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Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn

Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages

by Thomas Ross

Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew:

Introduction

Should Christians view learning the Biblical languages—New Testament Greek and Old Testament Hebrew[1]—as valuable and desirable, although every single Christian is not required to learn them? If possible, should preachers of the Word strongly desire to learn the Biblical languages? What about other teachers of Scripture? Should those who desire the office of the overseer / elder / pastor, or of the evangelist (Ephesians 4:11), learn Greek and Hebrew?

Before examining the reasons why Christians, and especially church leaders, should view knowledge of the Biblical languages as highly desirable, it should be stated that God does not require every Christian to learn the Biblical languages. The Bible is gloriously powerful, even in translation—which is only what one would expect, in light of the nature of He who therein speaks. On the Day of Pentecost, shortly after Christ ascended to heaven, the Lord Jesus in a reversal of the judgment of Babel bestowed the gift of tongues on His church—the risen Lord showed that He wished His wonderful works to be known and proclaimed in all languages, not in Greek and Hebrew alone (Acts 2; Genesis 11). The cessation of the sign gift of tongues with the completion of the canon of Scripture (1 Corinthians 13:8-13; Ephesians 2:20)[2] focuses attention on the continuing power of God’s Word in all languages and the necessity of its translation into the tongues of all the earth. Thus, “Christianity is one of the few religions worldwide that does not insist that its sacred Scriptures should be read in the original languages” alone, for His “eternal counsels are compatible with ordinary, everyday speech rather than being elitist and secret oracles.”^[3] The ineffable power of God’s Word is not restricted to the original tongues. An overflowing fountain of life, Scripture spreads refreshing and exhilarating life into the languages of all nations. Philip Mauro, writing in The Fundamentals, explained:

The Word of God manifests itself as a living Word in the very unique property it has of adapting itself and its message to all peoples, and of speaking in all languages, tongues and dialects. The extreme mobility and adaptability of Scripture, as manifested in this way, is comparable only to the power which a living being has of making himself at home in different countries from that in which he was born.

We have here again a characteristic which distinguishes the Bible from all other books, as any one may, with a little attention, clearly perceive. It is a universal rule that a book does not thrive except in the language in which it was written. Men’s books will not always bear translation; and the greater the literary value of a book the more it is likely to suffer loss in being translated from one language into another. Change of locality is, to the great majority of books, absolutely destructive.

But to this rule the Bible is a marvellous exception. It seems to run freely into the mould of every language, to adapt itself perfectly thereto, and to speak with equal directness, clearness and authority to all peoples and tribes and nations, in their mother tongue. It does not occur to us that, in reading our common English Bible [the Authorized, King James Version], we are reading a translation of an Oriental book; and indeed, when an example of the purest and best English is desired, men go with one accord to the Bible. … Like a living person, the Bible has made its way into all lands, has adapted itself to all environments, entered into relations of the most intimate kind with all peoples, and has exerted upon them all its own unique influence. It makes no difference what the people are to whom it goes, how radically different all their customs and institutions from those of that very peculiar people Israel; the Bible makes itself perfectly at home, and takes its own place without delay. Can this, or anything remotely approaching it, be said of any other book? And if not, are we not compelled, if we would have an explanation of this extraordinary difference, to fall back upon the statement that the “Word of God is living”? No other explanation will account for any of the facts we have been considering. This explanation accounts for them all. …

The Apostle Paul in the last of his writings (2 Tim. 2:8, 9) said, “Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel; wherein I suffer as an evil-doer even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound.” In these words we have the sufficient and the only explanation of the extraordinary and unique career of the Bible. The human custodian of the Word of God may be bound, and may be treated as a malefactor for merely being the bearer of the message; but the living Word of the living God is not, and cannot be, bound. Jehovah Himself has said, “So shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My mouth. It shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isa. 55:11).^[4]

Accurately translated Scripture is still “the word of God,” and as God’s Word, it is still “quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). Jonathan Edwards explained the tremendous, life-transforming impact of the plain meaning of God’s Word, not in Hebrew and Greek alone, but in the “language[s] of the world in these days”:

[False teachers] say [that] ancient figures of speech are exceedingly diverse from ours; [so] that we in this distant age cannot judge at all of the true sense of expression used so long ago, but by a skill in antiquity, and being versed in ancient history, and critically skilled in the ancient languages; not considering that the Scriptures were written for us in these ages on whom the ends of the world are come; yea, were designed chiefly for the latter age of the world, in which they shall have their chief, and comparatively almost all their effect. They were written for God’s people in those ages, of whom at least ninety-nine in a hundred must be supposed incapable of such knowledge, by their circumstances and education; and nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand of God’s people, that hitherto have been saved by the Scriptures.^[5]

Accurately translated Scripture is still God’s powerful Word and an inestimable treasure to the people of God.

