All Greek to me?

David Shaw explains the value of learning the original languages for Christian ministry

I suppose there must come a time in the life of every German fan of Shakespeare when they want to try him in the original Elizabethan English. To savour the rhythms and wordplays and images that transport us to Verona or Denmark or a wild Scottish heath. It would be a natural ambition, ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished’, as the Bard might say.

But, of course, that is no easy task. They are distanced from Shakespeare both by language and by time. Elizabethan English is not German, and nor is it modern English, for languages and the meaning of words change over time. And that might mean that our hypothetical German friend always relies on translations and reliable guides.

It would be hard to imagine, though, that they would ever stop wanting to read the original. Why would they? And they would certainly want to find people who can read Shakespeare knowledgeably and lean in as close as they can to that conversation.

Now, what has this got to do with Greek and Hebrew? Well, it’s tempting to spend this article making the case that in a similar way every Christian should (at least in principle) want to know Greek and Hebrew. To read the words in which God inspired the Scriptures. To travel across language and time to savour the rhythms and wordplays and images that transport us to God’s kingdom. But of course that too is no easy task, and so we rightly rejoice in the translations and reliable guides we have. They are great gifts and serve us well.

Instead, I want to focus on what the ambition of our pastor teachers ought to be. Again I emphasise ambition. I’m not saying that every pastor must know the languages. But they must surely make it their aim to be as reliable a guide as they can to the Scriptures, and how can they do that without making the most of every opportunity and resource to do that? What would our German friend make of someone who offered themselves as a guide to Shakespeare who was disinterested in English? Perhaps more pointedly, what would they make of a teacher who claimed to love Shakespeare, but didn’t make every effort to read him as attentively as he could.

That question of love and devotion is an important one. Too often I think we are asking: ‘What is the minimum we need to know in order to do a good job of teaching the Bible?’ But it should surely be a matter of devoted, loving attention; a constant movement towards the cherished word of our God. That’s the kind of pastor I want.

But we should also talk about calling. There is great enthusiasm these days for ‘vocational’ training, usually meaning a course that focuses more on practical skills for ministry than the study of theology or biblical languages. But central to the vocation (or calling) of a pastor is to correctly handle the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15), to ‘encourage by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it’ (Titus 1:9). For that defensive task we need to be skilled in seeing where the Scriptures are being distorted so that we might ‘contend for the truth that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people’ (Jude 3). And for the positive task of teaching and exhorting we need to be those who read as attentively as possible and can teach boldly on the basis of what we have read. If that is our goal, then a knowledge of the languages must surely at least be desirable.

Again, let me be clear what I’m not saying:

I am not saying this is impossible for someone who doesn’t know the biblical languages. The point is simply that a knowledge of the languages will support this kind of attentiveness and boldness.

Nor am I saying that knowledge of the biblical languages is in any way sufficient for preserving the gospel. The truth of the gospel has been denied by people who know the biblical languages better than I do. And many of the heresies that have arisen have claimed to be ‘just reading the Bible’. So contending for the gospel requires theological clarity that presses beyond biblical words to clarify all that Scripture affirms and denies.

And of course, as with all learning, there is a danger that learning biblical languages puffs someone up. But it would be bizarre to decide that we should therefore prefer ignorance to learning. I recently read someone lamenting that people leave Bible college with their ‘heads full of knowledge’. That struck me as odd. Surely we want heads full of knowledge (but about the right things and all framed within the worship and service of God)?

And nor am I saying that the work of a pastor is exclusively about word ministry. Whatever training we offer must be broader than that. But it is a quirk of English evangelicalism that it has placed such an emphasis on word ministry without much valuing the biblical languages.

Well, I think I’ve said enough to stir the pot and provoke a few objections. So let me address a couple of the major ones and then offer one positive example.

