Learn Greek or learn Glock?
Greek is not necessary to understand the Bible (and I am fluent in both Greek and Hebrew) However, a basic understanding helps greatly esp when coupled by the ability to properly use grammar tools and lexicons.
Far too often, in my dealings with cults, the false teachings come from a misunderstanding of what words mean or how they are used.
I learned Mandarin Chinese as an adult. I know a DOD consultant who is a China expert. He’s written books. He and I agree: the China “experts” who didn’t learn Chinese can’t really be totally expert because they have to rely on others’ interpretations. It’s like taking someone’s word for it. Many times I find these English-only experts put their presuppositions into their translations. I’m not saying there are no good translations of the Bible. I’m saying that there’s some real juicy stuff when you see the rhyming, the double entendre, the power of a word or phrase in the original language. You will never be a total expert unless you have Greek and Hebrew. Who has that kind of time? I pray the Holy Spirit may enlighten our minds as to the saving Truth found in God’s Word.
How is your Greek, LF?
In the Presbyterian Church (don’t get me started on PCUSA - our church is leaving the denomination) both Greek and Hebrew are mandatory. I have Bible software that shows the three side-by-side. As the poster above states it is sometimes good to revert back to the Greek for word form to give you a deeper meaning rather than rely on the translations that have occurred through the years. A case in point - In the KJV the commandment reads “Thou shalt not kill” whereas the Greek reads “You shall not murder” which, arguably, is a subtle but significant difference.
Thank God somebody did.
I will agree with you that arrogance in regard to one’s education is no virtue, but will add that neither is arrogance in regard to one’s lack of it. The bottom line is that a sound knowledge of Hebrew and Greek is a good thing; and remains good so far as one does not set it against the plain meaning of the text of Scripture.
Nowadays corrections come in the form using the pronoun she for God.
Good luck with your program!
I agree with your last statement in the article, although, I also know I have learned so much more from Scripture when I have studied the Greek and re-read the passages with the additional vocabulary.
Think about this way.
We are all condemned before we are saved. We all have souls after we are born, given to us by God. We have a regenerated human spirit created after we exercise faith in Christ upon understanding the Gospel and turn to God, confessing our sins through faith in Christ and what He provided on the Cross.
We now go through life, still with a soul, but now also with a human spirit, where God the Holy Spirit indwells in this age.
He sanctifies our thinking in our souls as we intake His Word and understand it.
Our souls are still scarred, though, from years of learning independent of faith in Christ. If we aren’t in fellowship with Him as we study His Word, we easily fall into old sinful methods of worldly problem solving, instead of living through faith in Him.
If we read His Word, and are thinking what He intended, then God the Holy Spirit processes that into our soul, cleaning our thinking processes so that we are slowly purified and sanctified in our thinking.
It is also possible to read the Bible, without thinking His Word. This can cause a range of scarred thinking and arrogance problems ranging from legalism to lasciviousness.
While the Greek isn’t required to learn His Word, it sometimes helps some believers to grow a new vocabulary and might introduce some scarred souls back to the original intent of His Word, which we have unwittingly been reading into for many years.
Msgr. Pope points out how we can be misunderstanding certain things because of translation of the language.
The KJB is the perfect translation of the Greek and Hebrew into English.
Increased depth of study is like the forming of relationships.
We are initially attracted to other people for a variety of reasons: appearance, personality, character, common interests, ease of communication and so forth.
Deeper relationships develop naturally when we desire to learn more. We become more comfortable in communicating with another person as the increased knowledge increases our trust and understanding. This lights up the fire to keep learning more.
It’s not that delving into the original languages is a requirement for its own sake, but it should indicate a certain *natural* and compelling desire to search deeper, at whatever level we are able.
To say that it is *not* a requirement is like saying it is not necessary to get to know our friends and spouses. The pursuit [of further knowledge] is not a goal per se, it’s an automatic inclination.
Who wouldn’t be drawn in by mutual deep eye contact? It goes right to the level of souls. It’s a world that asks to be explored, not blocked out. Out come the maps, navigation equipment, and other supplies needed for the journey. No specific destination needs to be in mind, but who’s going to be deciding at the outset, “Oh, I won’t need that map.”? Heck we load up for the trip with as much as we can carry ‘cause ya never know... :)
(Not knocking your post in any way; I am merely trying to draw out a subtle but dramatic difference in perspective.)
There’s over 25 Greek Lexicons...Whose Original Greek does one use???
Without some reader of Koine already having trod the way, you wouldn’t know how to write this diatribe. Both the premise and the outcome are wrong.
