Benefiting from the Biblical Languages

Answers Bible Curriculum Year 3 Quarter 3 Lesson 13

This week features a special Sunday school lesson on the biblical languages and how anyone can benefit from using the biblical languages to study the Bible. In the lesson, we investigate four main questions:

1. What are the biblical languages?
2. Why is it important and beneficial to study the Bible in the original languages?
3. How can I gain access to the Bible in the original languages?
4. What cautions must I heed as I study the Bible in the original languages?

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all right let’s begin it’s 9:30 welcome Sunday school we’ve come to the end of our third-year third quarter with our answers ba ba curriculum and our study of the old and new testaments over the last 12 lessons we’ve seen we we started with Jesus’s betrayal and then we walk through his crucifixion his resurrection his post resurrection appearances and ascension and then we saw the beginning of the church the day of Pentecost and how the gospel began to go forth we saw the first martyr Stephen we saw the gospel go to the Samaritans we saw it go to the people around Jerusalem and then we ended the quarter by seeing the gospel formally go to the Gentiles now we’re going to pick up with this we’re going to pick up with what comes next next quarter our first lesson in the next quarter we’ll be following the missionary journeys the Apostle Paul that’s where we’re going to be next but today we’re gonna do something special remember that there are review days integrated into the curriculum and for the adult Sunday School class they’re very flexible we can cover topics that we normally wouldn’t get time to cover that’s one of our options and that’s what I’d like to do today last quarter we had a question-and-answer session if you remember and one of the questions that I wanted to answer at that time but we just didn’t have space to was a question that someone asked originally in Sunday school which is how important is it to study the Bible in the original languages and I had given an answer in Sunday school when it came up but I want to refine that and expand the answer that question how important is it that we study the Bible in the original languages to whet your appetite let me illustrate I think two quotes that sum up unanswered that question the first is from a famous Jewish poet his name is haigha naman Delek he says reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your bride through a veil and then along with that here’s a quote from Martin Luther Martin Luther says if the languages that’s the biblical languages if the languages had not made me positive as the true meaning of the word I might have still remained a chained monk engaged in quietly preaching Romish errors in the obscurity of a cloister so is understanding the Bible in the biblical languages the original language is important definitely and I’d like to explain that answer more fully today pass on some insights to you and as well as some cautions that I’ve gained since I’ve come to seminary and just I’ve gained as I’ve grown as a teacher and there are four main questions I want us to consider in class today first what are the biblical languages I want you to actually see them hear them so they don’t seem so mysterious to you why is it important or useful to study the biblical languages even if you’re not a pastor how can I access the Bible in the original languages especially if you’ve never learned a lick of Hebrew Greek and what cautions must I heed instead in the Bible in the original languages so we’re going to investigate each one of those questions Lord willing we’ll have time to get through each one of those and maybe a little bit time left over for questions that’s right our loading god we thank you that we have your scriptures that they have not passed away and thank you God that we can’t understand them not only through these wonderful translations that we had today but also God by various resources and learning we have to even study the original languages thank you for that God and I pray that this would be an enjoyable class edifying class today the people would be thrilled to even study the word in the original languages in Jesus name Amen alright let’s look talk first about our first question what are the biblical languages surprise surprise the Bible was not originally written in English yeah I know it’s a shock not even the King James that’s not the original Bible consider the Old Testament and what languages were the Old Testament written Hebrew and Aramaic sometimes we forget about Aramaic but Hebrew and Aramaic and the New Testament was written in in Greek very specific version of Greek coin a Greek but there are three languages for the Bible our Hebrew Aramaic and Greek now when it briefly introduce you to each one of these languages we’re going to start with Hebrew Biblical Hebrew what we call Biblical Hebrew then he was a very ancient Semitic language it comes from the Semitic language group it’s very similar to other Middle Eastern languages like Aramaic and even Arabic they’re part of the same language group it’s also related to modern Hebrew but there have been a number of differences that have taken place in a language over time here’s what Hebrew originally looked like this is paleo Hebrew script this is actually the alphabet the paleo Hebrew alphabet it was assimilated from the Phoenicians it looks pretty wild the Old Testament most the Old Testament was written in these letters these are 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and we can even still see this paleo Hebrew script in certain archaeological finds from ancient Israel we can see these letters represented on those pieces of jewelry or what have you but this script changed over time particularly it changed after the Babylonian conquest and exile because the conquering nations Assyria Babylonia and Persia they used Aramaic as their language of Empire at least in the western territories in which Judea was a part and so the Jews replaced their original alphabet this paleo Hebrew script with an Aramaic alphabet it was still Hebrew language and Hebrew words but is no longer written in the same script it was written in a similar script the Aramaic script and it’s this Aramaic influenced Hebrew that became what we know as Biblical Hebrew in other words Biblical Hebrew is the Hebrew language written with Aramaic script and I’ve shown you a picture a biblical hebrew when we look at or I should say this all the surviving copies that we have of Old Testament manuscripts are not written in paleo Hebrew but Biblical Hebrew and these are the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet in Biblical Hebrew and I could go through each one letters but it’s a sake of time we’ll just keep going but what does this actually look like in text form what does this actually look like in a sentence well let me show you let’s look at Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew