The Necessity for Biblical Languages

I am taking a one-day detour from my 3-part series on "A Godly Husband" because I want to write today on the necessity of biblical languages in the evangelical church. I find it sad, frankly it's depressing, that so many Pastors and even lay people are ignorant of the biblical languages. Though Geoff Kirkland is no one special in them, I am working hard so as to improve my skills to read through the Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic comfortably anywhere in the Scriptures.

I was confronted once again with a great man of old, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) who is known for "carrying his Greek NT, the Hebrew OT, and his Latin Vulgate (notice this) along with his associates at his church.

He was a man who preached from the original texts from the pulpit. He engaged in intense exegesis and study from the original languages.

Why? What is the purpose? Why go through the rigors of learning a "dead" language?

Put it this way. Reading the Bible in a translation (i.e., English, French, Spanish, etc) could be compared to reading about a crime scene in a newspaper. However, reading the biblical text from the original languages may be comparable to actually being at the crime scene and experiencing it all - seeing the sights, smelling the scents, feeling the emotions, etc.

However, this is not to downplay or diminish one's trust in the English translation (ESV, NASB, etc), though it must be remembered that it is simply that, a TRANSLATION.

I have this burning passion in my soul that one day - when I am Pastoring a church (Lord willing)- that I would have a seminary level course always being offered on the biblical languages (from Greek, to Hebrew and to Aramaic) so the pastors and even the lay people can read the biblical text in the original.

The nuances, the emphases, the theology, the rhetorical devices, the poetic features are all absolutely wonderful - yet these nuances are lost in the carrying over from one translation to another (i.e. Hebrew to English).

My point in this post: Take seriously the thought and possibility of working on Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. I promise you (no doubt) you will be greatly blessed for the REST OF YOUR LIFE if you keep up with them and read the Scriptures in the ancient languages that God had originally chosen to communicate his revelation to mankind with.

Here are a few sources I think are profitable:

Hebrew: here
and here

Greek: here

Aramaic: here
and here