Furthermore, not every Christian who takes up the study of Greek and Hebrew will master both languages. The benefits of knowing one or both of the Biblical tongues is progressive—knowing a little has some benefit; knowing them better has more benefit; and knowing them very well has even greater benefit. Understanding one’s English Bible to a moderate degree is better than having no knowledge of it at all, but knowing one’s English Bible very well is even better. Similarly, even a passing acquaintance with the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament is valuable, but proficiency is yet more beneficial. However, neither Christians entirely untaught in the original languages, nor Christians who know only a little Greek or Hebrew, should feel that they are unable to walk with, please, and serve their Lord until they master the Biblical tongues.

Nevertheless, despite the immense blessing of translated Scripture, for centuries, “to elucidate and interpret the New Testament” in depth, “New Testament Greek [has been] by almost universal consent a legitimate requirement for graduation from a theological seminary. … At every turn the theologian and the advanced student discover themselves returning to the original text for added information.”^[6] Indeed, “it was the original design of the founders” of numbers of “leading theological seminaries” in the United States, not only that Greek and Hebrew were required courses, but that “an elementary knowledge of Hebrew [and Greek] should be required for entrance. … [so that] students [would gain] a real mastery of the Old [and New] Testament Scriptures.”^[7] The same Jonathan Edwards who recognized the immense blessing of translated Scripture also recognized the great value of knowing the original Biblical languages, commencing his study of Greek and Hebrew by the age of twelve[8] and supporting the necessity of ministerial candidates knowing both Hebrew and Greek before an undergraduate degree could be conferred.[9] Knowledge of the original languages was recognized as having a great positive impact on all other aspects of Biblical and theological studies: “The basis of theological training, in all [seminary] departments, is an adequate knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. A system of divinity has value just in proportion as it is founded on the grammatical interpretation of biblical texts.”^[10] What is more, a survey from some decades ago indicated that even “Bible Institutes feel duty-bound to include one or both languages in their curricula, although unable to offer standard collegiate or seminary courses when they do so.”^[11] What are some of the reasons for this historic emphasis on learning Greek and Hebrew for those who wish to be well-trained servants in Christ’s church?

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Lord Jesus Christ Learned These Languages

When the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, became true Man, like the rest of mankind in all things, except without sin, through His childhood He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52). Omniscient as God, as Man Christ blessedly identified with the limited knowledge of those He came to save; thus, He needed to learn, as other children need to learn.[12] He learned the Hebrew language, enabling Him from His youth up to read a synagogue scroll (Luke 4:16-22) and to intelligently converse with Old Testament scholars (Luke 2:46-47). Indeed, pointing forward to His coming entrance into humanity, Christ spoke Hebrew in His preincarnate appearances to Israel as the Divine Messenger of Jehovah (Joshua 5:13-6:2). Christ also learned Greek, enabling Him to deliver His powerful teaching and preaching in that language. He knew that the Greek words the Father gave Him would never pass away, but would be perfectly inspired and preserved in the New Testament, which He would reveal by the Spirit after His death and resurrection (Matthew 24:35; John 17:8) so that His church might obey and be built up by those Greek words (Matthew 16:18; 28:18-20). After His resurrection, Christ likewise spoke to men in Hebrew (Acts 26:14) and Greek (cf. Matthew 28:9-10; Luke 24:14-49; John 21:15-17). The Lord Jesus Christ, as Man and Mediator, prayed to and worshipped the Father, thought, spoke, and preached in the Biblical languages. In this way, Christ placed great honor upon the Hebrew and Greek tongues. That salvation history would climax in such a revelation through God’s final Prophet, Priest, and King is no accident—it is a product of God’s eternal purpose (Ephesians 1:11). Surely if the Savior so learned and honored the Greek and Hebrew languages, those who follow Him can do likewise.

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

To Show Reverence for God’s Inspired and Preserved Revelation

All the words of the canonical Word have been revealed for the people of God through the instrumentality of “holy men of God” who “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1:21); “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16). What is more, all those holy words, the very breath of God and the infallible revelation of the “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), have the astonishing quality of being a Word “more sure” (βεβαιότερος, bebaioteros), more “reliable … unshifting … abiding,”[13] than even the audible voice of the Father speaking directly from heaven. Indeed, every one of those inspired words has been perfectly preserved (Psalm 12:6-7; Psalm 119:89) in an available form (Isaiah 59:21) for the church to believe, practice, and teach (Matthew 28:19-20).[14] The Lord Jesus declared:

[V]erily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. … Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 5:18-19; 24:35).

The “jot” (ἰῶτα, iōta) is the smallest Hebrew consonant, the yôd (י), while the “tittle” (κεραία, keraia) refers to the smallest Hebrew vowel, the ḥı̂req (.), while also encompassing the Hebrew “accents.”[15] Christ teaches that “every sentence, word, line, mark, point, pen-stroke jot, [and] tittle was put … on the original parchment … by God,”^[16] and those Hebrew and Greek words, the Son of God promises, would be preserved and available for the saints to believe and practice as long as heaven and earth stand, and even through eternal ages.