there it is that’s our Biblical Hebrew text written now in verse form let me see if I can actually read this text to you remember Hebrew is read from right to left so the opposite of what we do in English we read from left to right Hebrew is read from right to left and this is what Genesis 1:1 says in Hebrew I’ll read the Hebrew person and I’ll break it down for you so betta sheath bara Elohim 8 Hossam ayam were 8 haha tax that is that a sheath in the beginning is a preposition bei next to it are sheath beginning bara he created Elohim he’s the one doing the creation Elohim is God so in the beginning God created 8 that’s the direct object or I should actually point to it for you eight here that’s the direct object marker what did he create Hashem I am the heavens what a ‘the so another direct object and then ha audits the earth in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth it’s pretty cool so the big letters that you see here are the Hebrew letters they’re the Hebrew constant the 22 Hebrew letters the little symbols above and below these big letters they are helpful markings from those who copied the Scriptures for us these markings indicate things such as what vowels are to be inserted between the consonants where the logical divisions are in the text and how the text should be sung if it is being sung in a synagogue service now originally these extra markings did not were not they were not a part of the original text they won’t even need it you could if you were a native Hebrew speaker you you would have already into it you would know which vowels went in there and you would see the logical markings etc but as the Jews slowly began to stop speaking Hebrew and instead began to speak Aramaic Greek or even Latin these markings became necessary certain rabbinical scholars they added these markings to preserve the traditional pronunciation and understanding of Hebrew the scholars who did this are known as the Nazareth’s as a name that refers to the hebrew word that means tradition missoura now these Maz reads these scholars of tradition they were diligent to copy the Hebrew Old Testament throughout the Middle Ages along with these pronunciation markers and various other notes and it’s these copies that they made that form the foundation of our study of the Old Testament in Hebrew today here’s a picture of one of the Masoretic texts that’s been preserved due to this diligent copying now because the mastery namaz reads markings are not original to the Old Testament text that is the bowing and those other markings they make they don’t carry divine authority still they are extremely important to us I mean after all these Maz reads were quite diligent in their craft they were much closer to the original text than we are today so we we consider there pointings and their other markings to be highly significant and then we would need a lot of evidence to overturn say oh those are the wrong vowel pointings here we would need a lot of evidence for us to overturn that we’re really in the debt of the mass REITs that we have this this this text preserved now the earliest copy complete copy of the mass REITs work copy of the entire Old Testament and which we work with today is called the Masoretic text maybe you’ve heard that sometimes when it comes to Bible translation or working with the original languages we work with the Masoretic text and that’s really essentially what’s been preserved by the missouri’s and we supplement there are used in the Masoretic text with various other ancient copies and fragments of the Old Testament including the Dead Sea Scrolls let me see there’s a lot of consistency between those which is encouraging so this is biblical hebrew but not all of the old but the Old Testament is written in Hebrew there are a few sections written in Aramaic does anybody know which two books of the Bible feature lengthy sections of aramaic daniel and ezra and this actually is not too surprising if the shift towards an Aramaic script occurred after the Babylonian exile it’s not surprising that these two books that occurred after Israel was taken out of the land after the Hebrews were subjected to Aramaic that they contain Aramaic I put the the two portions on the screen for you so it’s Daniel 2 4 to 7 28 and then as you’re for 8 to 6 6 18 and 7 12 to 26 it’s actually kind of fitting that these sections are in Aramaic in Daniel and the section the air make begins right when the text actually says and they spoke to the king and Aramaic saying and then it shifts the Aramaic and it continues in Aramaic through all the interactions between Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar Daniel’s friends and Nebuchadnezzar Daniel and Belshazzar Daniel and Darius all of that’s an Aramaic and even the first vision of Daniel to the end of chapter 7 is an aramaic and ezra the sections of aramaic roughly correspond to the sections where there are letters going back and forth with the persian king someone writes to the persian king it’s an aramaic when the Persian king writes something back it’s an Aramaic or when the person write or the Persian king writes on behalf of Ezra when Ezra is journeying to Israel it’s an Aramaic again that kind of makes sense but you can see even in the way the Bible’s the way the text appears the influence that Aramaic was making on the people of Israel what does that make look like well because Hebrew uses Aramaic script it looks awfully similar so here’s Daniel chapter 2 verse 4 this first line this line at the top this is Hebrew but this second line is Aramaic somehow they tell the difference right that’s because these languages are very similar and because Hebrew uses Aramaic script or Biblical Hebrew does it’s kind of like Russian and Ukrainian today if you know one of the languages you can kind of make your way through the other because they’re so similar and because they they come from the same language family even if you look at some of the words they might be spelled a little bit differently pronounced slightly differently but there’s gonna be a lot of crossover so those with Hebrew and Aramaic now I actually haven’t steady dare make myself but as I as I look at this I might be able to stumble through some of the different words from what I know of Hebrew I’m not gonna try reading this for you but this is a essentially one though the wise men say to Nebuchadnezzar tell us the king or tell us o King what you dreamed it will tell you the interpretation now eventually Aramaic supplanted Hebrew as the native language of the Jews of the people living in Palestine over time it came to be that only the rabbis really still learned and studied Hebrew it’s poignant that in the New Testament when we see Jesus crying out on the cross and quoting Psalm 22 verse 1 when he says my God my God why have you forsaken me he’s not actually speaking Hebrew there he’s speaking Aramaic because that would be the language that everybody was speaking at that time there that would be the language