… you don’t know Greek and Hebrew, and there are certain things you cannot do, like, well, reading Greek and Hebrew. I don’t think this means you can’t read the Bible, or that your opinions don’t matter, but it’s a simple fact.
When people pretend to know the Biblical languages, as they often do using tools such as Strong’s Concordance and associated tools coded to Strong’s numbers, they tend to introduce many more errors than they would if they stuck to English, or whatever language it is that they actually do read.
If they don’t know the languages, that doesn’t mean they are stupid or even ignorant. There are simply some things they can’t do. No big deal, right?
Well, Douglas Mangum wrote a perfectly reasonable post on the topic, deploring some tools such as I’ve described, which are advertised in a way that is at least questionable, and it appears that he has been called an elitist.
The only reason I jumped in here is that I’m a strong advocate of lay Bible study. I don’t believe my knowledge of Biblical languages gives me an exclusive on Biblical interpretation. I believe that anyone can get involved, and anyone can have valid opinions. But that doesn’t make everyone’s opinion valid. Use of Biblical languages tools without the proper training is one of the best ways to get nearly everything wrong.
Let each use what knowledge and skill he or she has, and depend on the proper experts where such skill is lacking.
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