Studying the Biblical languages shows reverence and honor for the God who infallibly revealed and perfectly preserved the Hebrew and Greek words in which His mind, will, glory, and Trinitarian redemptive love blaze forth in spotless splendor and sublimity. Such study is lovely to the man who is “poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at [God’s] word” (Isaiah 66:2).[17]

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Aid the Study of God’s Word

Ezra 7:10 provides a pattern for how God’s people should study, practice, be transformed by, and teach Scripture, and in this manner have God’s blessing upon them (Ezra 7:9). As the spiritual leader of God’s people, “Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” To seek (דָּרַשׁ, ḏāraš) the law is to “study and interpret … enquire about … investigate … search” Scripture,^[18] to “consult … inquire, investigate … seek with application, study, follow, practice … seek with care, care for,”^[19] and “seek with interest, be intent on, study, [or] interpret”^[20] God’s Word. The word “is often cognitive,” so that “its end is ‘to know.’”^[21] The kind of study modeled by Ezra covers the totality of God’s inspired revelation, all “the law of the LORD,” for the “statutes and judgments” refer to “all this law” (Ezra 7:10; Deuteronomy 4:8).

Similarly, in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 14:20 commands:[22] “Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.” All the saints must strive for a mature, full-grown understanding of God’s revelation. Spiritual leaders in particular should consider Paul’s commands to Timothy: “Consider what I say; and the Lord give thee understanding in all things. … Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:7, 15). Timothy was commanded[23] to “grasp or comprehend” Paul’s inspired epistle “on the basis of careful thought,” to “understand” and “gain … insight into” it.[24] He was commanded to “be especially conscientious in discharging [his] obligation, be zealous/eager, take pains, make every effort,” and “be conscientious”[25] to have God’s approval as a “workman,” a laborer in kingdom ministry, as he with consistency rightly divided God’s veritably true Word.[26] By rightly dividing it, his practice was the opposite of those who, lacking learning,[27] “wrest,” twist, or distort[28] God’s Word, bringing destruction upon themselves (2 Peter 3:16). As a pattern or example[29] for the all the godly,[30] and in particular for other spiritual leaders, Timothy was to rigorously and intensively apply his mind to the study of God’s Word, trusting in the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit.

Knowing Greek and Hebrew help “one observe more accurately and thoroughly, understand more clearly, evaluate more fairly, and interpret more confidently the inspired details of the biblical text.”^[31] The languages greatly aid the kind of careful study of God’s inspired Word that He commands in both Testaments:

There are certain levels of thinking, wrestling, and assurance that are possible only when one exegetes the original language. … The biblical languages are the very means by which God gave us his Word, and using them forces interpreters to ask questions that would have gone un-raised, to observe details that would have been missed, to evaluate arguments in a way otherwise impossible, and to grasp more clearly and confidently the intended message of the biblical authors.^[32]

An accurate translation, such as the Authorized, King James Version, has the breath of God, and can properly be termed “inspired” and the “Word of God,” in a derivative sense,[33] because it accurately conveys the teaching of the original language text dictated by the Holy Spirit. An accurate translation is authoritative in its substance or meaning, and those who do not know Greek or Hebrew can joyfully hear God speak in the accurately translated words of their vernacular language Bible. However, to understand the very “jots” and “tittles” in which God revealed His mind, not only the general content but the specific form of Scripture, the very letters, words, syntactical structures, and discourse markers, the word-plays, verbal allusions, the energy and emphasis, the breathtaking linguistic beauty, the nuts and bolts of the micro- and macrostructure of the Father’s thought revealed to the saints through the personal Wisdom of God by the Holy Spirit, the believer must study the original language text of Scripture.[34] He must not only refresh his spirit by drinking from the vernacular language stream but move to the original language spring from which the refreshing stream flows. Knowledge of Greek and Hebrew has a tremendous and beneficial effect on all other aspects of Biblical and theological study,^[35] so much so that knowing “letters” (γράμματα, grammata, John 7:15)[36]—understanding Biblical language, its grammar, syntax, and interpretive significance—is a term for “higher learning,”[37] for “‘academic disciplines’ and all that pertains to academic education.” In “the Israelite sphere,” to learn “letters” is the “knowledge of the Law,”^[38] “sacred learning.”[39] Knowing “letters” is to know “the body of information acquired in school or from the study of writings—‘learning, education, scholarship.’”^[40] A Jewish poet is said to have quipped: “Reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your new bride through a veil.”[41] A. T. Robertson wrote:

[Truth] lie[s] hidden in Greek roots, in prepositions, in tenses, in the article, in particles, in cases. … Many who saw Jesus in the flesh did not understand Him. It is possible for us all to know the mind of Christ in the Greek New Testament in all the fresh glory of the … Gospel of grace. The originality that one will thus have is the joy of reality, the sense of direct contact, of personal insight, of surprise and wonder as one stumbles unexpectedly upon the richest pearls of truth kept for him through all the ages. …[T]he minute study … [of] the Greek opens up unexpected treasures that surprise and delight the soul.[42]

Study of the Biblical languages is a good and necessary consequence of the fact that God has revealed Himself and His will in Hebrew and Greek words.