that was considered the native language of the Jews it sounds very similar to what the Hebrew would be in Psalm 22 verse 1 but it’s not exactly the same because there was a shift towards Aramaic and Palestine it’s not just Aramaic that people were speaking in Palestine they were also speaking Greek now why Greek isn’t that a completely different language family why would the Jews be speaking Greek yes it has to do with the conquest of a certain Macedonian king named Alexander starting in 334 BC the Middle East became very dominated by Greek culture and Greek language due to the conquests of Alexander the Great and due to his successors who set up many empires in the same land Alexander conquered the successors were Greek or if they were Macedonian they were committed to Greek culture and Greek language and they sought to spread it in the lands in which they ruled I show you a little map here showing Alexander’s conquests this is where Greek influence began to dominate and these were the same lands in which the Jews were living since the Babylonian exile remember not all the Jews came back to Palestine when Cyrus gave his decree many of them stayed in Babylon some of them had gone to Egypt and they stayed there others moved other places in the Mediterraneans especially on the eastern part so these Jews wherever they were they came under the influence of colonization that’s just another way to say Greek efficacious hélène a is a word that basically means Greek and so they were Grieco fide they were subjected to Greek influence one way or another all the Jews and really all the people in these lands were subjected to Greek culture and language now the version of Greek language that was being disseminated in these territories is what we call chlorine a Greek coin a just means common the common Greek a vernacular Greek a simplified Greek that’s based off of but again simplified from the Athenian version of Greek and we’ve been spoken back in Athens a little bit simpler more explicit version of that Greek now as the Jews are subjected to this many Jews learned the Greek language other Jews went even further and they totally embrace Greek culture they forsook the Jewish heritage and they became like the Greeks but many Jews simply learned the Greek language now one effect of this hellenization was that and as people are learning to speak Greek and no longer speaking Hebrew it became necessary to translate the Jewish Scriptures in to Greek and in the 3rd century BC it appears a group of Jewish scholars completed such a project of translation in Egypt it translated the Old Testament into Greek what do we call this translation the Septuagint you may have seen that term before the Septuagint abbreviated lxx because Septuagint means 70 and lxx is how you would write 70 in Roman numerals a Septuagint itself is a latin word it comes from this legend that the translators there are about 70 of them actually 72 and they finish their translation projects in about 70 days therefore their work became known as 70 now it’s probably not true but that’s what they said anyways now this Greek translation of the Old Testament will be very significant first of all because it’s quoted in the New Testament but also because it would become the primary Old Testament version used by Gentiles in the early church Septuagint was very significant now the Jews continued under the rule of the Greeks for more than 200 years they even after the Makka bein revolts and the later conquest by the Romans Greek influence was still so strong that the people in these lands conquered by the Greeks continued to speak Greek in fact the Romans themselves even though they conquered really all the Mediterranean they ended up admiring Greek culture and even Greek language so much that all over the Empire even the Romans embraced colonization many Romans also learned Greek so by the time of Jesus’s birth around 5 BC the whole Mediterranean especially the East was speaking Koine Greek in addition to their other local languages so in Palestine that would be Aramaic they’re speaking Aramaic and Koine Greek at the same time now does this mean that every person in every single area was a fluent Greek speaker no of course not but it still was the common language it was the lingua franca of the time kind of like English is today there are certain countries in the world that speak English and there’s certain other countries that don’t have English as the native language but it’s still the language that everybody tries to learn because it’s such an important language in our world if you want to engage in business or if you want to engage in science you need to learn English and so it was at their time Greek was the common language so then is it any surprise that when the New Testament writers compose their works and letters that they wrote in the common language of the day a language that could be understood by both Jew and Gentile they wrote the New Testament in Koine Greek now what does Koine Greek look like here’s the alphabet the ancient Greek alphabet again related to modern Greek but a little bit different looks like maybe a little bit more familiar to us some of the letters kind of look like some of our own letters this is a Greek script now exactly a Latin script so some of the letters are a little bit different but Greek featured both capitals and lowercase letters and Greek would be written from left to right just like our English language is now the biblical writers wrote their works the New Testament writers wrote their works with efficiency in mind they weren’t looking to write books for a library they were writing letters to individuals and we see that even in the New Testament texts you know Paul writing to this church or Paul writing to this person or even the Gospels Luke I’m writing to Theophilus therefore because they were writing in this certain more mode they wrote with efficiency in mind they wanted to conserve writing materials because it would be expensive to not conserve and I’d be easier to transport their letters if they wrote in a very efficient way therefore our New Testament manuscripts often look something like this I just showed you the Greek alphabet on the other page what do you notice about this manuscript right yes so no or little spacing there’s no punctuation marks and it’s an all capital letters this was to conserve space on the writing if you don’t use lowercase and you don’t have to have extra space between the lines and you don’t have need to use up as much ink and you don’t have to use as many sheets of papyrus or parchment or whatever you’re working on this was for efficiency now this wouldn’t be hard for the recipients to understand if you’re a native Greek speaker or if you’re a fluent Greek speaker you can understand this no problem and we could do the same thing in English if I write a message to you in all capital letters you can probably decipher it with ease let’s try it somebody read this statement go ahead and raise your hand I’ll