Someone:1 It seems like it’s a mixture of two
languages, but they failed to determine which two langages.
Diana: Ottoman and Sumerian.2 Surely someone else in this room knew that.
Someone: Who is this woman?
Steve: She’s my, um … secretary, sir.
Someone: And she can understand Ottoman and Sumerian?
Steve: She’s a very good secretary.
Diana: Ottoman and Sumerian.2 Surely someone else in this room knew that.
Someone: Who is this woman?
Steve: She’s my, um … secretary, sir.
Someone: And she can understand Ottoman and Sumerian?
Steve: She’s a very good secretary.
Wonder Woman (2017)
 |
| Some books in Hebrew. Square script is so pretty. |
Dear
Fellow-Believers Who Don’t Read the Biblical Languages,
Now look, I don’t want to put words in your mouth or anything; it’s just that I’ve noticed that when I’m chatting to someone after church and said someone, having made the understandable but unfortunate mistake of asking me what I do for a living, discovers that my obsession with ancient languages extends as far as the languages in which the Old and New Testaments are written, said someone’s reaction displays a remarkable tendency to fall into one of two camps: either it’s to the effect of, Wow, that’s amazing, I would love to be able to do that, or it’s to the effect of, Wow, that’s amazing, I could never do that in a million years.
I’m not here to criticise either reaction. I’m certainly not here to put myself on a pedestal and make lofty pronouncements about the superiority of my understanding. Rather, I’m here as a sister in Christ who would be pleased to offer you some encouragement in accordance with what God has given me, just as I in turn receive encouragement from brothers and sisters to whom he has given different things. It’s how the Church works, guys; don’t you just love the whole one-body-with-many-parts thing?3
I’ll start off by saying that I think it a shame that knowledge of the Biblical languages (for ease, henceforth BL) isn’t more widespread among the Church. I think it a shame that learning the BL is seen as something exclusively for academic types like me and ordained ministers.4 I would love to be able to do that – but the church I’m at can’t tell me anything about how to get started; and anyway it would feel a bit pretentious for a random layperson like me to have a crack at it; and even though I’m committed to furthering my understanding of the scriptures in all kinds of ways and I spend time and effort and money on making that happen (maintaining personal study and reading theological books and attending conferences and whatever else), it doesn’t feel justified to spend time and effort and money on this particular possibility. Or, I could never do that in a million years – because I’m sure you have to be really clever and do a theology degree and stuff, since the only people I’ve ever come across who know the BL are really clever people with theology degrees, namely academic types and ordained ministers, and since it’s not my vocation to be one of those, the BL are just not for me. Fair enough, there are a good number of people who really can’t stand learning languages and for whom the time and effort and money really would be better spent elsewhere; I’m not saying that it would be a realistic possibility or even a good idea for every believer to learn the BL, just that it’s a shame that so few do.
I would love it if we had a church culture where it was normal for random laypeople to pick up a bit of Greek or Hebrew, where church leadership and infrastructure facilitated that, where your typical house group (small group/cell group/life group/whatever) would have at least someone in it who could bring along an original-languages copy of the Bible and competently consult it as would be helpful for the group as a whole’s understanding of the passage under discussion. And the reason I would love that isn’t just so that I’d have more people to nerd out about ancient languages with. It’s not even purely because knowing the BL is really helpful for understanding the Bible, as true as that is. It’s also because I belive passionately that the scriptures and the right to interpret them belong in the hands of ordinary believers. There is no exegetical elite: a good preacher will never make the text come across as some great mystery whose secrets only he and the enlightened few can disclose, but will rather make you smack yourself on the forehead for not realising that the text quite obviously says what he just told you it says. But if the BL are restricted to academic types and ordained ministers, there’s a danger that everyone else – namely you guys whom I’m addressing – will get the impression that what you can see in the text is less valid than what someone who knows the BL can see.
Granted, sometimes you guys genuinely might get the wrong impression about the precise implications of a passage because you’re working from a translation only. That, after all, is the essence of why it’s even useful to know the Biblical languages – because a translation is an interpretation and only the original-language version of the text can be considered truly infallible – and that’s why my theoretical house group would contain at least someone able to pick up on any errors of this type and correct them. But those of us who know the BL make exegetical errors too, just as much as you guys do, and are just as in need of correction. It’s how the Church works, guys; God’s given us all different brains and different experiences, and different people are going to be good at seeing different things. I beseech you never to be shy to challenge someone making a clever-sounding argument about the original Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic5 if what he or she is saying doesn’t stack up with what you know about God, or if it just sounds a bit dodgy. If it’s true, it’ll stand up to scrutiny.