Computer Bible software and other study helps are wonderful tools to help the student of Scripture. However, there are many precious gems of truth[43] revealed by God that someone who knows Greek and Hebrew will easily see in the text of Scripture, while someone lacking the languages and entirely dependent on computer tools will either grasp only with great difficulty or will miss entirely. For example, wordplay is much more difficult to notice in a translation. Romans 12:3 reads:

Λέγω γάρ, διὰ τῆς χάριτος τῆς δοθείσης μοι, παντὶ τῷ ὄντι ἐν ὑμῖν, μὴ ὑπερφρονεῖν παρ’ ὃ δεῖ φρονεῖν, ἀλλὰ φρονεῖν εἰς τὸ σωφρονεῖν, ἑκάστῳ ὡς ὁ Θεὸς ἐμέρισε μέτρον πίστεως.

Legō gar, dia tēs charitos tēs dotheisēs moi, panti tō onti en hymin, mē hyperphronein par’ ho dei phronein, alla phronein eis to sōphronein, hekastō hōs ho Theos emerise metron pisteōs.

For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

The translation is certainly accurate, but Paul’s use of the phronein word group four times in merely ten words is easy to miss. Someone utilizing a computer to search the English text, or relying upon Strong’s numbers to do a word study without knowing Greek, will have difficulty catching the word play; hyperpronein, sophronein, and phronein have three different Strong’s numbers assigned to them. When one considers that the epistles were designed to be read aloud in churches, so “that these sounds were actually guides to the first hearers’ understanding of the arrangement of an argument, the opening and closing points of blocks of argument, and the like,”^[44] the value of their recognition in the Greek text is further illuminated.

For another example, consider Isaiah 28:10 in the Old Testament:

כִּ֣י צַ֤ו לָצָו֙ צַ֣ו לָצָ֔ו קַ֥ו לָקָ֖ו קַ֣ו לָקָ֑ו זְעֵ֥יר שָׁ֖ם זְעֵ֥יר שָֽׁם׃

ki ṣaw lāṣāw ṣaw lāṣāw qaw lāqāw qaw lāqāw zᵉꜥēr šām zᵉꜥēr šām:

“For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:”

In Isaiah 28:9-13, the prophet records the mockery of those who oppose his inspired message. They treated his weighty prophecy as if it were trivial and ridiculous bits of instruction, perhaps fit for infants who are just done being breast-fed. The repetitive monosyllables with their assonance in 28:10, 13 emphasize the mockery of those wicked people who are going to “fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken” (28:13), being punished by a pagan nation whose language they would not understand (28:11).[45] The word play is very clear in Hebrew, but less so in English—one factor that leads too many people ignorant of or opposed to the Biblical languages to use the verbiage of those who, ridiculing Isaiah the prophet, suffered God’s devastating judgment, as if their mockery were a command for studying the Bible “precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and there a little.”[46]

In addition to wordplay, computer tools do not enable an English speaker to understand original language syntax. Consider John 1:1:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

En archē ēn ho logos, kai ho logos ēn pros ton Theon, kai Theos ēn ho logos.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The third clause, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος (kai Theos ēn ho logos), follows Colwell’s Construction; the non-articular pre-verbal predicate nominative Theos preceeds the subject ho Logos. In the most concise, beautiful, and profound way John 1:1c specifies that the Son (John 1:18) fully possesses the Divine nature of the Father as God (contra Arianism) while being distinct from the Father (contra Sabellianism).[47] The English reader can certainly appreciate the truth that the Lord Jesus Christ is God and can recognize from John 1:1b and many other texts that Christ is not the Father. But computer software will not enable the Bible student limited to the English language to even grasp syntactically what Colwell’s Construction is, much less to recognize these constructions when they appear in the New Testament or appreciate the beautiful profundity in the inspired syntax of John 1:1c.

As another example, Ephesians 4:11 reads:

καὶ αὐτὸς ἔδωκε τοὺς μὲν ἀποστόλους, τοὺς δὲ προφήτας, τοὺς δὲ εὐαγγελιστάς, τοὺς δὲ ποιμένας καὶ διδασκάλους

kai autos edōke tous men apostolous, tous de prophētas, tous de euaggelistas, tous de poimenas kai didaskalous

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;

The plural article-substantive-kai-substantive of the “pastors and teachers” clause supports the fact that all pastors are teachers, while not all teachers are pastors. The first category, “pastors,” is a subset of the second and larger category, “teachers.”[48] An English translation, despite being completely free from inaccuracy, does not capture the syntactical subtleties of the Greek.

