that's akin to fingernails on a chalkboard for me.) There are no Hebrew custom voices, at least not available in the US.

 

I don't have a Hebrew computer voice for my computer either. It seems that the set of voices for Macs are the same here in Europe. It would've been fun to see how a Hebrew voice would pronounce Biblical Hebrew texts, but as with the Greek voices that you mentioned, it's a novelty at best. At least in its current form.

 

EDIT:

 

I think I have an idea why the Greek voices don't work with Ancient Greek texts - since 1982, the only diacritical marks used in Modern Greek are the acute and diaresis accents, so maybe the Greek voices go haywire when they have to read any word containing spiritus asper/lenis, gravis, iota subscriptum or circumflex. I actually just did a little experiment with the Greek voices Melina and Nikos. Neither could handle a simple Greek sentence containing the usual polytonic diacritics, but when I removed all of them, it went very smoothly for both voices. All the problems were gone.

Edited by Pchris
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ja, Hebräisch fäält no. Und mini Muätärspraach au.

 

Yes, Yvrith is stll not included.

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ja, Hebräisch fäält no. Und mini Muätärspraach au.

 

Yes, Yvrith is stll not included.

 

Greetings

 

Fabian

 

 

...Wie bitte? :)

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

translation:

yes, still no hebrew. and my [Fabian's] mother tongue [dialect - Schweizerdeutsch?] also.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why, yes, Sir! Fabian told me in a PM that it was [blank]. So many exciting languages out there to learn. :) Perhaps my next language will be a living one for a change..

Edited by Pchris
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There, edited for damage control! :)

 

Hm, this thread sure has derailed..

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...