Maintaining and Improving Biblical Languages Skills

This post is for a rather limited subset of what (I hope) my audience is here–those who have some knowledge of Biblical Greek, Hebrew, or both. Tragically, many seminary students learn a little bit of Greek or Hebrew but not enough to really put to use, and then they spend the rest of the career (or at least the next couple of weeks) forgetting what they learned. There are two common results–either a pastor/teacher who presents inaccurate information about Biblical languages in teaching, or one who simply leaves out Biblical languages in study altogether. In the former case we have the tragedy of misinformation confidently presented by an authority figure. In the latter, we have the waste of seminary and seminarian time and money.

I’m going to post a few short entries here about maintaing and improving your Biblical languages skills. Most of these suggestions are equally applicable to both Hebrew and Greek, or even to Aramaic if you have it. Specific tools, of course, will generally apply to one or the other.

My first general suggestion is simply that you continue to read material in the Biblical language that you studied. There are several things that tend to prevent students from doing this. You may be overwhelmed and disgusted, and never want to see the material again. You may feel that you can’t really read, so what’s the use in trying. You may decide to try, but set excessively ambitious goals.

So at the first level, let me suggest just making the opportunity to see some Greek several times a week. (I’m going to use “Greek” here for convenience, but this applies equally well to Hebrew.) There are a number of tools to help you do this. Bible software these days, from e-Sword to the source language texts from the NeXt Bible or Logos Bible Software include tools to take you quickly to the lexical entry on various Greek words. Your teacher probably told you not to do this while you were initially learning, but you’re out of class now, and the problem is maintaining and building. These tools allow you to see more Greek text.

Then there’s the ultimate crib sheet–a good Bible version. I normally recommend dynamic equivalence translations, but for this purpose you will want a literal translation like the ESV, NRSV, or NASB. These are again available in the various software packages I’ve mentioned.

If you don’t have the Bible software, take your Greek New Testament and get the Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Again, this is a tool you wouldn’t be encouraged to use during first year Greek, but you’re away from the seminary now and trying to maintain your Greek.

There are some other tools that can help, including grammars, but I’m going to discuss them in a later post. The idea here is that no matter how badly your Greek has faded, you can work your way through a passage. (You will, of course, need to refresh the alphabet.) Don’t be afraid even to just accept the translation in whatever English version you’re using if you don’t understand the material from the text. In later posts I’ll give you suggestions for getting beyond this, but for now you just want to dip your toes in the water.

At this point don’t get too ambitious. If you can only manage one verse per day, do that. You may have heard of folks who read a chapter each of Greek and Hebrew every day. I read three or four of each besides whatever I read for current research projects. But I’ve been doing this for quite a few years, and I left seminary with five years of Greek and four of Hebrew to which I’ve now added nearly 25 years of reading on my own. Don’t get tangled up with grand goals. Be content to read a verse at a time, and do so several times per week.

In later posts I’ll discuss solving grammatical issues, reference grammars, building vocabulary, and getting the immediate blessing for your devotional life and your teaching.