A similar situation applies to Hebrew syntax, accents, and larger discourse structures. For example, consider Deuteronomy 24:1-4:

1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. 2 And when she is departed out of his house, she may go[49] and be another man’s wife. 3 And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife; 4 Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.

This passage is too often improperly employed as a justification for divorce. It is misemployed to undermine Scripture’s plain teaching that God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16) and to annul Christ’s clear declaration: “Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery” (Mark 10:11-12). However, an examination of the Hebrew text, including a recognition of the basic structure of Hebrew narrative as a series of “and + verb” clauses, where breaks in this sequence are highlighted items,[50] clarifies Moses’ actual meaning:

‏כִּֽי־יִקַּ֥ח אִ֛ישׁ אִשָּׁ֖ה

וּבְעָלָ֑הּ

וְהָיָ֞ה אִם־לֹ֧א תִמְצָא־חֵ֣ן בְּעֵינָ֗יו כִּי־מָ֤צָא בָהּ֙ עֶרְוַ֣ת דָּבָ֔ר

וְכָ֨תַב לָ֜הּ סֵ֤פֶר כְּרִיתֻת֙

וְנָתַ֣ן בְּיָדָ֔הּ

וְשִׁלְּחָ֖הּ מִבֵּיתֽוֹ׃

‎וְיָצְאָ֖ה מִבֵּית֑וֹ

וְהָלְכָ֖ה

וְהָיְתָ֥ה לְאִישׁ־אַחֵֽר

וּשְׂנֵאָהּ֮ הָאִ֣ישׁ הָאַחֲרוֹן֒

וְכָ֨תַב לָ֜הּ סֵ֤פֶר כְּרִיתֻת֙

וְנָתַ֣ן בְּיָדָ֔הּ

וְשִׁלְּחָ֖הּ מִבֵּית֑וֹ א֣וֹ כִ֤י יָמוּת֙ הָאִ֣ישׁ הָאַחֲר֔וֹן אֲשֶׁר־לְקָחָ֥הּ ל֖וֹ לְאִשָּֽׁה׃

‎

לֹא־יוּכַ֣ל בַּעְלָ֣הּ הָרִאשׁ֣וֹן אֲשֶֽׁר־שִׁ֠לְּחָהּ לָשׁ֨וּב לְקַחְתָּ֜הּ לִהְי֧וֹת ל֣וֹ לְאִשָּׁ֗ה אַחֲרֵי֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר הֻטַּמָּ֔אָה כִּֽי־תוֹעֵבָ֥ה הִ֖וא לִפְנֵ֣י יְהוָֹ֑ה

וְלֹ֤א תַחֲטִיא֙ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר֙ יְהוָֹ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ נַחֲלָֽה׃

ki-yiqqaḥ ʾiš ʾiššâ (When a man has taken a wife,)

ûḇᵉꜥālah (and[51] married her,)

wᵉhāyâ ʾim-lōʾ ṯimṣāʾ-ḥēn bᵉꜥênāyw kı̂-māṣāʾ ḇah ꜥerwaṯ dāḇār (and it will be that she find no grace in his eyes, because he has found in her nakedness of a thing,)

wᵉḵāṯaḇ lah sēp̱er kᵉrı̂ṯuṯ (and he will write to her a bill of divorce,)

wᵉnāṯan bᵉyāḏah (and he will give [it] in her hand,)

wᵉšillᵉḥah mibbêṯô: (and he will send her from his house,)

wᵉyoṣʾâ mibbêṯô (and she will go out of his house,)

wᵉhālḵâ (and she will go)

wᵉhāyṯâ lᵉʾı̂š-ʾaḥēr: (and she will be for another man,)

ûśᵉnēʾoh hāʾiš hāʾaḥᵃrôn (and will hate her the latter man,)

wᵉḵāṯaḇ lah sēp̱er kᵉrı̂ṯuṯ (and will write to her a bill of divorce,)

wᵉnāṯan bᵉyāḏah (and will give [it] in her hand,)

wᵉšillᵉḥah mibbêṯô ʾô ḵi yāmûṯ hāʾiš hāʾaḥᵃrôn ʾᵃšer-lᵉqāḥah lô lᵉʾiššah: (and will send her from his house, or if the latter man will die, which took her to him to [be his] wife,)

