This book is set up in a dictionary style format where you look up an English word. The Hebrew origins of the English are then listed with explanation. This is probably one of the most controversial books we have listed in the bookstore. It is either loved or hated but this is usually based on preconceived views on the subject. The book does not go into great detail about the actual proofs for a Hebrew origin to English but instead it simply gives connections between Hebrew and English within the dictionary. The number of words in common between Hebrew and English (which the opponents to the idea say is coincidence) is really amazing. After studying this subject myself I have found that there is a substantial amount of connections between Hebrew and English to support the idea. We are all familiar with such words as Hallelujah, Amen and even Jubilee, which, no one argues, is derived from Hebrew. But, words such as scarf (worn around the neck), giraffe (a long necked animal) and scruff (of the neck) all appear to be related to the Hebrew word "gheref" meaning neck.

The Word is a unique reference text that traces most English words back to their ultimate origin in Biblical Hebrew. More than ten years of original research reveals a bold new vision of the superbly engineered dynamics of human language.

Genesis II supports a Mother Tongue thesis, and the Bible also claims that Adam named the animals. This may seem difficult to accept, but then why do the translations of the following animals' names: Skunk, Gopher, Giraffe and Horse actually have corresponding meanings in Biblical Hebrew, such as: Stinker, Digger, Neck and Plower? This landmark book features overwhelming data suggesting that the roots of all human words are universal, and that words have related synonyms and antonyms that must have been intelligently engineered . The current hypothesis that language evolved from grunting ape-men may seem like the flat earth theory, after reading this book. Ideal for word buffs and anyone learning Hebrew vocabulary.

The Word takes you back to the Tower of Babel, before Noah's Flood to Adam and Eve's Garden of Eden, to Creation itself. This landmark dictionary proves that English words can be traced back to the universal, original language, Biblical Hebrew. The 22,000 English-Hebrew links found in this work provide surprising evidence, and open new worlds of understanding, once we consider that all of these similar words could not be coincidences.

THE WORD is a unique reference text that traces most English words back to their ultimate origin in Biblical Hebrew. More than ten years of original research reveals a bold new vision of the superbly engineered dynamics of human language.

Isaac Elchanan Mozeson taught English at Yeshiva University, where he received his B.A., and attended N.Y.U. where he did his Doctoral studies. He has authored books on language, including a dictionary of English Slang (Putnam), Poetry, Biblical & Modern Jewish History, and is on the staff of Kirkus Review. He lives with his wife and children in Northern New Jersey.

In the beginning were these words. Come with me on an archeological dig. Let us remove the sands of millennia. We are deep in the valley of Shinar, reconstructing the Tower of Babel-one brick, one word at a time.

Vadim Cherny from Odessa Ukraine
The book is certainly interesting and worth reading, offering fresh insights into the English etymology. However, it's analysis is definitely not without flaws.

Some imagination is required to find lip/nose images in Hebrew letters, corresponding to their pronounciation, although the suggestion is daring. Besides, old Phoenician Hebrew letters are quite different.

If we consider possible wide substitutions, like R-L-N-(M) and work with three basic vowels (or even no vowels at all), add letters' reversal and omission, many three-letter roots are likely to coincide strictly by chance. The odds are only enhanced by the ambiguity of Latin transliteration and sometimes variant writing in Hebrew. Author also feels free to choose the suitable spelling either of modern or ancient English. Allow for the meaning to be not exactly the same, but related, and quite a lot of English words would find their equivalents in the much smaller Hebrew dictionary. Given such assumptions, it's overall plausible to find about a quarter of active English words related to Hebrew roots.

Common linguistic approach is to analyze transformation of the groups of words, not of the single words. This book apparently lacks such analysis either for phonetical groups or those related by meaning. For example, it stresses the origin of giraffe and skunk words, but not of the animals comprehensively.

Although the author traces similarities from Hebrew, this is not self-evident. Both Hebrew and English may inherit it from a source language, be it theoretical IE or actual bablit.

Some very important hypothesis are not elaborated upon. Thus, the author asserts phonetical relation of Hebrew synonyms and antonyms. This is a bold assumption, and would take more than a single pair of words to convince a reasonable person.

Susan Owen from Switzerland
This book is an excellent reference and fascinating explanation of where our words came from and why and how they have traveled from one language to another. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the history of words and wants to appreciate their language better. In fact, I suppose this book really would interest most everybody.

trueskeptic from Gaithersburg, MD USA
Very interesting ... look at the Edenics website for some good examples to whet your appetite. The origins of many words whose etymology is/was unknown is pretty convincing.

A reader from Cambridge, MA
As a historical linguist specializing in Hebrew and Semitic languages, I can assure you that this book is simply ridiculous. The author makes no attempt at using linguistic method. He simply finds an English word that sounds like an English one and makes up a connection. For example, he posits the Hebrew word for 'roof' (gag) as the source of the English word 'gag', citing involvement of the 'roof of the mouth'. The one star I give is for the entertainment value of the book. It is good for a laugh. Please do not believe anything in the book -- see the Oxford English Dictionary for English etymologies and E. Klein's "Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew language" for Hebrew ones.

mark_98 from Connecticut, USA
Very good book! The author is more than adequately trained and familiar with his subject matter. No doubt, most critics with an agenda will strongly dislike this book. With a work like this, one cannot help but realize the accuracy of the Biblical record and the beginning of man and the language of man in the Garden of Eden.

