Progress since last year

So you wanted to read the ancient texts in their first tongues. The puzzle is well worth the effort. But take care not to impose on it what you think it ought to say.

The puzzle divides into 7 major sections:

1. Torah
2. Former Prophets
3. Latter Prophets
4. The Twelve
5. Books of Truth
6. The Scrolls
7. Other

• Torah, the first 5 books, is 25% of the TNK by verses. I have read in Hebrew and written in English 24% of it. Lots more to do here.
• The former prophets, Joshua to Kings, is 19% by verses. I have done about 20% of it.
• The later prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, is 17% of Tanach. I have done about 24% of it. I understand Ezekiel has some affinity with John - I should look forward to that, but I have done little so far.
• The 12 (5% of the whole) I have completed. Though all completed things are relative to changes of mind.
• Of the Books of truth, Psalms and Job are completed, and Proverbs a bit. These three are 19% by verse count, and I am 88% complete. The music here is different. The length of verse is different. The verses are short, and there is an additional cadence available to the composer in the ole-veyored.
• The scrolls (3% of the whole) I have completed.
• The remaining (Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles) are 12% of the whole by verse, and I have done about 16% of this.

This is now the 11th year since I began to learn Hebrew. I don't think I can recall all the stats from a year ago, but I can measure where I am now and I have an undated measurement that is about a year old.

By word, there are (at present) 304,724 'words' in my database. A Hebrew word is 'a phrase'. It is a concatenation of several letters which will often include pronouns and prepositions. I do not count both qere and qetiv. (I make a decision and then put one of them aside. Generally I keep what is written, but occasionally change my mind.)

Of these words, 106,199 are part of completed chapters. So all these puzzle pieces are placed.
Of the remainder, my software has guessed by word sequence analysis (consonants only) about 162,000. Some of these guesses are better than others. The Hebrew guesswork is improving the more I complete. The Aramaic guesswork has too few examples to date.

As I complete a chapter, I decide what the root of each word is. An initial guess was made by an old algorithm years ago. Many of them are incorrect. At present 36631 puzzle pieces have not yet been turned over - there is no guess and the root may or may not be correct. I tend to associate each word with its apparent derived root, but sometimes I keep related roots separate. I also associate a semantic domain with each. At present, there are only just over 1100 complete unknowns. But any of the guesses can be wrong. Generally speaking, for completed chapters, the root + gloss is sufficient to let my software point out conflicts. But the underlying data could be improved. Adding an English root would strengthen my checking algorithms.

By chapter, this past 13 months includes about 170 chapters. The first 3 months of the year were sparse since I was writing a book. With 929 total chapters, you can see that a project like this is going to take more than 5 years. To date since 2010 I have completed 435 chapters. If I work the remaining 494 at the same rate as the last year, there are 3 years to go to a full first draft. That estimate seems to get further away. Perhaps this is the first real measurement of a year. (2015 had 111 chapters done.)

There's no real need to finish. I have no dead line. :) And who knows I might start really reading the Greek too or some non-canonical stuff and then I would get distracted from the target. I certainly expect Daniel to slow me down. I dread it. But a little fear is OK.

Book by book, 19 books are complete - including all the short ones. 20 more to go. Deuteronomy is at 69% complete with only 21 verses untouched, and 386 verses to write. 2 Kings is next at 54.2% complete with 25 verses untouched, and 417 with no draft. Jeremiah is next at 49.6%, 933 with no draft - (Jeremiah is the longest book by word count, 21,775 compared to Psalms 19,584.)

Well, that's where I am today.

			Chapters	Verses	Words
Completed			435	9,035	104,381
			46.8%	39.0%	34.3%
To do, including in process			494	13,877	158,708
				59.9%	52.1%
In process				1.0%	13.7%