lōʾ-yûḵal baꜥlah hāriʾšôn ʾᵃšer- šillᵉḥah lāšûḇ lᵉqaḥtah lihyôṯ lô lᵉʾiššâ ʾaḥᵃrê ʾᵃšer huṭṭammāʾô ki-ṯôꜥēḇâ hiwʾ lip̱nē Yĕhōwāh (No he will be able the first husband who sent her away to return to take her to be to him to wife [i. e., “The first husband, who sent her away, will not be able to return to take her to be to him to [a] wife”], after that she is defiled, because an abomination it is before Jehovah;)

wᵉlōʾ ṯaḥᵃṭı̂ʾ ʾeṯ-hāʾāreṣ ʾᵃšer Yĕhōwāh ʾᵉlōheḵā nōṯēn lᵉḵā naḥᵃlah: (and no you will cause to sin the land [i. e., “and you will not cause the land to sin”] that Jehovah your God is giving to you [for] an inheritance.)

Notice that vv. 1-4 constitute a single unit. Verses 1-3 have a Hebrew narrative sequence with a great many “and + verb” clauses. The only commands[52] Moses makes are at the two sequence breaks in 24:4.[53] The passage contains no command at all to divorce—the only commands are not to take back a woman who has remarried and not to cause the land to sin. If divorce and remarriage take place because of the hardness of men’s hearts (Mark 10:5), the second marriage cannot be broken up; a second set of holy vows cannot be broken; and a return to the first husband cannot take place—these actions would be an abomination to Jehovah. The fact that divorce and remarriage are themselves sinful is also clear from the fact that Moses employs the rare Hebrew Hothpael verb form[54] to specify that the second marriage “defiles” the woman; by remarriage she “defiles herself,”[55] as Moses elsewhere affirms that adultery “defiles” (Numbers 5:13-14, 20, 27-29). As Christ explains in Mark 10:4-5, through remarriage she commits an act of adultery and becomes an adulteress.[56] Moses is so far from teaching the morality of divorce and remarriage while one’s former spouse is alive that he affirms that it causes defilement, utilizing the same verb he employs to affirm that incest, homosexuality, and bestiality “defile” (Leviticus 18:24)[57] the sinners committing these abominations (Leviticus 18).

The Christian who does not know Hebrew is unlikely to discern the structure of Deuteronomy 24:1-4; or if he does, he will do so only with much greater difficulty. Recognizing that those who remarry defile themselves, and that Moses never commands divorce but only explains what is forbidden if sinners (contrary to God’s will) do divorce, are two truths made plain by the Hebrew text. The preacher who knows Hebrew can, with only a minimal expenditure of time, recognize and powerfully preach or teach the truth in this portion of God’s holy Word, recognizing that the passage turns in 24:4 as the two commands and the Hothpael “defile” leap off the page.

The Hebrew accent system is important for understanding the Old Testament:

The accent system punctuates the text and is therefore a very important feature in its syntactic analysis. … This feature of Hebrew grammar is so important for understanding that medieval Jewish sources paid more attention to it than to establishing the correct pronunciation of words.

Accents in the MT [the Hebrew Masoretic Text] are of two kinds: disjunctives and conjunctives. Disjunctive accents … mark the length of pauses from full stop to various shades of shorter pauses; conjunctives … control the text up to the disjunctive. … [T]he disjunctives mark a continuous “dichotomy” of the verse, that is, they divide larger units, beginning with the verse itself (marked off by [the Hebrew accent] silluq closing the verse), into successively smaller half-units on a syntactic (or logico-syntactic) basis. A unit ending with a disjunctive of one grade is divided into halves, and its halves in turn are divided into smaller units by other disjunctive signs until the whole verse is divided into single words, or groups of words joined by conjunctives.^[58]

English punctuation marks are, at times, crucial for a proper understanding of a sentence. The difference between “Let’s eat Grandma!” and “Let’s eat, Grandma!” has great significance for those who wish to honor their elders:

The student of the English Bible should know what commas, semicolons, colons, and periods are and should understand that a period, which ends a sentence, is a higher level of disjunction than a comma. God has provided the Hebrew Old Testament with a complex accent system, commended by Christ in Matthew 5:18. It specifies four different levels of strength for verse division and employs other accents to connect words together. “Historically and … exegetically the study of the accents needs no apology. They … are frequently found to be of real service both in the sphere of grammar and of exegesis.”^[59] Every inspired word in the Old Testament has an accent revealing one of the four levels of disjunction or an accent indicating conjunction, specifying that words are either to be read with a pause between them (disjunction) or are to be united (conjunction). The levels of accentual disjunction divide verses in half, then the half-verses in half, then those portions in half as well, until every Hebrew word is properly divided from or united to its fellows.

Starting with the first verse of the Old Testament, the significance of the Hebrew accents is clear. Genesis 1:1 reads:

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

bᵉrēʾšiṯ bārāʾ ʾᵉlōhim ʾēṯ haššāmayim wᵉʾēṯ hāʾāreṣ:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

The accents break the verse down as follows:

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים

bᵉrēʾšiṯ bārāʾ ʾᵉlōhim

In the beginning created God [In the beginning God created]

אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

ʾēṯ haššāmayim wᵉʾēṯ hāʾāreṣ:

the heaven and the earth.

