A Reason to Learn Biblical Greek (5): Because You Love God and His Word

A love for the word of God can manifest itself in many ways.

You might be someone who always makes time to read your Bible, every day. You might be someone who memorizes verses, chapters, or entire books of the Bible. You might even be someone who reads commentaries in order to get a better understanding of what’s your Bible is saying. Or, you might be someone who decides to learn Greek.

The interesting thing is that, of those practices listed above—daily Bible reading, Bible memorization, studying commentaries, and learning Greek—it’s learning Greek seems to be the one that most people think is either 1) not worth it, or 2) not realistic.

I’m not 100% sure why that’s the case, although I have a hunch.

Far from being a most valuable tool in the toolbox, learning biblical Greek has become the annoying tool many bring out to make others feel small. You know the phrases as well as I do…

Well, the Greek here says.
If you know the Greek then you know your translation has a mistake in this verse.
I’m closer to God than you, because I know Greek.

I don’t know if anyone has actually said the third statement in that list, but that’s how it often comes across. And that’s too bad.

It’s too bad because those with PhDs in Greek hate Jesus. Learning Greek does not guarantee anyone anything in relation to an actual connection with the triune God, because learning Greek does not raise a spiritually dead person to life.

All that being said, scores and scores of people throughout the ages have taken the time and expelled the energy to learn Koine Greek with the sole reason being that they love God and his word. And that actually makes sense. What do we do with the people or things we love? We devote time and energy to them. Sure, we count the costs. But, in the end, our love moves us forward. I don’t think it ought to be any different with God’s word and our learning Greek.

Does this mean everyone should learn Greek? Probably not. You can love God’s word and not want to have anything to do with Greek, but I dare you to learn Greek because you love God and his word and come away thinking that it wasn’t worth it.

If you’re interested in learning biblical Greek and you’d like some help along the way, please email me at kevindavis1986@gmail.com. I’d be happy to discuss with you some different teaching options that will help you get into the Greek of the New Testament!

A Reason to Learn Biblical Greek (4): Because it's hard!

Why do people climb Mount Everest? It’s not because it’s relaxing. So many people have died trying to climb that mountain—it couldn’t possibly be a relaxing experience. It’s not because it will get them fame and notoriety—go ahead, try to name five people who have finished that climb…I’ll wait.

They do it because it’s hard.

The difficulty of a task is more often than not why we do something. No one runs a marathon because it’s easy. No run gets a PhD because it’s easy. No one goes to the moon because it’s easy. We do those things, as President Kennedy once said, “…because they are hard.”

The same can be said for learning biblical Greek. Why in the world would anyone want to learn Greek? Because it’s hard.

There’s nothing particularly easy about learning the Greek of the New Testament. You have thousands of words to memorize. You have grammar to learn; grammar that’s often different from the grammar that’s natural to you. You have paradigms to memorize and put into practice. We’re talking over 30 grammar paradigms that don’t just need to be understood, but need to be memorized cold. You have to then deal with all those places in the Greek New Testament where the rules you learned get changed because, as with all languages, rules are made to be broken!

But, as it is with climbing a mountain, running a marathon, or even going to the moon, the task is worth it. And it’s worth it not because it will get you fame and notoriety—if that’s what you’re looking for in Greek, you might as well go climb a mountain.

No, it’s worth it because God has called us to work, and work hard as we work, and to learn biblical Greek is hard work.

So, why not go for it?

If you’re interested in learning biblical Greek and you’d like some help along the way, please email me at kevindavis1986@gmail.com. I’d be happy to discuss with you some different teaching options that will help you get into the Greek of the New Testament!

A Reason to Learn Biblical Greek (3): Because it's fun!

Is it really possible that you could have fun giving hours and hours of your time to learning a language that is out of use in the modern world?

I believe so, but the answer you will give really depends on how you have fun. To get to fun takes work, but the beauty of it is that there’s fun to be had on the way to fun. And knowing and being able to use Greek is fun, but a lot of the fun comes in the middle of the process of actually working towards knowing the language.

How is it fun to learn biblical Greek?

Do you remember what it was like to learn how to ride a bike? I know you scraped your knees and maybe even bloodied your elbows. It wasn’t your fault, though, it seemed ridiculous to ride a bike. I mean it only had two wheels…and they were in line with each other! How in the world were you supposed to keep it upright? And forget about turning. Once you turned the front wheel, the whole thing would move and you’d go down.

And then…

Almost as if something suddenly shifted in your brain, you started to move forward on your bike and the thing stayed upright. Your knees and elbows were safe…for the time being. You weren’t exactly sure how this was working, but you were having fun. You didn’t feel confident that you could stop when you wanted, but you were having fun learning. The thing that seemed impossible before was now adding to your joy. You didn’t really know how to ride a bike yet; you just knew how not to fall right away. Nevertheless, that was fun.

In my experience, it’s almost an identical process for learning biblical Greek.

When you first begin, it feels strange, awkward, and, honestly…impossible. The letters look weird, you don’t have an idea how you’re going to remember all of this, even the punctuation is different. You’re used to a question mark looking like “?” and now it looks like “;”. And forget about memorizing all these new words. How many are there to memorize? Something like 5,000? They don’t mean anything to you. How could you possibly remember them?

And then…

Almost as if something suddenly shifted in your brain, the letters don’t look quite so weird anymore. You find that you’re able to tell the difference between a “ζ” and a “ξ”, and you know when to use a “ς” instead of a “σ”. You’re even able to recite the Greek alphabet as fast as you can the English alphabet. And you’re having fun doing it. What! The words that were so difficult to remember start to look familiar. λόγος doesn’t just look Greek anymore; it starts to look correct. You don’t really know how the language works yet, but you’re having fun on your way to finding out.

