Personal Journey for Learning Hebrew

It was from a wood carpenter in a small town in Ohio that I initially sought to learn Biblical Hebrew. After a year of study with the carpenter, he encouraged me to ask the local Rabbi if he would teach me intermediate grammar. Following yet another year, the Rabbi encouraged me to find a formal place to study which could aid in advancing the necessary erudition. At this advice, I earned a Bachelor of Arts in Judaical Studies with a major in Hebrew and minor in Bible from the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Jewish Studies, Cleveland, Ohio.

In the last year of my undergraduate degree, I was requested by a seminary professor to be his language tutor for Hebrew. At the end of this experience, I inquired if his seminary could aid in advancing my understanding for the language. His immediate response was that I was already more advanced than those graduating from the seminary’s Master of Divinity program.

For this reason, I ended up going to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. It was here a Master of Arts with a major in Bible and focus on Northwest Semitic Languages was earned. Afterwards, a post-graduate degree was earned in Australia at the University of Sydney. My Ph.D. thesis pertains to the overall history for making Hebrew and Aramaic dictionaries.

Jason Andrew Wetz

PhD

Educational Background

Bachelor of Arts in Judaical Studies with a major in Hebrew and minor in Bible from The Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Jewish Studies, Cleveland, Ohio; now part of Case Western University, Siegal Lifelong Learning.

Master of Arts with a major in Bible and focus on Northwest Semitic languages (e.g., Ammonite, Aramaic, Deir 'Alla, Edomite, Moabite and Phoenician) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Ph.D. from the University of Sydney, Australia, with a focus on the history for making Hebrew dictionaries.

* For more on Dr. Wetz’s education, see academia.edu

Making Void Higher Education

For the last several decades, many have been confounded by the lack of professional qualifications of those earning graduate and post graduate degrees in higher education. Making void higher education is a three-part series that addresses this concern. Essay one keenly suggests the main problem as degree hopping, which is the earning of graduate and/or post graduate degrees in a field other than your previously earned degree(s). Essay two for this series narrows the focus to ministry orientated degrees and the terrible repercussions for degree hopping in that field of study. The third and final essay in this series provides a profound historical review for the early Protestant Reformation, noting that the modern church is now repeating church history by accepting translations as authoritative texts. Hardcopies for these three essays are available on Amazon.com. The fourth picture with flag, sword and Bible is a written lecture by Dr. Wetz demonstrating how the history for training US Marines demonstrates a paralleled example for what the church must do to restore integrity of the clergy and church leadership. This lecture is only on Amazon Kindle as an electronic source.

 
 

Get in touch with the Classical Language Initiative to see if Dr. Wetz is available as a guest speaker