The primary disjunctive accent (א֑, the athnach/ atnakh),[60] specifying the greatest pause within the verse, is on the word “God.” The two halves of the verse are then divided as follows by a second-level disjunctive accent (א֖, the tiphkha):[61]

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית

bᵉrēʾšiṯ

In the beginning

בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים

bārāʾ ʾᵉlōhim

created God [God created]

אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם

ʾēṯ haššāmayim

the heavens

וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

wᵉʾēṯ hāʾāreṣ:

and the earth

The placement of the main pausal accent, the athnach, on אֱלֹהִ֑ים (ʾᵉlōhim, “God”), emphasizes Him:

Here the focus is not on the fact that God created “in the beginning,” or that God “created,” but that “God” (and no other) created. So when contemporary Bible scholars tell us that Genesis 1:1 is a polemic against the religions of the surrounding cultures, they are simply reiterating what the accents told us long ago through the placement of atnakh.^[62]

The Hebrew accents of Genesis 1:1 provide considerable help in understanding, preaching, and teaching the first verse of Scripture in the way God intended:

For the preacher … the main plea in behalf of a[n] … accurate study of Hebrew accents … [is] in the practical work of exposition. The way in which a passage is arranged accentually is sometimes the one hint necessary for suggesting a suitable division of the subject. There are sermons in accents. … Let him open, for instance, the Hebrew Bible at Gen. 1:1, and note the marvellous accuracy of the Masoretic notation. A considerable pause is placed on the first word, according to the rule that prepositions with their government at the beginning of a clause are generally marked off by a disjunctive accent. This was the time when, and the place where, the great Artificer began the mighty task. “In the beginning—God created the heaven and the earth.” The main pause, however, is placed on “Elohim” [God], not simply for the sake of musical equilibrium, but because this is the one thought that illumines everything. The worker is always greater than his work. “In the beginning—God created! the heaven and the earth.” Finally, there are two stages in the work and two beats in the music—the heaven first (as it ought to be) and the earth in subordination to it, and therefore both separated by a disjunctive accent, but wrought also into a finished whole (a cosmos) by the final dominating pause Silluq [where the period is at the end of Genesis 1:1]. So that the divisions of our subject are lying on the surface:—

(1) The Time when,

(2) The Worker,

(3) The Work,

—an arrangement which may be represented to eye and ear alike by being printed and read thus:—

In the beginning—God created!

The heaven, and the earth.^[63]

It is certainly possible for the preacher or teacher of Scripture to create an outline of Genesis 1:1 from the English text. Such an outline, as it conveys glorious truth, can bless those hearing his teaching. But is it not even better to consider the powerful outline of the verse provided by God Himself in the accents recorded by the hand of Moses?

The most detailed exposition of the meaning of Christ’s saving gospel in all of God’s revelation is found in the book of Romans. The theme passage for the book is Romans 1:16-17, a passage which contains a quotation from Habakkuk 2:4:

16 οὐ γὰρ ἐπαισχύνομαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ· δύναμις γὰρ Θεοῦ ἐστιν εἰς σωτηρίαν παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι, Ἰουδαίῳ τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλληνι. 17 δικαιοσύνη γὰρ Θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ ἀποκαλύπτεται ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν, καθὼς γέγραπται, Ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται.

16 ou gar epaischynomai to euaggelion tou Christou; dynamis gar Theou estin eis sōtērian panti tō pisteuonti, Ioudaiō te prōton kai Hellēni. 17 dikaiosynē gar Theou en autō apokalyptetai ek pisteōs eis pistin, kathōs gegraptai, Ho de dikaios ek pisteōs zēsetai.

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Paul quotes Habakkuk 2:4—the heart of the entire book of Habakkuk. Referring back to the statement of Genesis 15:6,[64] and in light of other Old Testament texts that promise salvation to believers,[65] Habakkuk states: “Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.” The great fact that the just shall live by faith was to be engraved plainly upon tablets, an allusion to the Ten Commandments.[66] The ungodly, whether unbelieving Israelites[67] or idolatrous Babylonians,[68] are proud, their souls lifted up; in contrast, the true people of God, those who are just, will live by faith. Habakkuk sets before Israel the example of Abraham—the patriarch was justified by faith alone, and his faith, because of its saving character, produced a life of persevering obedience (cf. Genesis 22). In such a manner, Habakkuk affirms, the people in his day needed to experience true conversion by faith and evidence the reality of that conversion in a life of faithfulness. The word faith[69] in Habakkuk 2:4, a noun related to the verb believe in Genesis 15:6, means in Habakkuk 2:4 a steadfast trust which results in faithfulness,[70] combining the ideas of faith and of the faithfulness that flows from it.[71]