call you yes sir thank you and that’s basically what the Greeks would do with their manuscripts as they received them there’s no problem that they received it in all capital letters because they knew their language and we can do the same thing with English today but if you’re not a fluent Greek speaker then this manuscript with all capital is no punctuation that is pretty difficult to decipher so when we look at our Greek New Testaments today a room we study the New Testament the original language we don’t study it in this way the text has been modified for us we put in upper and lowercase we put in space thing we put in punctuation marks and we even put in accent marks to help us distinguish between certain words and to aid pronunciation now when we alter the text like this are the extra additions inspired no they’re not it’s just like the mass reads notation they’re not inspired but they help us work with the text remember the scholars who have made these alterations to the text for us like the masteries they have a good handle on what they’re doing so we want to we can have confidence in their decisions and we want to really solid case of evidence to overturn what they decided and say okay there are a few ambiguous places in the New Testament where it’s not clear whether this phrase goes to the previous sentence or the one that comes after it and so we want to look at those situations with a little bit more care but our text looks a little different what does it look like well let me show you here is John 3:16 in Koine Greek you can see it’s an upper and lower case here at with all the extra marks to make this more readable now as I said Greek is written from left to right read from left to right let me read this to you you know John 3:16 so this won’t be a surprise to you I’ll read to you first in Greek and then I’ll break down each one of the words so starting with a I’ll use my mask here that you can see where I’m reading so who toasts got AG a basin haha Austin Kozma hoster Tom Crean Tom mahogany a token henna pause Hoppus – on ace Alton may a poly tie I’ll okay Zoe Ionian now let me break down each one of those words so first putos thus gar for for thus a cop a sin that’s a verb he loved you can see agape in there for he thus loved who who loved hatha us that’s God for God so loved Tom Kozma the world for God so loved the world hosts that Tong who yong the son or his son Hanuman again a His only begotten Son so we add the adjective to this first part here his that his only begotten son ed okay another verb he gave that he gave his only begotten son Heena so that pasta pissed you on that everyone who believes it’s al tongue in him so that everyone who believes in Him may apologize that’s another very pure with a negative something that indicates no or not so that they might not die they might not perish oh contraction of Allah but okay they might have is owain Ionian life eternal or life everlasting pretty cool now side note I find Greek much easier to learn and speak men Hebrew because Greek is more similar to English and English features many words that come actually from the Greek language but other people find Hebrew easier to learn and really both are learning bull certainly I myself I’m not a master of either these languages let alone Arabic but I have through my classes and study come a long way now truly the difficulty of Hebrew or Greek it often depends on the particular author or book that you are looking at in the Bible consider in the Old Testament the Pentateuch is very straightforward and actually pretty easy to understand once you know a little bit of Hebrew in contrast Isaiah for instance is extremely complicated one of the most difficult books to translate in the Old Testament in the New Testament the Apostle John writes with the simplest Greek while on the other on the other side of the bracket we have Paul and second Corinthians very more advanced uses lots of unique words where the writer of Hebrews very complicated much more advanced style of expression more difficult to translate and interpret but again each one of these is able to be understood so we’ve met the different biblical languages we’ve answered our first question what are the biblical languages but why study them aren’t translations good enough aren’t English translations good enough well it is true that if we only had the English translations today of the Bible we could be still thoroughly equipped the Bible affirms the use of translation as I mentioned to you the Septuagint is even quoted in the New Testament and it’s quoted as the Word of God the New Testament affirms that it is right and good to use translations of the Bible and we do have great translations today new American Standard ESV NIV new King James Version they’re all great translations and many scholars have gone over the original texts and they’ve created these translations and they’ve refined these translations they’ve gone to this rigor so that not everyone in the church has to these translations have been tested and refined by theologians translators scholars etc and thank God for these things there’s still good reasons for us corporately and even you individually to study the Bible in the original languages and let me give you four reasons for reasons why it’s still good it’s still important for you and for us to study the Bible in the original languages first it makes God’s Word more vivid makes it more vivid I’ve used the analogy with you before and this is an original to me I’ve heard that someone else use it but looking at the Bible in the original languages is like looking in a high-definition TV screen when you see something in high-definition or whatever the most advanced way that you can look at televisions today you see nuances that you didn’t see before you see details that were not clear then just standard definition you could still see it and understand in standard definition that high-definition you see even more gives you a deeper appreciation for what you see so it is with the Bible translations actually let me use one more analogy and once wrote a poem for my wife in German I stated German in high school in college and I wrote this poem for her because she studied it a little bit also and I think the poem actually turned out quite beautifully and she was very appreciative of it when I gave it to her but it’s been some years since I wrote that poem and she and I both forgotten some of our German so I not too long ago I decided I’m gonna translate this poem into English so that she and I can still appreciate it and I did and then I presented it to her but once I translate it into English it I didn’t have quite the same punch that it did when I wrote it in German like some of the expressions don’t sound quite as dazzling they know they don’t have the same image making quality that it did when I wrote it in the original language so it is with the Bible you get certain there’s there’s a certain quality to the text that can’t come through all the way in