Program / Course 5: Biblical Languages / Lesson 1.2
What you will learn
- State plainly that this course does not provide fluency in Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek.
- Describe three levels of language ability: tool use, guided reading and fluent reading.
- Explain why a little knowledge of the languages can mislead, and how to guard against that.
- List what a careful beginner can honestly do and what should be left to specialists.
The big idea
This course does not provide fluency in Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek. Fluency means reading unfamiliar passages with understanding, and it takes years of study with a teacher. What this course offers is smaller: the alphabets, the outline of the grammar, and the method for using interlinears, lexicons and concordances with care. A beginner who understands these limits can check translations responsibly. A beginner who forgets them can make confident mistakes. Saying clearly what is not taught is part of the teaching.
Key terms
- Fluency
- The ability to read a text in its own language with understanding, without translating word by word, and to handle unfamiliar vocabulary and grammar.
- Tool use
- Working with reference books such as lexicons, interlinears and concordances to examine a word or verse without reading the language.
- Exegesis
- Careful drawing out of the meaning of a passage from its text and setting. Full exegesis of Hebrew or Greek requires reading the language.
- Specialist
- A person trained to read the languages and the scholarship around them, such as a professor of Hebrew or a translator who works on a Bible committee.
- Overclaiming
- Saying that you know more than you do, for example by announcing what the Greek says after using only an interlinear.
- Gloss
- A short English equivalent given for a foreign word in a reference book. A gloss is one hint, not the full meaning.
Background
Many people feel drawn to the original languages because they want to get closer to the text. That desire is good. It has also been used badly. Sermons, videos and books often say what the Greek or Hebrew means in a way that sounds authoritative, and readers who cannot check the claim have no means of testing it. Sometimes the claim is right. Often it is simplified, and sometimes it is simply wrong.
The opposite error exists too. Some people hear that the original languages are difficult and conclude that ordinary readers should never look at them. That is not the view of this course. Translations are the work of trained scholars who relied on the originals, and a careful reader can learn how those translations were made and where they differ. The task is to be honest about the distance between looking things up and reading a language.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: What this course does not teach
This course does not provide fluency in Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek. It does not train a reader to translate a verse unaided. It does not make a student able to settle disputed readings, to date a manuscript, or to judge between scholars on technical grammar. It carries no credit toward a degree and does not claim to prepare a person for ordained ministry or professional translation.
Fluency is not the result of finishing a set of lessons. A typical university or seminary program spends several semesters on each language, and students afterward still read slowly for years. Hebrew and Greek are not hard because they are mysterious. They are hard because every language takes long practice, and these are ancient languages with limited surviving texts and no native speakers to ask.
Step 2: Three levels of ability
It helps to separate three levels. At the first, tool use, a reader can find the Hebrew or Greek word behind an English verse and look it up in a lexicon. This course aims at this level. At the second, guided reading, a reader can follow a passage in the original with a grammar and lexicon open, slowly and with help. This takes about a year or more of regular study. At the third, fluent reading, a reader works through texts with little help and notices fine points of style and grammar. This takes many years.
The levels matter because a person at the first level can easily feel as if they are at the third. The interlinear places an English word under each Greek word, and the result looks like reading. It is not. The reader has not seen the grammar, the idiom or the other senses of the word.
Step 3: Why a little knowledge misleads
Three problems recur. First, a gloss is only one sense of a word. A lexicon may list six senses, and the right one depends on context. Second, the same word in two places may have different meanings, and different words may mean nearly the same thing. Third, grammar is invisible to a beginner. A genitive case, a verb stem or an unmarked clause may change the sense, and a reader who cannot see them will not know what has been decided for them.
A fourth problem is social. A person who says the Greek says something carries authority with listeners who cannot check. This is a reason for the beginner to speak with care and to say how they know.
Step 4: What a careful beginner can do
A careful beginner can recognize the alphabets and sound out words. A beginner can find the original word behind an English word using a reverse interlinear or a concordance. A beginner can read a lexicon entry and see its range of senses, compare several English translations and sort the differences, read the footnotes and prefaces, and describe the question clearly enough to ask an expert.
A beginner should not claim to know what the original must mean, should not decide a disputed reading alone, and should not teach others on the strength of a word study without checking with a scholar’s commentary. The last lesson of this course returns to this point.
- At which level of ability am I actually working: tool use, guided reading or fluent reading?
- What would I need to be able to do before I could say that the Greek or Hebrew says something?
- Am I treating an English gloss as the full meaning of a word?
- Who has checked this claim besides me, and what do they say?
- Is my confidence based on evidence, or on how technical the explanation sounds?
- What would change my mind about this reading?
Examples
Overclaiming from an interlinear
A speaker looks at an interlinear and says that a Greek word means only one thing because the English word under it is the same each time. The same Greek word may be translated differently elsewhere because the interlinear is giving a single standard gloss. The claim goes beyond the evidence. (A constructed example.)
