Featured Should I learn Hebrew and Greek?

You bring up many good points.
I worked at a Jewish hospital for 20 years. Through association with staff and patients I decided to learn Hebrew.
It's been an on-and-off project for 25 years.

I've incorporated the answers in bolded red with your message below.

Rob

 

Every manuscript we have was once valued Scripture for a Christian community of the past.
The Greek manuscripts are not vastly different.
We can look over the data by reviewing the apparatus of the Greek texts we use and review the manuscripts if we need to, then make our own guess (or rely on experts to make it for us).
Where there are differences that matter we should look to other portions of Scripture to clarify proper doctrine.

The few Hebrew manuscripts we have are amazingly similar.
And knowing a little Greek helps -- the Greek Septuagint opens a window into how the Hebrew Scriptures were understood in past times.

Personally, I find that the major value of being familiar with Hebrew is that I am better able to appreciate the decisions that a translator is concerned with when approaching a text
and can begin to understand why one translation differs from another.

Learning original languages is not Bible study...

...but it can be a part of your study of the Bible.​

It's a tool in the way you approach Scripture.
It can be used and miss-used.

Rob

 

If you have the time and opportunity, it will be good to learn the original languages. I know some Greek because I studied Classical Latin and Greek at school and University as an unsaved youngster. Afterwards I wondered why on earth I'd done that as I went into business and never used Greek again for nearly 20 years when the Lord saved me. Then I felt the call to preach and I brushed up my Greek and learned the differences between Classical and Koine Greek (not all that many). It is useful, but there are many on line helps that you can access, so it's not as important as it was 30 years or so ago.
I thought I would learn Hebrew when I retired, but it hasn't happened (my excuse is that I've been too busy) but just this week I was preaching on a text in Ecclesiastes and the various translations and commentaries differed quite widely, so I felt that a lack of knowledge was a problem; but on the other hand, if experts can't agree, how is an amateur going to decide between them?.

Having studied a certain amount of Textual Criticism for my degree, I am of the view that the Majority Text or Byzantine Text is likely to be nearest to the original. I can give you reasons for that if you want. The M.T. is much nearer to the Textus Receptus, but I think it is quite hard to defend the T.R. when it espouses a reading that is only found in a tiny number of late manuscripts. My translation of choice is the NKJV as it is close to the KJV but gives those places where the T.R. varies from the M.T. or C.T.
I hope that's helpful. Feel free to P.M. me if you would like any further info.

 

I have been trained in Hebrew and Greek, and taught Greek in Japanese for years, and now have taught Greek in English for 9 years. If you are a full time worker for Christ, or are training to be one, I believe you should learn the original languages. It's just the right thing to do. You learn better exegesis, wisdom in evaluating translations, nuances of the Word of God in the original languages, etc. It's just a great thing to do for your ministry.

You say you had a teacher.... So are you in Bible college? Do your best, finish your degree, and go on to seminary if you have good enough grades.

I'm not a scholar of textual criticism, but am published in the field (an essay in a festschrift) and have read much on it. My position is Byzantine Priority, and I have many reasons for that. I'll just give a few.
1. It simply reads better in the Greek than the Alexandrian mss (manuscripts).
2. The denizens of Alexandria did not normally speak Greek as their heart language, while the Byzantines did. That's oversimplifying, of course, but it's a valid point. I am fluent in Japanese, but will never understand it as well as a native speaker, and am far more likely to make mistakes in nuance or in copying it than the native speaker is.
3.
4. Occasionally the UBS/Nestles critical text has some simply bizarre readings where the Byz./TR makes more sense. God is not the author of confusion.

I agree.

Again, this depends on your future ministry. Are you going to be a full time Christian worker? Get good Bible college and seminary degrees.

If you are young P. who has failed Greek 101 twice, you'll never learn the original languages well enough for them to be useful. If you are young A. who made straight A's, you might become a Greek scholar someday, but you'll still have to study hard to get there.

Nope.

Can't tell unless I know the name of the book you're talking about.

 

I have long been an admirer of Andy Naselli. He has long since grown beyond the Junior assistant to D.A. Carson. He's a good lecturer and preacher. Aside from introductory remarks at the start of a 'sermon' he recited all of 1 Corinthians using the ESV and usually reciting the alternative marginal notes instead of just the regular text. Quite the feat.

This is a part of what he said in his blog from June 27, 2011. Since a dozen years have passed since what follows, it means he has had even more experience and accomplishments in this area of study.

-- I've read the Greek New Testament daily since 1998 [25 years by now --Rip]
-- I took ten semesters of Greek in college and seminary (not including many other courses that built on that foundation), finishing with Don Carson's 'Advanced Greek Grammar.'
-- I passed Greek proficiency exams at two seminaries.
-- I graded Greek proficiency exams at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
-- I passed the comprehensive exams that Don Carson wrote for my PhD in NT at Trinity, which requires the student to sight-read the Greek NT.
-- I've taught nearly twenty introductory and intermediate semester-long Greek courses on the college and seminary level.
-- I've written papers and publications that deal largely with Greek exegesis.

But my knowledge of NT Greek is merely novice-level compared to the best NT professors and Bible translators.

 

I'd say yes, learn Hebrew and Greek. Every single person I know who has learned them has found it beneficial.

 

This is a reliable man.

Listen to him.

 

Also Latin and French.
Most of John Calvin's writings remain untranslated into English to this day!

 

A lot of my Japanese stuff remains untranslated into English, too. Me and John C.

Seriously, though, the man was a giant in the original languages.

 

Here's an interesting scholarly essay on the Reformers and their knowledge of the original languages.

https://petergoeman.com/papers/The Reformers and the Original Languages.pdf

 

Your entire question is something that will get easier to understand as you study Greek. Words do not have inherent meaning. They have meaning in context. They almost all have a range of meanings, and that will be dependent on the context.

 

Actually, I don't completely agree with this. Context determines the correct meaning out of several possible meanings that a word might have. But the word has to have some kind of core meaning in order for it to have other meanings. This is especially true in languages that use Chinese characters. For example, the character for "gold" is 金 (jīn in Mandarin, kin in Japanese), and it has meant that yellow metal for 1000s of years. There are derivative meanings, mostly idioms, but the core meaning stays the same. Likewise, the English word "gold" retains its core meaning, though context tells us what the particular usage is. The Greek word χρυσός occurs in 25 verses in the NT, and every single time it has the same core meaning, though there are derivative idioms or metaphors, such as "money" or "riches" in some passages.

Linguist and ambassador Edwin Reishauer wrote,
"Characters also have an esthetic value, at least for those who know them, that are (sic) not to be found in phonetic scripts. They have an almost magical quality too. They seem to have more substance then (sic) words written phonetically and to have a life of their own, quite distinct from the words they are used to represent. Technical and scholarly words written in characters always clearly reveal their component elements and in a way are self-explanatory. Any sixth grader can have some concept of the word hyōga, because it is 'ice river,' or kōkogaku, which is 'study antiquity science.' The meaning of the corresponding English words, 'glacier' and 'archeology,' are not at all as self-evident to the American child."
Edwin O. Reishauer, The Japanese. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1977, 392.