translation yes you can still understand it you still get the standard definition view you can still see it but there’s a vividness there’s certain qualities that you won’t be able to detect anymore let me give you an example of this and Genesis chapter 22 verse 5 we hear this statement we hear the following regarding Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac Genesis 22 that’s the whole event of Abraham going to sacrifice his son at God’s command and in verse 5 of that chapter it says this I’m just gonna be reading the English to you Genesis 22 5 Abraham said to his young men stay here with the donkey and I and the lad will go over there and we will worship and return to you now in English we might look at that statement from Abraham and say and where he says we will worship and return to you and wonder did he really mean that was he just saying that – so his servants wouldn’t become suspicious of what he was about to do with Isaac I mean after all he’s going to sacrifice his son how did he know he was going to return with his son did he know was he lying in the English it’s not entirely clear now we have Hebrews that tell us the New Testament that he did believe that his son would rise from the dead but from the text itself at least in English it’s we couldn’t say for sure but in the original language you can because the verbs for that phrase we will worship and return are a special kind of verb they are cohort ative I no have to necessarily worry too much what that means they indicate a resolve on behalf of the speaker a cohort ative of resolve in Hebrew means that the person who’s saying that he’s going to do something is intent on making it happen so when Abraham says we will worship and return to you he’s saying it in an extremely confident way I am resolved we are resolved to worship and come back in other words you don’t need to go to the book of Hebrews – to know that even at that moment in Genesis 25 abraham believed that god would raise his son from the dead that’s faith on display and it comes through the original language you couldn’t indicate that in heap or in english but it’s there if you could see the original language so this is one reason to study God’s Word in the original languages it makes it more vivid another reason is that it gives you a greater ability to see the Canaan actions in the Bible there’s certain words phrases that are purposefully used by the authors of both the old and new testaments that’s her kind of use to help you see a connection to another passage they use the exact same verb or they use the exact same phrase English translations don’t always show this because in English we have a stylistic difference to the original writers in English if you use the same word over and over again it is a stylistic error it shows that you seem to have a lack of ability to use different words you’ve got to use a synonym in English or it sounds clunky not so with the original languages in Hebrew and Greek you can use the same word again and again and no strike against you but in English we we feel compelled to use synonyms but this sometimes helps us miss connections in the text for example Jonah chapter 1 and you can actually open there if you like Jonah chapter 1 general chapter 1 I want to talk about the first couple verses verses 1 2 3 we get that opening statement from God about Jonah’s commission and notice what we see in the first three verses Jonah chapter 1 verses 1 to 3 it says the word of Yahweh came to Jonah the son of Amitai saying arise go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it for their wickedness has come up before me verse 3 but Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord or Yahweh now you can kind of see a connection here in the English verse 2 says where God says to Jonah arise go to Nineveh but then verse 3 says but Jonah rose up to flee to Tarshish arise rose up those come from the same route in English even though they’re not quite the same word it’s the same root and same idea but in the Hebrew it’s actually the same ferb it’s the same verb being used two different times and there’s an ironic contrast between the two right god says rise up go to Nineveh but instead Jonah rises up and it goes to Tarshish the exact opposite direction of where God wanted to go this is a connection that we can see more easily in the original text but it keeps going look down in verse 6 Jonah chapter 1 verse 6 we see the same a same sort of thing when Jonah is on the boat the storm has risen up Jonah is asleep and so it says in verse 6 so the captain approached him and said how is it that you were sleeping get up call on your God perhaps your God will be concerned about us so that we will not perish now that phrase get up and call you wouldn’t be able to tell in English but it’s the exact same phrase that was used in verse 2 where God says arise go to Nineveh and cry same word for get up as the word arise and the same word for call in verse 2 is the word cry in verse 6 so again there’s this deep irony being highlighted for us in the text God gave Jonah a certain command he wouldn’t obey it and now godless pagans are telling Joe to do the very thing that God told him to do get up and cry don’t call upon your God and you see this throughout the Book of Jonah there’s just keeps being references back to what God originally commanded and yet Jonah was not willing to do and this furthers the point of the Book of Jonah Jonah is really representative of the people of Israel were unwilling to fulfill God’s calling to be a light for Yahweh in the earth and to all peoples so this is another reason for us to study the Bible in the original languages we see the connections more easily yeah Caleb yeah good right good question Caleb why don’t they just translate in the same way each time and I think it goes back to what I mentioned earlier just the style that we have in English which is you can’t use the same word again and again it doesn’t make for flowing reading it sounds clunky now there are times or the translators are intent on being consistent but they also because this is the way the English language works we use synonyms and so they’re not going to be using the same word every single time especially if they’re being used in close succession you might find that if the words were far apart they’ll use the same word each time but in English we just had a stylistic difference so it’s unfortunate but that’s that’s what you have to do if you’re going to translate it into English so that’s probably the reason so this is a second reason for us to study the word in the original languages third reason and this goes a little bit more these first you were kind of more like the initial quote from the Jewish poet I gave you at the beginning of class these latter two are more unlined about Martin Luther said now the reason we want to study the Bible in original languages is because it gives us greater accuracy it allows us to be more accurate now it’s not to say that our English