Polis The Jerusalem Institute Of Languages And Humanities

The Polis Institute is a non-profit association for the development of Humanities from Jerusalem. Founded in 2011, it aims at three complementary goals: improving the knowledge of ancient languages and promoting the awareness of the roots of western cultural heritage, offering university studies of Humanities, open to every kind of background students, and fostering research on the inheritance of the Holy Land. The institute organizes courses of ancient and modern languages (Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek, Latin, Classic Syriac, Arabic and Modern Hebrew). Over the year 2013, more than 300 students from 39 countries took part in the language courses we offered in Jerusalem. The Institute is in charge of the linguistic training of the students from other centers, such as the Ecole Biblique et Archéologique, the Institut théologique and the Theologisches Studienjahr Jerusalem. Polis Institute provide also intensive language courses to universities in other countries. In September '13, the Institute launched a Master’s program in Ancient Philology. Well-known professors from Europe, USA and local universities provide the tutoring to 10 students from 7 countries. The Polis method wants the students to acquire a direct, intuitive understanding of the ancient languages. Thus, from the first day of class, the only language which is used is the language which is taught and they finish speaking in Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek. Through modern didactic techniques such as ‘Total Physical Response’, ‘Storytelling’ and ‘Storybuilding’ , the method tries to reproduce the conditions in which children learn their mother tongue. This method has been applied in the Polis textbook of Koine Greek, published in French, German and Italian. The publication of the English version is scheduled for the year 2014. From the increasing experience with the Polis Method, textbooks of Biblical Hebrew, Latin and Levantine Arabic are being developed by the Polis team.