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Objections to Christians Learning Hebrew and Greek (7/7)
Post six in this series examined five common objections to Christians learning Greek and Hebrew. Part six followed the first five blog posts summarizing Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages, which explained the value of learning the Biblical languages and explained that the languages are not too difficult to learn–indeed, Biblical Greek and Hebrew are easier languages to learn than modern English. This final post will examine some remaining common objections, #6-12 on pages 57-68 of Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages.
6.) “The many computer tools and other study helps available today make knowledge of the original languages superfluous.”
Computer tools are certainly very valuable. However, they do not come close to eliminating the value of learning the languages themselves. Furthermore, the Christian who does not know Greek or Hebrew runs the serious risk of misunderstanding what his computer Bible software is telling him.
7.) “People have gone to big-name seminaries, learned Greek and Hebrew, and come back full of doctrinal compromise.”
Sadly, this has certainly happened. But it has been the consequence of compromise in the seminary and in the sinful heart of the person who compromises. It is not a problem with God’s Greek and Hebrew words.
8.) “There have been godly servants of the Lord who never learned the Biblical languages.”
There certainly have been godly servants of the Lord who never learned the Biblical languages. There have been godly servants of the Lord who never learned to read at all, or who were even unable to read because they were blind of possessed some other unfortunate handicap. That God can use illiterate Christians for His glory does not mean that learning to read has no value. No more does the fact that God can use Christians who do not know Greek and Hebrew serve as a sufficient cause to fail to learn the Biblical languages.
9.) “I have heard that learning the Biblical languages was useless.”
People who actually know Hebrew and Greek do not say that they are useless. Only people who do not know the languages seem to make this claim. Someone who voices this objection should be asked: “Do you claim that Hebrew and Greek are useless for understanding the Bible because of your experience and in-depth study of those languages, or are you making that claim from a position of ignorance?”
10.) “Learning Greek and Hebrew undermines the King James Version.”
Why? Does this objection assume that the translation cannot withstand scrutiny? Who is undermining the KJV then? The KJV translators would have viewed a low view of Greek and Hebrew as a Catholic false teaching. They would have viewed it as utterly antithetical to a Bible-believing Protestantism.
11.) “Maybe Protestants valued Greek and Hebrew, but Baptists did not.”
Such a claim is simply ignorant. Countless Baptists, from Hetzer and Denck who translated the Bible into German before Luther did, to William Carey, the “father of modern missions,” to expositors like Alexander Maclaren, to martyrs like Felix Mantz, to fundamentalists like James Josiah Reeve, to Landmarkers like Ben Bogard have viewed knowledge of the Biblical languages as tremendously valuable.
12.) “It is wrong for a woman to learn the original languages of Scripture.”
The New Testament commands women to “learn” (1 Timothy 2:11), and never even once states or implies that women are to be less committed to learning Scripture than men, or that they are only to learn the Bible in the vernacular but not in the original tongues. Why should women who have the holy duties of teaching other women teaching children (Titus 2:3-5; 1 Timothy 5:10, 14) be kept from the increased ability to understand, teach, and practice Scripture that comes from knowing Greek and Hebrew?
Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages concludes:
[A]rguments against the study of Greek and Hebrew are unconvincing … [while] the reasons why Greek and Hebrew are extremely valuable, and clearly learnable, are compelling. May the Father who revealed His glory and redemptive mind and heart in the Hebrew and Greek words He gave His Son to deliver to His saints by His Spirit bless these facts to the flourishing of reverent study, loving practice, and bold proclamation of those infallibly inspired and perfectly preserved words to His eternal glory and the advance of His spiritual kingdom. Amen!
And to that conclusion, again I say, “Amen”!
–TDR
Christians CAN learn Greek and Hebrew-they are not too hard! Part 5 of 7
The first four blog posts summarizing the argument in Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages explained the value of learning the Biblical languages. Clearly, knowing the languages is valuable. However, are they learnable? Aren’t Greek and Hebrew too hard to learn?
Actually, Greek and Hebrew are emphatically NOT too hard to learn. They are not too hard because of the following reasons, summarized from pages 40-51 of Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages:
1.) Christians have their Almighty Father to help them learn the languages.
2.) The self-discipline involved in learning the languages can contribute to their sanctification.
3.) Scripture is not God hiding Himself. The Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are God’s “revelation,” not God’s obscuring Himself.
4.) For century after century, Old Testament Hebrew and New Testament Greek were the languages of the common man, not of the elite few.
5.) A very high percentage of Koine Greek speakers picked it up as a second language, while having a different native tongue. So can modern English speakers today.
6.) The Hebrew Old Testament was comprehensible to the simple rural folk that comprised the large majority of Israel.
7.) The Greek New Testament was comprehensible to the slaves and lower class people who constituted the large majority in the first century churches.
8.) It is harder to master modern English than it is to learn to read the Greek New Testament or Hebrew Old Testament.
9.) English speakers assume English is an easy language while Greek and Hebrew are allegedly difficult, but their assumption is invalid–because we have already mastered English, we do not think much about what was involved in learning the language. Someone starting from scratch would more easily learn to read Greek or Hebrew than he would learn to master modern English.
10.) The vocabulary of the average four-year-old child is larger than the number of words one must learn to gain a solid grasp of the Greek New Testament or the Hebrew Old Testament.
11.) The inspiring examples of those who learned the languages as children, or without grammar books, or despite extremely pressing work commitments, or in the face of other hardships, show that learning the Biblical languages is eminently attainable.
12.) Numbers of countries world-wide are officially trilingual, while fifty-five nations are officially bilingual. There is no reason why people in these countries can master two or three languages in order to make money and efficiently function, but Christians cannot learn Greek and Hebrew in order to better know God and His Word.
The facts above are important, both to encourage people who are contemplating learning the languages and to refute Ruckmanite notions that Greek and Hebrew are impossibly difficult, so one must simply stick to English, not even use Greek or Hebrew lexica, and ignore the treasures God has laid up for His people in the Hebrew and Greek tongues.
–TDR
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