translations are inaccurate that they’re bad no no but sometimes there could be better now this has been an area of my own personal growth I’m not sure how much I said this in Sunday school but there was a time I was young and immature when it came to stating the Bible and I would do my own study and then I look at what our English translations would say and I say what are they translate it like that these people are confused I know better well naturally Jews are not perfect but there’s always a reason for how they translate something the way that they do and they’re really trying to be accurate with the text and sometimes you have to kind of choose between the lesser of two evils when moving from the original language into English for example many of you know about the word do lost in the New Testament in Greek what does do loss me it means slave and it’s related to the verb to do Luo which means to serve as a slave but most the times the New Testament it’s not translated as slave it is translated as servant now on the one hand we could say all right that’s a bad translation but not really there is it is okay that it is translated servant even though it’s missing a nuance but there’s a reason they’ve chosen to do that translators besides perhaps not wanting to be offensive with the term slave they have felt that it is not an accurate indicator of what the word actually means because of what’s going to come up in the mind of the audience when they see the term slave when an American sees the term slave he probably thinks that Antebellum slavery that is the slavery of whites against blacks in America up into the Civil War and that condors are certain concept of slavery which is not exactly what the New Testament talks about when it speaks of a slave there are some parallels to be sure but it’s not quite the same and so they say if we use the term slave that’s going to give people an inaccurate idea let’s use the term servant and even though that’s not fully accurate either it’s closer to what the New Testament is trying to indicate but there are problems with servant too so you could then perhaps go the way that the new American Standard does and you don’t translate it as slave or servant you translate it as bondservant it’s kind of like a mix between a slave and a servant you got the idea of slave with a word bond but it also has the idea of servant so it doesn’t conjure the exact idea of slave but that has its own problem because what’s a bondservant now you have to explain that term all this to say if you know what the original language says then you’re not caught in this kind of conflict between Oh which which is the best word to use serve in slave bondservant you can just talk about what the original term means do loss it means a slave but it’s not the slave that you’re thinking of in America and the 1800s and you can explain what that means really want to come to serve enslave if you’re gonna be a faithful interpreter and explainer of the text you just have to explain the termina matter which one your translation uses because people need to have an idea of what that really means and you can do that once you know the original languages or at least know a little bit of the original languages this is the idea of making the Bible more accurate it’s still accurate enough in our translation but we can make it more accurate by knowing the original languages and then a fourth and this comes right on the heels of what I just explained knowing and staying the Bible in the original languages gives us a greater ability to defend the Bible because there’s one thing that false teachers love to do is to appeal to the original languages of the Bible and why well because when you appeal to the original languages you can claim a secret knowledge or an elevated authority that will be free from criticism for most people in the church because if you make a claim about the original language and other people don’t know the original language how can they counter you and this is most evident in that long-standing point of conflict and John 1:1 you know John 1:1 in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God now you know people who denied the deity of Christ like the Jehovah Witnesses it’s not translated in their Bibles and the Word was God but how is it translated I heard a couple different things but the idea is a God and the word was a God now what’s their justification for doing so well they appeal to the original language as I say in the Greek there is no article before the word God it doesn’t say and the God it’s by extension by inference it must be indefinite so we need to supply the indefinite article a God now if you don’t know a Greek if you don’t know there is no language how you can respond to that but if you do know a little bit of Greek and you know something about the original language then it’s actually not very difficult to respond to that at all because you can explain in Greek not having an article does not make something automatically indefinite in fact there is no indefinite article in Greek or even in Hebrew and even the article in Greek doesn’t correspond exactly to the English article da in fact in Greek a noun that has no article could still be definite or it could be also qualitative which means it describes a characteristic of the of the thing being mentioned moreover the Jehovah Witnesses and others who translate this passage awry they’re not consistent in applying their own rule that no article means indefinite they don’t do that elsewhere in the New Testament really when we apply the rules of Greek to John 1:1 it is a profound declaration of the triune God the absence of the article it indicates that the word is the same as God and yet distinct from God if the article were there then it would mean that father and son were the same it would be modalism but that’s not the way that John wrote it the absence of the article means that father and the son are the same essence the word and God are the same essence and yet they are distinct it’s actually the Trinity being explained in one verse so this is another reason that is good for us important for us to study the original languages study the Bible in the original languages so we can defend the Bible against the claims of false teachers of course this was instrumental in Martin Luther’s life and ministry it was the correction of certain false teachings of the Roman Catholic Church when it came to the original languages and translation that really fueled his gospel ministry and the proclamation of salvation by faith so to sum up then why should we study the Bible in the original languages I mean kind of the language of the Bible more vividly you see the connections in the Bible more readily understand the meaning of the Bible more accurately and were able to defend the Bible more thoroughly but how can we do this how can you how can I studied the Bible in the original languages when I’ve not gone to seminary well great question let me see if I can briefly