I am presently a student of the Hebrew language, and I would definitely recommend this book to any serious student or truth-seeking scholar.

Dillon S from Tucson, AZ
This is ridiculous. English could not have possibly evolved from Hebrew, it is a Germanic language, and the Germanic sub-family falls into the Indo-European class of languages. In addition, Hebrew is a semitic language. The semitic sub-family is part of the larger African family of languages. In addition, Akkadian is really the oldest known semitic languages. Thus, Hebrew, as well as most other semitic languages such as Arabic and Syriac, most likely stole much of their vocabulary from this language.

And I'm sure everyone knows that Europe has had a long history of anti-semitism. It is very likly that any European language would have taken vocabulary from Hebrew. Also, common vocabulary found in English and Hebrew does not mean that Hebrew is responsible. It could have come from another semitic language.

More likely, Greek borrowed vocabulary from Phoenician, the most commonly used semitic language of ancient times. It is then probable that the Romans borrowed Greek vocabulary, some which contain semitic Phoenician origins, and then English took the Latin, which is why the author may think that the English language developed from Hebrew, when truly, it developed from Hebrew's close cousin, Phoenician.

The idea that Hebrew could actually have contributed to English truly is preposterous. There really are not many Jews that speak Hebrew, and because the language was never used as an administrative language (in ancient times, the Hebrews in Israel learned either to speak Greek or Latin, the Romans and Greeks did not learn Hebrew), there is no way that it could have merged with any other language(not even another semitic language). The only English word derived from Hebrew is Chaunaka.

Dr Mark Newbrook from Heswall, Wirral, United Kingdom
As a historical linguist, I have examined Mozeson's proposals and samples of his treatment of individual words. I do not deal here with the religious issues that arise but rather with the linguistic evidence and associated argumentation, in terms of what we have learned across the 200 years of scientific linguistic scholarship. The main problem with Mozeson's proposal is the comparative methods which are used, which are long outdated and are now used only by fringe amateurs. The probability of pairs of superficially similar words in apparently unrelated languages having very similar or the same senses by chance is in fact MUCH higher than Mozeson suggests. And in this particular case most of the alleged correspondences do indeed appear to be unsystematic and arbitrary; each correspondence is invoked as it is needed to 'explain' specific forms, but there is typically no good explanation for why different correspondences apply in different cases, or even an admission that this is a problem or an issue that needs to be addressed. It is already known that language change does not occur in this way. Using such methods one can 'prove' (spuriously) that almost any two languages share large amounts of vocabulary. The statistics involved here have recently been formalised by Ringe and other historical linguists, and while there is some debate about specifics the overall case is overwhelming. In addition: (a) in many of the cases cited here, other etymologies are already known or proposed with good evidence; (b) the proposal contradicts a large amount of well-grounded information about the genetic relationships of languages; (c ) the analysis ignores the fact that genetic relatedness (as opposed to influential contact) always involves specific elements of grammar and phonology as well as shared vocabulary. Because of all this, Mozeson's sweeping claims about the derivation of all other languages from Hebrew/'Edenic' are invalid. There have been many other attempts to reanalyse language origins in such terms; they all fail, for the same reasons.

Edward J Wood from Henderson, Nevada
When God confused the languages at Babel, He didn't do a thorough job. That's the bottom line from The Word by Isaac E. Mozeson. All other languages were confused and all other peoples were scattered, but ancient Hebrew survived in its pure form. And Mozeson claims to have traced modern English words back to their Hebrew roots. Mozeson claims that, in tracing modern words only to Latin or Greek, etymologystops short, instead of taking the last step back to Hebrew. He goes so far as to claim that ancient Hebrew was the language of Adam and Eve, straight from the Garden of Eden. There is much conspiracy theory here: the last hundred years of scholarship in (German) comparative linguistics, Mozeson dismisses as racist and anti-Semitic. But it was not always so: our Puritan forefathers made deep study of Hebrew, and almost made it an official language (they also believed that the Indians were the lost tribes of Israel, but Mozeson does not mention this). Mozeson claims that Hebrew contains subtle wisdom found in no other language; for example, the root "ear" is connected with "balance" - a fact recently confirmed by modern science, but known all along to the ancient Hebrews (or maybe it's because we have one ear on each side?)If you like "The Word", you'll love "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World" by Ignatius Donnely - he and Mozeson were cut from the same cloth.

AnneLark -- aol.com from Alabama, United States
As I read the first page of The Word, I was thrilled to learn that someone had DISCOVERED the hypothesized Indo-European roots to our modern languages! Almost every language can trace some of its roots to this once dead, but now resurrected language, but in English, 95% of our language is demonstrably traceable directly or indirectly to Hebrew. Even some Amer-Indian words have more than coincidental resemblance to Hebrew. How could scholars have missed the connection? Could it possibly be antisemitism within the ranks of the 19th century German linguists, who introduced the science of etymology to the world? Isaac Mozeson is scholarly, yet entertaining as he traces language roots through the developing sciences of linguistics and etymology. And those who love Scripture and linguistics have a double treat in store.