Back to studying Hebrew after almost a decade, the thing is, I only had very superficial internet knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, but now I wish to study both Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew on a professional basis, I see people in here say that learning the Modern first is the best choice, is it?
Title says it, during my naive and enthusiastic teenager era I started studying Biblical Hebrew in the most wrong ways possible, i.e. via-simplistic internet websites coming from sources with no academic accreditation, simply learning how to read the Hebrew Bible instead of learning anything else such as the pronunciation, the origins of the words, etc., absolutely zero clue of its dialects and historical evolution and how it changed and varied depending by time period and region, etc.
The thing is, now that I am a grown adult who finished high school, I genuinely wish to study ANE languages on a professional basis and dedicate my lifetime to it, to eventually get an actual career in Bible, ANE, and Archaeological studies, not just internet hobby stuff, this is something that I am extremely passionate about, alongside cartography and art.
I am also an amateur aspiring writer, and when I write my stories that center around Ancient Israel, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Indiana Jones-esque archaeological adventure/mystery stories set in modern-day Israel and Egypt, etc., I wish to be someone who actually has accreditation on the field, and to write them in the most historically accurate way possible in ways that teach the reader about history correctly instead of superficial or outright pseudo-historical History Channel-esque stuff, given how all languages change, I need to be aware of what forms of such languages were spoken depending on the time period.
At the same time however, I also need to learn the Modern Hebrew spoken in Israel, given that a lot of the historical and archaeological study material is from there, the main protagonist of my story is himself Israeli, and given the themes of archaeology and ancient mysteries, they feature a lot of Israeli characters.
But overall, completely putting modern politics and internet arguing that goes nowhere aside, I am genuinely fascinated with Israel as a country since I was young, and visiting its archaeological museums and having contact with Israeli archaeologists is one of my ultimate dreams in my life.
From what I see, many people in this sub recommend learning Modern Hebrew first, because if you learn it, you more or less automatically learn Biblical Hebrew as well, and so you get a combo of being able to learn two languages for the price of one, just like how in Septuagint and New Testament studies, I constantly saw people recommending newbies to instead learn Attic Greek instead of Koine Greek, since if you know Attic, you can also easily read both of the Greek classics as well as the Bible, Patristics, Hellenistic texts, etc. so once again, two languages for the price of one, and a whole classical library included with it instead of just the Bible.
I do very much know however, that if you learn Modern Hebrew you do not automatically learn the entirety of Biblical Hebrew, not at all - sure, it helps a ton, but they are still separate languages, I'm a native Portuguese speaker, and while I can learn and comprehend Camões' poetry more easily than an English speaker, it's still not the same thing as my modern Portuguese.
(Also one of my dreams since I was a teenager is to learn Hebrew studies and Biblical archaeology in Israel, but that is a post for another sub or another day haha)