address that how can you access the Bible and original languages you might be surprised to learn that there are many ways that you can do this even you even each one of you God has gifted us as American Christians in the 21st century with the abundant resources to access the Bible in the original languages first of all you can actually learn these languages yourselves I know that may sound crazy but you can’t you can enroll in a course at a college or Seminary you can buy a textbook that will help teach you or you can even watch free lessons online do the suggested homework for example one website that does this is called daily dose of Hebrew or daily dose of Greek com there are lessons on understanding each of the parts of the language and then once you’ve completed all the lessons in the homework there are 2 minute daily doses you can take just steady a verse and give an insight on it to keep you up in your language ability you can do this you can even purchase for yourself a Greek New Testament or a Hebrew Old Testament but that’s not the only way you can also utilize biblical language tools there are many tools that exist now to give you insight into particular words or phrases in a given text based on the original language there was various Bible Software you can purchase and you may have heard of things like logoff accordance or Bible works I’ll show you log us in just a second you can use free resources from the web you go to websites like blue letter Bible work and you can find an interlinear translation of both the New Testament and the Old Testament with links to concordance and lexicon it even tells you where that specific word Hebrew or Greek word appears every instance of the Bible and how its translated in those words in those instances you can find the same thing at Bible hub calm oh we can even purchase like paper interlinear version so interlinear means that the english is interwoven with the greek of the hebrew aramaic of the bible as you move your way through the bible and you could even use this when you come to church the pastor is preaching through a text and he makes some point about the original word and you can say look there it is right there I can see it right even in my own Bible or on my online computer oh I should mention there’s apps also I’m a blue letter Bible Bible hub Scripture direct they also have apps interlinear apps that you can download for free and use those resources let me actually show you I exit my PowerPoint for just a second you can see here this is actually what Lagos looks like this is what August looks like on my computer I’ve got my original language on the one side I’ve got my lexicon open on the right side whenever I hover my mouse over a term at the bottom of the screen it’ll give me what that term means and I’ll even parse that term for me or if I double click on a word it will then find that word in the lexicon and then I had that lexicon entry right there now log us depending on what you purchased or some other Bible program it can be expensive not necessary necessarily what you need to get but it is available here’s blue letter Bible com if I just go to blue letter Bible and then I want to find a I want to look at a particular verse let’s say I want to look at John three I look it up in the new American Standard and then shows me all the verses of John three I go down to say John 3:16 I want to see something about the original language here and go to tools look at interlinear and then there it is here’s the Greek text and then I have an interlinear the text broken down for me I can do interlinear or reverse into linear reverse into linear it starts with the English and then it gives me the Greek root of whatever word is is there loved it comes from agape oh all right the world its cosmos or I can do the regular interlinear well it starts with the Greek in the original form and then it gives me the English correspondence so the reverb in the original is they send from agra agra Pato you can even see the pronunciation right here and then the English on the right side but there’s more than that you can click on one of these one of these things this is a link to the concordance and Strong’s and let’s say we do that for agape sin and now it gives you even more information about that word okay it’s a verb it gives you the etymology comes from phileo here the ways that it can be translated here’s the how many times it appears in the King James here’s a definition from Strong’s here’s the lexicon entry entry here’s every instance of the in the New Testament look it shows you every first and where it appears gives you English and this is all in the new American Standard and I can keep going down and keep going down keep going now I can see every single entry that’s really helpful if you want to understand how a charm is being used throughout the Bible so tons of free resources for you just at this one website and Bible hub comm is very similar here’s the interlinear of the passage I mentioned earlier Genesis 1:1 you can see the different Hebrew words see the English translation and you can see how you pronounce the Hebrew words and this is a link to the concordance entry and I get the same thing that I was showing you on the other website more information about the word every instance of it appearing in the Bible and how its translated lexicon entry etc so a lot for you here you can find the same thing on the apps that you can download from these these two websites Bible blue letter Bible and Bible hub and Scripture direct has something similar so lots lots for you to take advantage of let me go back to the PowerPoint now alright so you can use these free resources and you can also benefit from the language inside of others you can use study Bibles that while not giving you the whole original text they’ll often make notes about the original language might be a note in the margin or there might be something at the bottom of the Study Bible page that tells you something about the original language of that particular verse or there you can also benefit from commentaries now you say how do I know what’s a good commentary well if you note in charlie he has a section on his website where he recommends commentaries for each book of the Bible or most books of the Bible that’s a helpful resource or you can even use free online commentaries now if they’re free that means they’re probably old it doesn’t mean that they’re bad I often consult Matthew Henry’s commentary Matthew Henry was a Puritan from the 1600s his complete commentary is available online for free Calvin has his sermon slash commentaries available online Spurgeon also has his analysis of verses online I find those things that steady like org slash commentaries I’m able to look at each one of those things and you can too so again another way that you can access insight into the original languages so use of the Bible and the original languages is not as far as you far away from you as you think and as you access these