Honest use of a tool
A student wants to know why two translations differ at a verse. She finds the Greek word, reads two lexicon entries, notices that the word has two senses, and writes that translators have chosen between them. She says that she cannot judge which choice is best without reading the Greek and consulting commentaries. (A constructed example.)
Augustine on languages
Augustine of Hippo, one of the great Latin writers of the church, reports in his Confessions that he disliked learning Greek as a boy. In later life he knew some Greek but was far more at home in Latin, and he depended on Latin translations for much of the Bible. He knew little or no Hebrew. His example shows that deep study of Scripture has long been done with limited language skill, and that he knew when he relied on others.
Different perspectives
Catholic
At the Council of Trent the Church declared the Latin Vulgate authentic for public readings and disputations, because the council wanted a stable text and was cautious about private revision. Modern Catholic teaching also encourages the study of the original languages by scholars, and Catholic translations are now normally made from them. The Church also holds that the interpretation of Scripture is guided within the community of the church and not left to private judgment alone.
Orthodox
Orthodox Christians read the New Testament in Greek or in translations made in the church’s own languages, and the liturgy is steeped in the language of Scripture. Reading with the Fathers and in the life of the church is thought to matter more than technical skill. Language study is welcome but is not a substitute for that setting.
Protestant
The Reformers pressed for study of Hebrew and Greek, and Luther is known for calling for the study of the languages. At the same time, many Protestants hold that the main message of Scripture is clear to any believing reader in translation. Protestants therefore value both trained scholars and ordinary readers.
Jewish
In Jewish tradition Hebrew is learned from childhood, and study is done with teachers and in partnership with another student. Even skilled readers do not claim to understand a verse without commentaries and tradition.
Scholarly
Biblical scholars generally agree that reading the languages is a skill that takes years, and that tools help but do not replace it. They also warn against both overclaiming by amateurs and the idea that translations cannot be checked at all.
Why it matters
A student who is honest about limits learns more and misleads fewer people. A student who is not may spread errors with great confidence. The rest of the course builds skills step by step, and each of those skills will be useful only if the student remembers what it can and cannot do.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: If I finish this course, I will be able to read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek.
Correction: This is not the case. The course gives the alphabets, basic grammar and tool use. Fluency takes years of structured study with a teacher.
Misunderstanding: Only scholars can say anything useful about the original languages.
Correction: A careful reader can learn what a lexicon entry shows, compare translations and understand why they differ. What a beginner cannot do is settle hard cases alone.
Misunderstanding: An interlinear lets me read the Bible in the original.
Correction: An interlinear is a tool for finding the words. It does not show how the grammar or idiom works, and its single gloss for each word hides the range of meanings.
Misunderstanding: Translators have hidden the real meaning from ordinary readers.
Correction: Translators work from the originals and usually explain their choices in prefaces and footnotes. Differences between translations are real, but they are not conspiracies, and most can be understood by reading the notes.
Knowledge check
What does this course not provide?
It does not provide fluency in Biblical Hebrew or Koine Greek. Students will not be able to translate unfamiliar passages unaided, and the course carries no credit or degree. It gives a working acquaintance with the alphabets and grammar, and a method for using reference tools carefully.
Describe the three levels of language ability.
Tool use means finding and looking up original words without reading the language. Guided reading means following a passage with a grammar and lexicon, slowly. Fluent reading means working through texts with little help. This course aims at the first level only, and the later levels take a year or more and then many years.
Give two reasons why a little knowledge of the languages can mislead.
A gloss gives only one sense of a word, while the right sense depends on context. Grammar and idiom are invisible to a beginner, so choices made by a translator are hidden. A reader may also feel more certain than the evidence allows because technical terms sound authoritative.
What can a careful beginner honestly do?
A beginner can sound out the alphabets, find the original word behind an English word, read a lexicon entry and its range of senses, compare translations, read footnotes and prefaces, and state a question clearly enough for an expert to answer. A beginner should say what remains unknown.
Think it through
- Have you ever heard someone say what the Greek or Hebrew means? How could you have checked it?
- What is the difference between humility about a skill and refusing to learn it?
- Which of the traditions described here gives you the most useful reminder about limits?
- What would you write at the end of your own work to state your limits plainly?
Independent assignment
A statement of limits
In your own notebook, write 250 to 400 words. Describe your current experience with Hebrew and Greek, including any word study you have done before. Place yourself among the three levels of ability. Then write a short statement of limits, in the first person, that you could attach to any study you do in this course, saying what you will and will not claim. Keep it and reread it at the end of the course. Do not send it to anyone.
Further study
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read the passages in Book 1 on Augustine’s schooling in Greek and Latin.
- Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth See the chapter on translations for an argument about what readers can do in translation.
- Council of Trent (1545-1563), Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Read the decree on the edition and use of the sacred books for the Catholic position on the Vulgate.
- Origen, On First Principles (De Principiis) Look at how an early Christian scholar who knew Greek and some Hebrew handled the Old Testament.
- Acts 8:30 Philip asks a man reading Isaiah whether he understands what he reads.
- Proverbs 11:2 Wisdom is with the lowly.
- James 3:1 A warning about teachers.