1. Isn’t there a danger here that we take the word of God out of the hands of the people?

History might seem to agree. After all, wasn’t the Reformation in part a battle to put the word of God into the hands of the people, and so to translate from Latin into local languages? That is true, but the Reformers were just as vocal about the need to preserve a knowledge of the original languages, especially amongst Christian ministers. Martin Luther said that ‘in proportion then as we value the gospel, let us zealously hold to the languages’.

Luther’s colleague Philipp Melanchthon said the same: ‘Since the Bible was written in part in Hebrew and in part in Greek … we must learn these languages, unless we want to be ‘silent persons’ as theologians … Only if we have clearly understood the language will we clearly understand the content.’

2. But we have so many resources now, we don’t need the languages ourselves.

Often the case for biblical languages is made with a long list of historical quotes insisting on their value, like the ones above, and there’s merit in that. But it can be tempting to say that things are different now. We have resources galore and so we can rely on them.

Interestingly, Luther goes the other way. For him, we are all the more compelled to study the languages ‘when God is offering and giving us men and books and every facility and inducement to this study, and desires His Bible to be an open book.’

Of course there are good commentaries written by reliable guides, and those are wonderful gifts. But what to do when commentaries disagree, as they do about a great many things? The result is often uncertainty about the meaning, or we just go with the commentator we trust. There’s a rightness to that, but also a danger that we get caught in a small echo chamber of people we agree with (or is it that they agree with me?). How much better still to grow into a confident ability to go to the original texts. In the end, that’s where the greatest confidence and the greatest pleasure is always to be found. Not reading what someone thinks about what someone once wrote about Shakespeare. Not hearing someone describe how wonderful his metaphors are, but reading them for yourself and then telling others, filled with the thrill and confidence of a first-hand encounter.

Perhaps an example might help.

Let’s say you’re reading Matthew 15:28 in the ESV. A Canaanite woman implores Jesus to rescue her daughter from a demon and at the end of their encounter, Jesus exclaims: ‘O woman, great is your faith’. And let’s say that, when you read that, you remember Jesus beginning a number of speeches with ‘O’ and do a word search, wondering if there’s a pattern. You discover there are ten places like that in the ESV. But then you think it’s probably worth double-checking the NIV to see if it gives the same list. It doesn’t. In fact the NIV has no speeches beginning with ‘O’. You try a few commentaries, and find that no-one mentions it. It looks like a dead end.

Now let’s say you have the Greek open. In Matthew 15:28 there is a little word equivalent to O – in Greek ὦ.

You dig around and realise there is only one more use of that word in Matthew’s Gospel (the ESV has added the rest of the ‘O’s). It’s in Matthew 17:17 where another exorcism is needed, but unbelief amongst the Jews prompts Jesus to exclaim: ‘O faithless and twisted generation.’ The two exclamations even sound similar. Jesus says ‘O woman’ (ὦ γύναι) and ‘O generation’ (ὦ γενεὰ) at the start of each speech and the Greek words for woman and generation echo each other.

So to the Canaanite woman Jesus says ‘O woman, great is your faith’ and she, a Canaanite woman, stands in contrast to the entire generation of faithless Israelites, Jesus’ disciples included. The use of that little Greek word underlines the shocking contrast, highlighting that neither race nor gender counts for anything. What matters is faith.

Now from the English, you could still have traced Jesus’ mounting critique of the disciples for their ‘little faith’ (6:30, 8:26, 14:31, 16:8), but knowing (just one!) Greek word helps you see the climax where one woman is commended, and a whole generation are exposed in these parallel exclamations. A little Greek goes a long way!

Translations, then, are a wonderful gift to us. But we do need to reflect on why we have been content to stop short of reaching for the original texts, especially as ministers of the gospel.

One Jewish poet compares reading the Old Testament in translation to kissing your mother through a handkerchief. In these times of coronavirus that might sound prudent, but the point is the lack of immediate contact. Perhaps then we should feel about translations the way we all feel about Zoom right now. Deeply grateful for what they allow, but always with a sense that there is still a distance to overcome. And perhaps it’s time then to ask whether we could or should draw nearer still?