BillMounce.com

In response to last weeks blog, several people have asked this question. I find it interesting that I never thought of it; it is easy to criticize others, but harder to build up. A general principle of life. So how do you use Greek (and Hebrew) properly?

It starts with your homework. The most important place to use biblical languages is behind the scenes in doing your research, whether it be sermon preparation or getting ready for a Bible study. The languages give you access to tools that are far beyond the reach of English. The ICC commentaries are inaccessible without Greek and Hebrew. It is hard for me to imagine preparing a talk on Romans without checking Cranfield carefully.

But even a series like Eerdman’s New International Commentary on the New Testament really require a working knowledge of Greek. Even though the Greek is relegated to the footnotes, I can’t imagine being able to follow the commentator’s line of reasoning without having a working knowledge of Greek. When a writer argues that argument “A” is stronger than argument “B,” behind those decisions almost always lies not just a working knowledge of Greek but a feel for the language and how it works.

Or how about a discussion of the flow of a biblical author’s thought? All translations (to varying degrees) simplify sentence structure. Passages like Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 demand it. But when the commentator starts talking about dependent and independent constructions, and what words a phrase or clause modifies, English-only readers will struggle to even keep up with the discussion.

Some time ago I was listening to a sermon by a pretty good preacher. He was talking about the ending to the Sermon on the Mount and how the builders of both houses were working with the same materials, but one was wise and one was foolish; one built his house on a solid foundation and the other on sand. The storms could not destroy the first, but they washed away the latter. The person who builds on the good foundation is the person who not only hears Jesus’ words but also does them. The foolish person (Greek, moros) hears them but does not do them, does not apply them to his or her life.

The speaker stressed that in a church everyone hears the same words, fills in the same sermon notes, but that does not make them wise. All the people have the same building blocks, but the wise pew-sitter (my word) is the person who takes the words and applies them. Good point.

But in the process of making the point, he committed a basic blunder, a blunder that unfortunately has been repeated in pulpits across this land innumerable times, but one that should never be repeated. It is very easy to prevent: never define a Greek word by its English cognate. Never!