Here is some additional perspective providing insight.:
Why did God do it this way? Why did He not drop a book out of the sky in every language so that their would be no problem recognizing its divine significance? Why did he just not give us a book written in reformed Egyptian Hieroglyphics and have someone with magic glasses write down the content?
(a) There is a great deal of parallelism throughout the Bible. One of the most important is that of Jesus Christ, who is the living Word, fully and unequivocally God and yet true humanity (John 1:1-12). This is parallel to the concept of Scripture, God’s complete and connected message to man as recorded by the human authors of Scripture who did not waive any of their humanity in the writing of Scripture. A grasp of the living Word gives us understanding of the written Word and vice versa.
(b) There is the principle of chronological revelation; that is, we exist in time and God has different programs for different ages. The church age was not pertinent to Adam and Eve, to Noah, or to Moses. Having information about the church age would have not been helpful. Jesus Christ came in time, so the Scriptures which preceded His coming had to look forward to His coming and those Scriptures written after His death and resurrection had to look backward to his first advent. Therefore, each set of
generations of peoples required revelation which was for their time in human history. It was not until the church age that we had God’s complete revelation to man.
(c) We must never forget that we are an integral part of God’s plan. We are not just a separate entity on earth with some divine will imposed upon us from heaven. God is personal and there is an moment-by-moment interaction between God and ourselves which is real and dynamic.
The proper interpretation here is: some people profess to be religious, spiritual, to love God, etc. The reality of the alleged spirituality is found in their interest in God’s Word. This is where we find out just exactly Who
God is. Without His Word, we do not have the ability to love God because we do not know Who God is.
Note, however, that even though God spoke to Pharaoh, this required a mature believer to interpret the dream.
Notice that these dreams, visions and trance-like states occurred with more frequency prior to the recording of Scripture. After Moses recorded the first Scripture, then these methods were used by God in order to write more Scripture.
Prophecy does not begin and end with the foretelling of future events. A prophet represented God to man and his message was God’s message to man. So all that a prophet had to say was called prophecy and only a portion of that was prophetic.
....
(a) Human authorship. Over forty different authors, from kings to common fishermen to tax collectors to four star generals to theologians wrote the 66 books of the Bible over a period of over 1600 years. The cohesion of Scripture is better explained by the supernatural guidance of God than it is by pure coincidence.
Some detractors will try to point out that this is religious literature put together by religious people who all have the same viewpoint. This is highly unlikely because if anyone has a different set of viewpoints, it will be religious people.
Recall the statement, When any two rabbis agree on any one thing at one time, Messiah will come.
(b) Personal honesty and objectivity of the writers of Scripture. Believer and unbeliever authors alike tend to see themselves with rose-colored glasses. They can spot the faults and shortcomings of others, but cannot see even the same deficiencies in themselves. However, the authors of Scripture, when they sinned or were wrong, they did not do the natural human thing: gloss over it, neglect to include it or rationalize and/or justify it; instead, they record their sins and failures along side their triumphs and successes.
David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband that he contracted; Noah’s drunkenness (probably originally recorded by Noah); Moses’s sin which caused him to be kept out of entering into the promised land with a multitude of one of the most degenerate generation of Jews ever; Solomon’s failure to woo the Schulumite woman in Song of Solomon.
The Bible is filled with the accurate recording of many men. Some Christians find this troubling; to examine some great man of Scripture and then to find out that not only does he have feet of clay, but he is knee deep in mud.
Most Islamic scholars will agree that the Q’oran can ONLY make sense in the original Arabic. They go so far as to say that, when critics of islam quote the extremely bigoted and violent suras of the Q’oran, they don’t really know what they are talking about. It is their way of hiding what islam really stands for. Some very famous examples of this are the very name “islam”, which they tell us means “Peace”, when it actually means “Submission”. They say that “Jihad” means an internal struggle for righteousness, when in reality it means “Holy War”. They also speak of chronological subrogation, meaning that more recent verses of the Q’oran cancel out the contradictory verses that were penned earlier in time. Even the transliteration of the Arabic has changed. “Q’oran” used to be “Koran”.
The Scriptures, while magnificent in their original languages (Particularly the Psalms in Hebrew), do not suffer from this problem. Although the wording may vary from one translation to another, the ESSENCE remains the same. That is why the complete Bible has been translated into more than 600 languages, and portions into thousands more, and has the Power to Save in every tribe, nation, and tongue.
I have several different translations and enjoy them all. Greek was the original language of the NT, and has some tenses that do not exist in English, but the Message does not suffer.
There are still places on the planet where one can be executed for having a copy of the Bible. It is a very powerful Book, and is not restrained by human language.
My opinion...yours may vary, but i suggest everyone at least give it a try! :-)
Blessings will come.