Tian HattinghChristiaan (Tian) Hattingh was born and raised in South Africa. In 1974 he completed a four-year training course as a forest manager from the Saasveld Forestry College, now part of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. He spent most of the nextnine years as a training manager (sawmilling) in the Southern African timber industry. During this time, he studied the Zulu language, which is considered to be the lingua franca of the region, as a third language.In 1987 he completed a BA degree in psychology and philosophy at the University of South Africa. Starting in 1974, he studied biblical Hebrew for three years at the same university, and although he never achieved a formal qualification in the subject, he soon felt obliged to share his knowledge with others who were equally interested in learning more from the Hebrew Bible. As a result of this yearning, he later conducted part-time classes to beginners at the local polytechnic in Rustenburg, South Africa, where he was living at the time.He has been an avid birder for the past 42 years and is a founding member of the Rustenburg branch of BirdLife South Africa. He has been birding in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Malawi, China, Thailand, and lately in Vietnam. He visited Israel several times, first as a Christian pilgrim and later to study the birds of the region more closely. Returning to South Africa in 2001, he presented talks on "Birding in Israel" at several BirdLife South Africa branches. In 2002 he moved to mainland China, where he became an ESL/IELTS teacher. In February 2012 he published Birds and Bibles in History, covering the history of the Tanakh, the history of ornithology, and all 409 references to birds in the Old and New Testaments. From September 2014 he conducted classes for beginners in biblical Hebrew in the city of Shenzhen in China until March 2016, when he relocated to Vietnam. He has been an ESL teacher, an IELTS instructor, and an online biblical Hebrew teacher there since then. Visit his personal website at www.tianhattingh.com for details of his BIBLICAL HEBREW ONLINE classes. Read More Read Less