One thing in particular that I suggest you would do well to be suspicious of is appeals to vocabulary, that is, arguments that depend on the (mis)translation of an individual word. It takes almost no real knowledge of Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic to look something up in a dictionary, and of course a word in one language is never going to cover the exact same range of possible meanings as a word in another language, so it’s really easy to produce plausible-sounding eisegesis by claiming that such-and-such a word ‘really means’ something different to what the average English translation says. Devising dodgy translations by substituting in other definitions of the same words is actually a pretty fun game. For instance, if you replace every word in Mark 1:4 with a different definition given for the same Greek word in the legendary Liddell-Scott-Jones dictionary, you can come out with: “There was produced John, the one who dipped, in the case won by default, crowing a baptism of an afterthought into emission of failures.”6 Of course, sometimes there genuinely is a case to understand a word in a particular sense different to that given by the average English translation, but such a case should always be backed up by uses of the word in the same way within the same book or, failing that, wider corpus (e.g. Paul’s letters, the whole New Testament, or other Greek texts from the time – each of these being less compelling than the last).
Now look, I don’t want to put words in your mouth or anything; it’s just that I’ve noticed that when I’m chatting to someone after church and said someone, having made the understandable but unfortunate mistake of asking me what I do for a living, discovers that my obsession with ancient languages extends as far as the languages in which the Old and New Testaments are written, said someone’s reaction displays a remarkable tendency to fall into one of two camps: either it’s to the effect of, Wow, that’s amazing, I would love to be able to do that, or it’s to the effect of, Wow, that’s amazing, I could never do that in a million years.
I’m not here to criticise either reaction. I’m certainly not here to put myself on a pedestal and make lofty pronouncements about the superiority of my understanding. Rather, I’m here as a sister in Christ who would be pleased to offer you some encouragement in accordance with what God has given me, just as I in turn receive encouragement from brothers and sisters to whom he has given different things. It’s how the Church works, guys; don’t you just love the whole one-body-with-many-parts thing?3
I’ll start off by saying that I think it a shame that knowledge of the Biblical languages (for ease, henceforth BL) isn’t more widespread among the Church. I think it a shame that learning the BL is seen as something exclusively for academic types like me and ordained ministers.4 I would love to be able to do that – but the church I’m at can’t tell me anything about how to get started; and anyway it would feel a bit pretentious for a random layperson like me to have a crack at it; and even though I’m committed to furthering my understanding of the scriptures in all kinds of ways and I spend time and effort and money on making that happen (maintaining personal study and reading theological books and attending conferences and whatever else), it doesn’t feel justified to spend time and effort and money on this particular possibility. Or, I could never do that in a million years – because I’m sure you have to be really clever and do a theology degree and stuff, since the only people I’ve ever come across who know the BL are really clever people with theology degrees, namely academic types and ordained ministers, and since it’s not my vocation to be one of those, the BL are just not for me. Fair enough, there are a good number of people who really can’t stand learning languages and for whom the time and effort and money really would be better spent elsewhere; I’m not saying that it would be a realistic possibility or even a good idea for every believer to learn the BL, just that it’s a shame that so few do.
I would love it if we had a church culture where it was normal for random laypeople to pick up a bit of Greek or Hebrew, where church leadership and infrastructure facilitated that, where your typical house group (small group/cell group/life group/whatever) would have at least someone in it who could bring along an original-languages copy of the Bible and competently consult it as would be helpful for the group as a whole’s understanding of the passage under discussion. And the reason I would love that isn’t just so that I’d have more people to nerd out about ancient languages with. It’s not even purely because knowing the BL is really helpful for understanding the Bible, as true as that is. It’s also because I belive passionately that the scriptures and the right to interpret them belong in the hands of ordinary believers. There is no exegetical elite: a good preacher will never make the text come across as some great mystery whose secrets only he and the enlightened few can disclose, but will rather make you smack yourself on the forehead for not realising that the text quite obviously says what he just told you it says. But if the BL are restricted to academic types and ordained ministers, there’s a danger that everyone else – namely you guys whom I’m addressing – will get the impression that what you can see in the text is less valid than what someone who knows the BL can see.
Granted, sometimes you guys genuinely might get the wrong impression about the precise implications of a passage because you’re working from a translation only. That, after all, is the essence of why it’s even useful to know the Biblical languages – because a translation is an interpretation and only the original-language version of the text can be considered truly infallible – and that’s why my theoretical house group would contain at least someone able to pick up on any errors of this type and correct them. But those of us who know the BL make exegetical errors too, just as much as you guys do, and are just as in need of correction. It’s how the Church works, guys; God’s given us all different brains and different experiences, and different people are going to be good at seeing different things. I beseech you never to be shy to challenge someone making a clever-sounding argument about the original Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic5 if what he or she is saying doesn’t stack up with what you know about God, or if it just sounds a bit dodgy. If it’s true, it’ll stand up to scrutiny.
One thing in particular that I suggest you would do well to be suspicious of is appeals to vocabulary, that is, arguments that depend on the (mis)translation of an individual word. It takes almost no real knowledge of Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic to look something up in a dictionary, and of course a word in one language is never going to cover the exact same range of possible meanings as a word in another language, so it’s really easy to produce plausible-sounding eisegesis by claiming that such-and-such a word ‘really means’ something different to what the average English translation says. Devising dodgy translations by substituting in other definitions of the same words is actually a pretty fun game. For instance, if you replace every word in Mark 1:4 with a different definition given for the same Greek word in the legendary Liddell-Scott-Jones dictionary, you can come out with: “There was produced John, the one who dipped, in the case won by default, crowing a baptism of an afterthought into emission of failures.”6 Of course, sometimes there genuinely is a case to understand a word in a particular sense different to that given by the average English translation, but such a case should always be backed up by uses of the word in the same way within the same book or, failing that, wider corpus (e.g. Paul’s letters, the whole New Testament, or other Greek texts from the time – each of these being less compelling than the last).
 |
| The Greek word translated as ‘baptise’ does mean ‘dip’ in the same sense in which one dips churros in dulce de leche, but that obviously doesn’t mean we should construe baptism in a manner strongly analogous to churro-dipping (and not only because they didn’t have churros in Second Temple Israel). Mm, churros. |
The thing is,
as much as those of us who know the BL like to belittle English translations
(especially those that take more of a ‘dynamic equivalence’ approach than a
verbatim one7), the fact is that the mainstream translations are
generally pretty good. They were put together by experts, earnestly prayed for,
and probably agonised over, and while that doesn’t make them infallible, it does
mean that if two or three translations are saying the same thing, you can be
almost entirely confident that that really is what the underlying original text
means.8 Bible translators are not amateurs, especially not English
Bible translators; if someone pops up saying they’re wrong, he or she had
better have very good evidence.
And frankly, some of us who read the BL like to think we’re a lot cleverer and better informed than we really are. It’s fun to be right when everyone else in the house group is wrong, and it’s even more fun to be right when a committee of Bible-translation experts is wrong. We’ll take every chance we can get to show off our linguistic prowess, and even if we’re not downright eisegeting, it doesn’t necessarily mean that what we’re saying is actually useful for the upbuilding of our brothers and sisters in the context we’re in. This, again, is why it would be useful to have more people about in the church who know the BL, so that we might keep each other humble and in check. But regardless, you guys shouldn’t have to be putting up with our unhelpfulness. If we’re getting pretentious, call us out, if not for your own sake then for ours. Mishandling scripture is a serious sin. So is the arrogance that leads to it – being so pleased with our own cleverness that we’d rather use scripture as a means of showing off than see more of God in it. If you love us, please be bold enough to rebuke us for such sins. Correct us where we need it; we’ll correct you where you need it; it’s how the Church works, guys. This is why it’s so key that we keep the scriptures in the hands of all believers.
After all, at the end of the day, what qualifies a person to interpret the scriptures rightly? Well, check out the following chunk of the second chapter of Paul’s first letter to the community of believers living in Corinth:
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.9
The difference between not being able to understand the truth about God and being able to understand it is having the Holy Spirit. To have the Holy Spirit is to have the mind of Christ. And guess who has the Holy Spirit?
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.
That’s from the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the community of believers at Ephesus.10 If you believe the gospel, you are qualified to interpret the Bible, because you have received the Spirit of God that you might understand the things freely given you by God. That doesn’t mean you’re automatically a Bible expert, or that you’re not going to need a lot of help and correction along the way (it’s how the Church works, guys) – but it does mean that you’re immediately better able to interpret scripture rightly than a world expert on the BL who nevertheless hasn’t believed the gospel.
To summarise, then:
And frankly, some of us who read the BL like to think we’re a lot cleverer and better informed than we really are. It’s fun to be right when everyone else in the house group is wrong, and it’s even more fun to be right when a committee of Bible-translation experts is wrong. We’ll take every chance we can get to show off our linguistic prowess, and even if we’re not downright eisegeting, it doesn’t necessarily mean that what we’re saying is actually useful for the upbuilding of our brothers and sisters in the context we’re in. This, again, is why it would be useful to have more people about in the church who know the BL, so that we might keep each other humble and in check. But regardless, you guys shouldn’t have to be putting up with our unhelpfulness. If we’re getting pretentious, call us out, if not for your own sake then for ours. Mishandling scripture is a serious sin. So is the arrogance that leads to it – being so pleased with our own cleverness that we’d rather use scripture as a means of showing off than see more of God in it. If you love us, please be bold enough to rebuke us for such sins. Correct us where we need it; we’ll correct you where you need it; it’s how the Church works, guys. This is why it’s so key that we keep the scriptures in the hands of all believers.
After all, at the end of the day, what qualifies a person to interpret the scriptures rightly? Well, check out the following chunk of the second chapter of Paul’s first letter to the community of believers living in Corinth:
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.9
The difference between not being able to understand the truth about God and being able to understand it is having the Holy Spirit. To have the Holy Spirit is to have the mind of Christ. And guess who has the Holy Spirit?
In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.
That’s from the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the community of believers at Ephesus.10 If you believe the gospel, you are qualified to interpret the Bible, because you have received the Spirit of God that you might understand the things freely given you by God. That doesn’t mean you’re automatically a Bible expert, or that you’re not going to need a lot of help and correction along the way (it’s how the Church works, guys) – but it does mean that you’re immediately better able to interpret scripture rightly than a world expert on the BL who nevertheless hasn’t believed the gospel.
To summarise, then:
1) It would be
a good thing for more Christians to know the BL. If you have much of an
inclination to learn them, I’d encourage you to pursue that, and will leave a
few suggestions as to how in a footnote.11
2) Mainstream
English translations are generally reliable. Be suspicious of people who
challenge them without good evidence, because those of us who know the BL are
horribly prone to showing off about it and need to be called out on the fact.
3) Ultimately,
the only qualification for being able to interpret scripture is having the Holy
Spirit, which everyone who believes in the gospel does.
I hope you find this useful.
Yours sincerely,
Your sister in Christ
Footnotes
1 A transcript very helpfully provided by some thoughtful human here, https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=wonder-woman-2017, doesn’t include a record of who’s speaking when, and I couldn’t remember who said which lines. It doesn’t much matter for getting the gist of the quotation.
2 Neither of which are Biblical languages, I feel I should clarify, and neither of which I can read, though I do have my eye on getting to grips with Sumerian at some stage in the future…
3 I here allude primarily to 1 Corinthians 12: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians+12&version=ESVUK. You might like to keep 1 Corinthians open; we’ll be heading there later.
4 Or not-ordained ministers because your denomination doesn’t believe in ordination, but regardless, I’m talking about the preacher/pastor/elder types who stand at the front and deliver the sermon.
5 Although let’s be real here, next to nobody reads Biblical Aramaic even among academic types and ordained ministers.
6 Thanks to Step Bible for making it so easy to consult the LSJ entry for each word of the verse successively: https://www.stepbible.org/. Under other circumstances, I tend to consult the LSJ using Perseus’ Greek Word Study Tool, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/search (on the right). The LSJ deals with all kinds of Greek from antiquity, not just the koiné variety of the New Testament period, so one has to be careful in applying what it says to New Testament vocabulary, but it’s still a very good dictionary.
7 The term ‘dynamic equivalence’ was coined by Eugene Nida and basically means focussing on transmitting the sense of the original text in a way that sounds natural in the translation language, at the expense of keeping as close as possible to the grammatical and syntactical structure of the original – sense-for-sense or thought-for-thought translation. The opposite approach, word-for-word translation, is called ‘formal equivalence’. My local Christian bookshop will give you a nice diagram of where different translations sit on the spectrum: http://www.bridgebookshop.co.uk/guide-to-bible-translations.
8 Fancy some Adam4d hilarity on the subject of different Bible translations? Of course you do: http://adam4d.com/what-your-preferred-bible-translation-says-about-you/.
9 I keenly urge you to read the whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+2&version=ESVUK. The context is actually really key here in terms of the contrast Paul is drawing between how to explain the gospel to those who don’t know it and how to increase the understanding of those who already believe.
10 Aw, we all love this chapter, don’t we? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eph+1&version=ESVUK.
11 A few suggestions of ways to learn the Biblical languages:
I hope you find this useful.
Yours sincerely,
Your sister in Christ
Footnotes
1 A transcript very helpfully provided by some thoughtful human here, https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=wonder-woman-2017, doesn’t include a record of who’s speaking when, and I couldn’t remember who said which lines. It doesn’t much matter for getting the gist of the quotation.
2 Neither of which are Biblical languages, I feel I should clarify, and neither of which I can read, though I do have my eye on getting to grips with Sumerian at some stage in the future…
3 I here allude primarily to 1 Corinthians 12: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians+12&version=ESVUK. You might like to keep 1 Corinthians open; we’ll be heading there later.
4 Or not-ordained ministers because your denomination doesn’t believe in ordination, but regardless, I’m talking about the preacher/pastor/elder types who stand at the front and deliver the sermon.
5 Although let’s be real here, next to nobody reads Biblical Aramaic even among academic types and ordained ministers.
6 Thanks to Step Bible for making it so easy to consult the LSJ entry for each word of the verse successively: https://www.stepbible.org/. Under other circumstances, I tend to consult the LSJ using Perseus’ Greek Word Study Tool, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/search (on the right). The LSJ deals with all kinds of Greek from antiquity, not just the koiné variety of the New Testament period, so one has to be careful in applying what it says to New Testament vocabulary, but it’s still a very good dictionary.
7 The term ‘dynamic equivalence’ was coined by Eugene Nida and basically means focussing on transmitting the sense of the original text in a way that sounds natural in the translation language, at the expense of keeping as close as possible to the grammatical and syntactical structure of the original – sense-for-sense or thought-for-thought translation. The opposite approach, word-for-word translation, is called ‘formal equivalence’. My local Christian bookshop will give you a nice diagram of where different translations sit on the spectrum: http://www.bridgebookshop.co.uk/guide-to-bible-translations.
8 Fancy some Adam4d hilarity on the subject of different Bible translations? Of course you do: http://adam4d.com/what-your-preferred-bible-translation-says-about-you/.
9 I keenly urge you to read the whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+2&version=ESVUK. The context is actually really key here in terms of the contrast Paul is drawing between how to explain the gospel to those who don’t know it and how to increase the understanding of those who already believe.
10 Aw, we all love this chapter, don’t we? https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=eph+1&version=ESVUK.
11 A few suggestions of ways to learn the Biblical languages:
1)
If you’re at university (which I
know some of my readers are), you might be able to take modules in the BL even
if they’re outside your department (the system for that at my university is
called Modularity). Alternatively you could sit in on them not for credit; try
emailing the relevant lecturer.
2)
Hebrew’s easier to pick up in a
Jewish context than a Christian one, so a bit of Googling in that direction
might not hurt. The Jewish Chaplaincy at my university runs Biblical Hebrew
classes, for instance.
3)
On that note, Google is your
friend. Who knows what might be on offer in your area? Plus, the Internet is
chock full of resources that can help you out.
4)
You can pick up Modern Greek and Modern
Hebrew through all the usual systems for language learning (I’m having a go at Hebrew
on Duolingo at the moment). Obviously it’s not quite the same thing
(particularly in terms of vocab), but bear in mind that Modern Hebrew was
resurrected straight out of the Bible when the state of Israel began existing,
so it’s pretty close; and Greek hasn’t changed as much as you might think
either. This is probably something to do alongside another method rather than
by itself; Duolingo provides good motivation to practise daily!
5)
If you have a friend who knows one
or more of the BL, he or she probably won’t refuse if you ask for a bit of
tuition.
6)
There’s always the option of
getting hold of a textbook and teaching yourself. Lily Kahn’s Routledge
Introductory Course in Biblical Hebrew, http://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/_author/kahn-9780415524803/,
and Jeremy Duff’s Elements of New Testament Greek are both really
excellent. The latter is even available free online: https://www.academia.edu/7846071/The_Elements_of_New_Testament_Greek.
A thousand times YES x
ReplyDeleteThanks - glad to have your company in this opinion!
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