I’ve had more fun in this process than I ever thought I would. The question for you is: Is this the type of fun you might be interested in?

If you’re interested in learning biblical Greek and you’d like some help along the way, please email me at kevindavis1986@gmail.com. I’d be happy to discuss with you some different teaching options that will help you get into the Greek of the New Testament!

A Reason to Learn Biblical Greek (2): Preserving the Ambiguities

In general, ambiguity is uncomfortable.

If you asked me how to get to Grand Rapids from Hastings and I told you to get on M-37 and travel anywhere from 15 to 40 miles, you’d be annoyed—you might get there—but, you’d be annoyed. You’d be annoyed because 1) I didn’t tell you which direction to travel and, 2) 15 to 40 miles is nowhere near exact enough. Those directions are far too ambiguous.

We like things to be black or white; grey isn’t helpful. That is, unless we’re talking about some particular places within the Greek New Testament.

One of the things that make good English translations of the New Testament (and the Old Testament) so helpful is that they often clear up ambiguity within the text. Teams of translators have given hours in looking at particular phrases, and even individual words, in order to come up with a good English equivalent that helps us understand the meaning of the text we’re reading.

I’m extremely thankful for that type of work, as I think we all (who read the Bible) are.

That being said, there are situations in the New Testament where ambiguity exists in the Greek, and that ambiguity has sometimes been removed through the translation process. This, then, leaves a question for us: If there’s ambiguity in the original text, is it helpful to remove it when we translate it into another language.

What I’d like to briefly do here, is to look at one example where removing that ambiguity might not actually be the most helpful thing.

John 3:16 is probably still one of the most well-known verses in all the Bible. Even those who have little to no relationship with church or the Bible know what John 3:16 says. Or, it might be better to say: they know what their translation of John 3:16 says. The reason for that is because there’s some ambiguity with the first word (in Greek) of that verse.

Here’s how the Greek looks: οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον (John 3:16a). That first word in question is: οὕτως.

There are a number of ways to translate that word—not all of which are correct in every situation—but, briefly several of them are: in this manner, thus, and so. It’s ambiguous with this statement on what John meant to communication with the word οὕτως. What’s really interesting is that by surveying a number of different English translations, we can see how faithful translators have made decisions based on their research.

For God so loved the world (NIV, ESV, NASB, KJV)
For this is how God loved the world (NLT)
For God loved the world in this way (CSB)
God loved the people of this world so much (CEV)
For this is the way God loved the world (NET)

As you can see different translations have made different decisions. And, with these translations above, all of the options for the Greek word οὕτως have been put into play. In making their particular decisions, the translators have removed the ambiguity of the Greek under the English. No longer, if we’re just reading the English text, do we feel any greyness when we come to John 3:16. God either so loved the world, loved the world in this way, or loved the world so much. The English is pretty black and white.

The question for us though, if we are going to deal with the Greek of the New Testament, is might it be better to allow the ambiguity to stand? Could it possibly be that John, himself, wanted the ambiguity there? Wouldn’t it be amazing if John really wanted to hold different—albeit complementary ideas—with the one word: οὕτως?

I think that might be exactly what was going on with the text.

If you’re interested in learning Biblical Greek and you’d like some help along the way, please email me at kevindavis1986@gmail.com. I’d be happy to discuss with you some different teaching options that will help you get into the Greek of the New Testament!

A Reason to Learn Biblical Greek (1): Emphatic Negations

There is a way to negate something in Greek that rarely gets translated into English in such a way that allows us to feel the full force of it.

In Hebrews 13, the writer is encouraging his readers (hearers, more likely) to continue to trust in God. Specifically (in verse 5b), to trust in God over and above any sort of trust that’s placed in money. To help drive that point home, the writer quotes Deuteronomy 31:6: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” (NIV)

This is clear enough in English, but what if you knew the Greek behind the Old Testament quotation? Could that help you to see the verse with more clarity? I believe it can.

Let’s look together at it here.

The Greek of Hebrews 13:5b looks like this: οὐ μή σε ἀνῶ οὐδ’ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω. Where knowing the Greek upon which the English is built can be of help are situations like this one where even though there is nothing “technically” wrong with the English translation (and I mean that sincerely; in no way is this article or any other article of mine that addresses the original languages and English translations to be understood as sowing seeds of doubt in the English text), there is a force that isn’t immediately recognized in English that is very much present in Greek.

In English, if we were to use two negatives in a row (not, not), we understand those to cancel each other out. It’s a common mistake that those who are just learning English or are leaning English as a second language will make. The assumption is that if we stack negatives in a row they emphasize the negation. This is not the case in English but, in Biblical Greek, this is how the language works.

One of the ways to negate something in Biblical Greek is to use the word οὐ, which means no or not. However, if you really wanted to emphasize the negation to the point of making the negation an absolute certainty, you can stack a couple together like οὐ μή (not not). And this is what we see happening twice in Hebrews 13:5b (actually there are five negations in that short phrase, but we’ll leave the other one for another article).

As I said before, it is totally acceptable to translate οὐ μή σε ἀνῶ οὐδ’ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω as: Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. But, if you really wanted to draw out the force of the Greek that is somewhat hidden behind the English, you could translate οὐ μή σε ἀνῶ οὐδ’ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω as: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever will I leave you, never, ever, ever, ever, ever will I forsake you.

There we see the force of the emphatic negation in the English translation, but it looks odd in English because that’s not how we write nor generally talk. In that case, maybe it makes more sense to just dive into learning Biblical Greek?

If you’re interested in learning Biblical Greek and you’d like some help along the way, please email me at kevindavis1986@gmail.com. I’d be happy to discuss with you some different teaching options that will help you get into the Greek of the New Testament!