Keeping Up Greek for Exegesis

Dave Black posted today about keeping up Greek and its importance for exegesis. I’ve extracted that post to the JesusParadigm.com site so as to have a specific link. Everything he said could apply to Hebrew as well. I turned to his passage, though I was confident I would be able to read it. I’ve read the entire gospel of Mark multiple times in Greek as part of keeping up my language skills. I was not disappointed. I learned Greek and Hebrew so that I would be able to read the texts in the source languages, not so that I could occasionally look up a Greek or Hebrew word, or pronounce words tolerably well when I found them in commentaries. I’ve kept up the skills necessary for that.

So how fresh is your Greek? Does it help you?

I’ve questioned our approach to teaching biblical languages in seminaries for a very long time. Quite often I believe that students learn just enough Greek to be dangerous and in a way that is often dangerous. Witness how common it is to hear a preacher say “what the Greek here really means here” or “what this Greek word actually means.” Either of those statements, almost without exception, means that someone doesn’t really know how language works. The result is a new translation. Assuming the preacher involved is using a modern English translation produced by a committee, he’s asking you to accept the “real meaning” as determined by someone with a couple of semesters of the language over the “real meaning” as determined by a committee of qualified scholars.

So do I bow to the “committee of qualified scholars”? I do not! I have my own opinions. I study passages for myself. But when I translate from Greek or Hebrew and use it publicly, or when I comment on the meaning of a passage based on my own study, I identify it as such. It is my opinion after I have studied, not the “real meaning.” It might be the real meaning. I hope it’s the real meaning in that context. But in reality it’s my best approximation of it. Since I’m the one teaching the passage, that’s what I work with.

My thought is that if we are not going to require actual proficiency in the biblical languages, we would do better to teach students just a few basics and then a great deal about linguistics to help them understand what they read from various commentaries or articles. The number of pastors I know who truly apply their Greek and Hebrew in a beneficial way is vanishingly small. I would urge those pastors who have a little Greek to work on getting more. If you are not truly skilled, make sure to use your Greek carefully.

Come to think of it, I publish something useful: “In the Original Text It Says …”, and Dave has written something too, on which I wrote a few notes: Book Notes: Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek.