Use Your Greek and Hebrew!

Agree, get the skills keep the skills.

I have to say, though that things like the uses of the dative case, uses of the genitive case, tense/aspect: these seem to always come as a set of possibilities, and rarely as “it’s definitely meant like this.” So, calibrate the certainty. Do I have to preach a point that depends on a particular use of the dative in the verse? I studiously avoid doing that, because it’s usually a moderate to low certainty scenario. But there are often two or three possibilities that are very high certainty as a group. So, I don’t know for sure the use of the dative here is A, but it’s like 95% certain its either A, B, or C.

So I look for a way to preach it that works for A, B or C.

So I’m not going out on a limb exegetically.

It should be noted that even without the knowledge of verb tenses and the ability to translate entire passages, getting into the original languages on a very basic level can be extremely powerful. One can figure out with a look at BDB, Kittel, or whatever that, for example, the ancient usage of a word is far different from the modern translation, or ancient words are connected in fascinating ways by their etamologies (for example, one finds "shalom" all over in Hebrew in unexpected places).

Nothing against verb tenses. I'm just not there yet. But there's a ton of good simply from looking at usage, etamology, and the like available to beginners.

One thing that happens across languages is that the range of meaning a word has, semantic range, based on usage, doesn’t align with any word in the target language. So translators have to look for places where two words have some overlap and try to find the best compromise.

Where skilled translators are at work, the Greek is never going to be completely different from the English. But there are going to be a lot of places where the Greek word’s range of meaning is different from the nearest English equivalent. But there will always be overlap—and it’s the overlap that translators are trying to capture.

With denotation, connotation, and nuance—all shaped mostly by context—it’s challenging work. I often compare strong English translations then dig into why they are different where they’re different. Translations like NET include a lot of ‘why we did what we did there’ notes, which are fascinating and helpful. I wish all the translations did that.

Although I disagree with some things about your understanding of what the Greek teaches in Ephesians 4:19, I appreciate the exhortation that you have given in this article to use the languages in studying the Bible. Thanks.

Here are three practices I have done since seminary to keep my language skills sharp:

1. Translate and parse every passage I preach. The only exception is when I’m in narrative and the passage is crazy long.
2. Read through my Greek NT every other year. I rotate between reading through my English Bible in a year and reading through my Greek NT in a year.
3. Read books about Greek grammar / syntax / linguistics

I’ve lost a lot of my Hebrew vocab, sad to say. I used to be able to read through the Torah in a year with a Hebrew reader. Now, I can no longer do that.

Jacob Cerone published a book a few years ago that has daily Scripture readings in Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. I went through that when it first was published. That was helpful.

Having taught first-year NT Greek as a teaching graduate assistant for 3 years, I learned first-hand how hard it is for many students to learn and assimilate key information that is important to gain a basic level of proficiency in reading NT Greek. Later, I created a number of simple tools to that end.

"If you’ve ever studied elementary NT Greek, you probably found it at least somewhat challenging to learn and memorize what the basic Greek prepositions mean when they take their objects in different cases. My new Basic Greek Prepositions Pie Chart helps make that task easier by pictorially separating the prepositions according to their meanings with the three different cases, accusative, genitive, and dative, in which they take their objects!"

RajeshG wrote: My new Basic Greek Prepositions Pie Chart helps make that task easier by

Nice! I always found chart-making helpful also. For me, the act of making the chart was, itself a great learning exercise. So then, ironically, didn’t need the chart so much. But as time progresses, you end up with a lot of charts and most of us—myself included—don’t have the sort of brain to keep all that straight.

So, yes, the charts!

Yes to this, although, alas, I never really had enough Hebrew to really retain it. That was my fault, I let myself be intimidated by the negative attitudes of others and left it till my last year of seminary. So... didn't learn enough to really retain it.

On the Greek side of things, I would like to recommend SIL's Exegetical Summary Series. It helps identify key words and the arguments of all the commentaries on key exegetical questions verse by verse. It identifies where the questions are and offers no final conclusions.

I've found this extremely helpful as I wrestle with the text and then see how the commentaries handle it.

I have read very extensively in Brenton's Septuagint and found it to be profoundly helpful and would highly recommend reading in it because the parallel columns of the English and Greek texts make reading the Greek text much more manageable than it would be to try to read just the Greek text by itself.

Over the years, I have discovered some very valuable insights in the LXX that have direct application to how some NT Greek passages should be understood, including my treatment of one passage (Haman, Head Coverings, and First Corinthians 11:1-16) that has gotten some attention in a Wikipedia article (I did not have anything to do with my article's being cited in that Wikipedia article and was surprised when I learned that it had been cited there).

I have not yet read the Apocrypha in his edition and may never get around to doing so; however, I have done considerable research in the Apocrypha by using BibleWorks 10 to search for occurrences of various NT Greek words to see how they are used in the Apocrypha.

Good reminder and helpful. I translate the passage (or at least part of the passage in longer ones) every week, whether Greek or Hebrew. I used to read more Hebrew from the Reader’s edition but I have not done that in a while. I should get back to it.

I would offer a slight caution however. There was an old meme circulating along the lines that “50 scholars with several hundreds years of combined knowledge and experience translated this text but I have more insight since I have had two years of seminary language.” The caution is that the translations do a good job and it is highly unlikely that we are going to correct them or discover something that they didn’t know when they translated it. Of course when translations differ, having the equipment to evaluate is helpful, but leaning on exegetical commentaries is going to be more beneficial than trying to figure it out on our own.

But having said that, IMO, pastors should be translating at least something every week.

To be sure, there are great translations out there, and yes, it is dangerous business to think that one's few semesters of language training empowers one to greatly improve on the work of guys who actually wrote the reference works you own. Granted. Perspicuity of the Scriptures applies as well in a good, appropriate translation.

That said, no translation can carry every nuance, and there are a lot of opportunities for where the secondary nuance (tertiary, etc..) can add meaning to what one is reading. Great examples include many Biblical names and their significance. So it is a way of getting to know the Scriptures better, and transitively speaking, their Author.