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God Gave Words in their Original Languages and Preserved Them

In Scripture

Part of the story of the doctrine of inspiration of scripture and then its translation relates to languages.  God immediately inspired the original manuscripts of scripture in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  God gave scripture in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  God also used His church in an institutional sense or His true churches to give witness to Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  This fulfilled the scriptural instruction to keep the Lord’s Words.

The Lord Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:18, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”  A jot is the smallest consonant in the Hebrew alphabet.  A tittle is a vowel point, which is small.  Some evangelicals say the tittle is a part of a Hebrew letter that distinguishes it from another Hebrew letter.  Either way, jots and tittles refer to Hebrew letters.  That says that God promised to preserve what He gave by inspiration, which is the original text.

In History

Jesus Christ Himself, God in the flesh, says that ‘not one jot nor one tittle shall pass from the law.’  The Lord establishes one particular detail of preservation.  That detail is this:  He preserves His Words, the very letters, in the language in which they were written.  We can see that churches believed this point of Jesus in the London Baptist Confession, when it says:

The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentic; so as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal to them.

Text, Translation, and Meaning

Churches should and do go to the original texts for their final appeal in all controversies of religion.  This answers the question, “How did people understand the passage who heard it in the day of its writing?”  The final appeal does not go to an English translation.

Someone could then ask, “Does everyone then need to know the original languages?”  The same London Baptist Confession says next:

But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have a right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded in the fear of God to read, and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship Him in an acceptable manner, and through patience and comfort of the Scriptures may have hope.

I did not write Matthew 5:18.  I did not write the London Baptist Confession on that point that Jesus made.  However, I believe Jesus and what true churches believed and taught on this doctrine.  For sure, I’m not abnormal on this.

A bit of logic could come into play.  If the true Word of God was an English translation in the 17th century or an edition of it in the 18th century, could true churches believe and live what God said for the previous sixteen centuries?  Anyone should ask that.  If man lives by God’s Words, it assumes He possesses them.  Part of the doctrine of preservation is the doctrine of availability.  Denial of general accessibility is denial of God’s promise of perfect preservation of scripture.

Studying the Original Text of Scripture

Meaning

For someone reading this essay today, you should know that you can look up a word in the English translation to find the Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic word.  I know many who put in the effort to do that.  Even those who never took one day of a course in biblical languages can know the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic word.  In the church I pastor right now, when I refer to a Greek word, a man looks it up on his phone to see.  The one, who does not know original languages, checks me out.  I welcome it.

Grammar and Syntax

I would expect further study than the meaning of the words in their original language, but that is a very good start.  A great one.  Yes, people should know grammar and syntax, but I find that a large majority of people do not know grammar or syntax in any language.  Some of the people who criticize our use of original languages here do not rely on grammar and syntax either.

For a moment, consider the expertise of grammar and syntax, even in an English version.  Isn’t that an expertise too?  Does the Bible come with a grammar book?  Does scripture come with a syntax guide?  It doesn’t.  In a sense, someone uses a glossary of extra-scriptural terms to apply to the study of the Bible.

The words “verb,” “noun,” and “adjective” are outside of God’s Word.  To be consistent, original language deniers should criticize the requirement of grammar and syntax.  “Don’t make me learn the word ‘participle’!”  I don’t know; maybe they complain about that too.  Perhaps they are grammar deniers as well.

You will miss a portion of the meaning of scripture if you rely only on a translation.  It helps to know the range of semantic meaning of a word.  You can understand from the original text the tense, mood, or voice of verbs or participles.  Going to the original text for meaning will help a student of God’s Word.  God gave His Words in those original languages.

Points in the Text Not In Translation

Hebrew Acrostics

Did God give the book of Lamentations in a Hebrew acrostic?  Yes.  Someone cannot see that in a translation.  Does that also affect the interpretation of the book?  Yes.  The third chapter is a triple acrostic by starting triplets of verses with the same Hebrew letter.  This also provides a chiastic structure that tips the point of the whole book in the absolute middle of the book.

Several Old Testament passages structure each section of poetry to start with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 119 is a well-known example of this, but also Psalms 9-10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 145, Proverbs 31:10-31; and Nahum 1:2-8.

Poetic Word Plays

The Lord also used poetic word plays all over the Hebrew Old Testament one cannot see in a translation.  Does God expect someone to recognize those word plays?  Yes.  You will start seeing word plays in the early chapters of Genesis and then continue seeing them all the way through the Old Testament.

In Genesis 1:2, “without form and void” translated tohu and bohu in the Hebrew, which is paranomastic, a rhyming effect.  We don’t get this rhyming effect in English.  One aspect of beauty or aesthetics are these devices of language.  God gives them to us, not to miss them.

“One of his ribs” in Genesis 2:21 and “bone of my bones” in Genesis 2:23 are a Hebrew word play.   God (and Moses) reverse the consonants of “rib” and “bone.”  It’s intentional and easily spotted in Hebrew, but not in a translation. We are meant to see the life connection between “rib” and “bone.”

God uses an obvious pun between Adam and the Hebrew word ’adamah, meaning “earth.”  The Hebrew ’adam means “man.”  In the chapter introducing the first man, Genesis 2:5 says, “there was not a man [‘adam] to till the ground [‘adamah].”  Later then, Genesis 3:19 says, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust [‘adamah] shalt thou return.”  These Hebrew word plays are distinct from a translation.

God cares about these word plays.  He used them.  They mean something.  He has not shelved them for translations of the original text.  When someone cannot see an acrostic or poetic word play, He does not witness something God wrote.  Any true believer should want to know this.  It is a reason why God gives churches pastors.

Different Words

In the King James Version, the translators translated different Greek words with identical English words.  They also translated identical Greek words with different English words.  Someone would not know that by the translation.  I ask you to consider 1 Corinthians 13:8:

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

“They shall fail” and “it shall vanish away” both translate the same Greek word, katargeo.  You would not know that by the translation.  I believe it is very helpful to know that, even for the interpretation of the passage.  “They shall cease” translates a completely different Greek word than the other two in the series, and yet all three are translated differently, as if there are three different words.  There are just two, not three.

On the other hand, “miracle” translates two Greek words:  semeion (Acts 4:22) and dunamis (Mark 9:39).  You would not know that by the English translation.  Sometimes, very often, the translators translated semeion, “sign,” as if “miracle” and “sign” might be something different.

Do we decide the words and the meaning by the English translation?  Do we now say, there are three different words in 1 Corinthians 13:8?  Do we say that miracle is just one word, because that’s the way it looks in the English?  Our decisions on these issues come from the original text, not the translation.

Originalism

Obeying God by rightly dividing the word of truth (1 Tim 2:15) requires originalism.  Originalism means the original biblical text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that God gave it by inspiration.  The Bible doesn’t change in meaning from the original text given to the original audience of scripture.  The text means what the author meant and he wrote it in an original language.  Scripture cannot mean something different than what it originally meant.

God preserved His Words to fulfill His promise of preservation.  He did it for the right understanding of meaning.  God also preserved those Words because His communication of meaning comes through those original Words.  An accurate translation of a perfectly preserved text is not superior to the perfect preserved text.  That translation comes from that text.