resources you can see some of the subtleties that don’t come through in the English translation you can see some of the connections that are not as evident in making this translation and you can also get more background about certain key terms in the text now am i saying that this automatically should become a part of your daily devotional well no I would definitely encourage you to take advantage of your excellent Bible English Bible translations as you feed yourself on God’s Word every day but as you have extra time as you need to wrestle with something especially and in a particular passage or a verse or if you’re responding to the claim of someone speaking against the truth I take advantage of these resources to set their Bible in the original languages but you do need to have some caution as you do this this is a great power at your disposal but as as someone once said with great power comes great responsibility I just want to give you a couple of cautions about using the Bible original language as we as we close know I have to do this quickly because we’re short on time alexander pope english poet once wrote a little learning is a dangerous thing drink deep or taste not the period spring their shallow drafts intoxicated the brain and drinking largely Sobers us again what was he saying well he was cautioning against their reckless use of a little bit of learning once you understand a little bit based on the original languages you might think you know everything and that whatever the translators have decided or whatever some teacher has said is totally wrong because you know you’ve looked at the original well remember i’m gonna give you four of these things here briefly remember that you don’t know everything yeah you can learn things from studying the original text but there have been plenty of scholars who have gone for you people who’ve done it the translations that we have in english they know more than you do very likely those are reason they’ve decided to translate things as they’ve done there’s a reason they’ve included certain words that are listed in italics in a new american standard bible that means they don’t literally appear in the original text but there’s a reason that include of them because that they’re gonna help you understand what the original meaning is you need to have a little bit of humility as you uncover or as you study the original the original language be ready for Greek and Hebrew and even Aramaic to have nuances that you might not quickly understand so be cautious as you as you steady and if you find something that seems to contradict what you’ve lovely largely heard check your work see what commentaries and study Bibles have to say and see even what your pastor has to say along those lines beware novelty they wear novel interpretations and conclusions if you find that your study leads you to a conclusion that’s totally different than what pretty much everybody else has said be very very cautious about that it’s a phrase that we used in seminary or I’ve heard many times in seminary it goes like this if it’s true it’s not new and if it’s new it’s not true as Christians we are not charged with discovering new truth we are charged with holding fast what has been handed down what was once and for all delivered to the things that doesn’t mean know that traditions are always correct but we should beware novelty again along these same lines prepare for differences to how English works don’t look for a total one-to-one correspondence like English grammar works like this Hebrew and Greek grammar must work the same way no not necessarily languages are complex they have lots of nuances to them are you ready for things to be a little different than what they are in English one great example of this is the verbal systems in English we are verbs work primarily hurt our verbs emphasize time when an action took place past present future etc but for verbs in Hebrew non-greek they’re not so much emphasizing time as kind of action not when the action took place but what was the manner of the action so things are gonna be a little different now to be ready for that and then finally remember that context is still King context is still King access to the original languages can give you a lot of resources when it comes to word studies you can find out where the word came from what the different parts of the word mean how it’s used throughout the Bible remember the chief element in determining the meaning of a word in particular passage is that passages context words can mean a lot of different things it’s how they’re used in a particular instance that shows you exactly which meaning of that word is meant so and all your extra resources don’t forget context is still king so in some what have we seen today we see if the Bible was written in we’ve seen the original languages we’ve seen it’s been written in Biblical Hebrew biblical aramaic Koine Greek scene that there are important benefits to be had in studying the Bible in the original languages Howell becomes more vivid we see the connections more easily it becomes more accurate and more defensible we’ve seen that there are many resources to allow Christians access to the original languages of the text the Bible but we’ve seen that there also should be a caution and humility that we should exercise when studying the original languages it is a great power at our disposal though must handle it appropriately now again does everyone in Christchurch need to become an expert in the biblical languages and the original text of Scripture the answer is some do we do need some to be experts to guard and help everyone else but not everyone needs to be nevertheless everyone can no matter what kind of or how long you been a Christian everyone can benefit from learning the Bible even a little bit in the original languages this will help you become more like Christ enjoy him more and declare his word with greater confidence and boldness wow we actually got through everything that’s amazing well we’ve had a little bit over time they have questions about what you heard today you can email me I’ll be glad to answer your question next time we come back to Sunday school we’re jumping right back into the book of Acts and Paul’s first missionary journey and that will be our final quarter of study or at least in this first run of our study of the entire Old Testament and New Testament let’s close in prayer now okay we thank you that we have the Bible in English that is a great grace and we know that many have suffered to give us the Bible in English but God we also thank you that we have access to the original languages that we can see actually the original way you put your words down that’s so amazing lord I thank you for that and I pray God that you bless the people as they accessed these different resources and that you would guide them and bless them and guard them better pray that you bless the rest of their service today and Jesus name Amen yeah you’re welcome I’ll see you next week