In Paul’s quotation of the theme verse of Habakkuk in the theme passage of Romans, disputes have arisen about whether Paul’s quotation of Habakkuk 2:4 should be translated as “The just shall live by faith” (KJV) or, as some modern versions claim, “The just by faith shall live,” e. g.:

He who through faith is righteous shall live (RSV).^[72]

The righteous by faith will live (NET).^[73]

The person who is put right with God through faith shall live (Good News).^[74]

The KJV’s translation in Romans 1:17 of the Habakkuk quotation is broader than that in the modern versions quoted above. The modern versions claim simply that those who are righteous by faith alone will receive eternal life. The translation in the King James Version, in keeping with the original meaning of Habakkuk 2:4, includes the blessed fact that people receive righteousness by faith alone and those who are so reckoned righteous will receive eternal life, but it also teaches something broader—those who receive imputed righteousness by faith will also live by faith in their Christian pilgrimage.[75] The translation in the King James Version allows Romans 1:16-17 to specify the theme of the entire book of Romans. After introductory material (Romans 1:1-15), Paul proves in Romans 1:18-3:20 that all need the gracious justification of God through the gospel of Christ, because all—Jew and Gentile—are sinners devoid of righteousness. They must become just or they will perish. The Apostle then explains in Romans 3:21-5:21 that men are delivered from sin and justified apart from the law through faith alone—the just enter into life by faith. Since, as Habakkuk 2:4 affirms, those who have faith are those who have spiritual and eternal life, and are the just before God, clearly salvation is the possession of every believer, whether Jew or Gentile, rather than the prize of those only who perform meritorious works. Paul then proceeds to prove in Romans 6:1-8:39 that those who are justified by faith receive a spiritual life that encompasses not justification only, but also progressive sanctification and glorification—the Christian lives by faith (Romans 1:17). Romans 9-11 then unfolds some of what is involved in the gospel being “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16), explaining God’s purposes for Israel and the Gentiles. The Lord gave Israel many privileges, but whether Jews or Gentiles, those who are of faith are the just who will live. Romans 12:1-15:13 then exhorts the Roman church to a myriad of practical duties, acts of justice, that must adorn the life of those who by faith are just, followed by concluding material; the continuity and development from 1:16-17 to 15:13-16 (cf. 17-20) and 16:25-27 is clear, while the offering of 15:25-33 and the holy actions mentioned in the people listed in 16:1-24 are examples of the holy sacrifices that the almighty grace of God produces in those justified and regenerated; they are specific manifestations of what the renewed life of those who have become just by faith looks like. Thus, the KJV allows the Habakkuk quotation in Romans 1:17 to survey the entire book of Romans, while modern versions that adopt the “righteous by faith” translation limit the impact of Habakkuk 2:4 to the first five chapters of Romans. Which translation of the Habakkuk quotation is correct?

While the translation of Romans 1:17 in the KJV receives many lines of contextual and exegetical support, a quick glance at the Hebrew accents of Habakkuk 2:4 is decisive:

הִנֵּ֣ה עֻפְּלָ֔ה לֹא־יָשְׁרָ֥ה נַפְשׁ֖וֹ בּ֑וֹ וְצַדִּ֖יק בֶּאֱמוּנָת֥וֹ יִחְיֶֽה׃

hinnē̂ ꜥuppᵉlâ lōʾ-yošrâ nap̱šô bô wᵉṣaddiq beʾᵉmûnāṯô yiḥyeh:

Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.

The primary disjunctive accent athnach divides the verse in two as:

Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him:

but the just shall live by his faith.

Within the second half of the verse, the secondary disjunctive accent tiphkha divides the text as:

But the just

by his faith shall live

The words “faith” and “live” are united by the conjunctive accent merekah (א֥),[76] while the disjunctive tiphka divides “the just” from “shall live by faith.” Thus, in Habakkuk 2:4b the Hebrew accents conclusively indicate that the inspired affirmation of God’s prophet is “the just, by his faith shall live” or “the righteous, shall-live-by-his-faith,” rather than “the just by his faith, shall live” or “the righteous-by-his-faith shall live.” Since the inspired New Testament text never takes the Old Testament out of context, the Hebrew accents prove that the translation of the Authorized Version is correct in Romans 1:17. “The just shall live by faith,” not “The just by faith shall live,” is the affirmation of the Apostle. The Hebrew accents, by clarifying the interpretation of the theme verse of Habakkuk and the theme passage of Romans, influence the way a preacher or teacher expounds both an entire Old Testament and an entire New Testament book.

The handful of examples above could be multiplied enormously. The value of Greek and Hebrew for the study of the words, phrases, and syntax of Scripture is indisputable. One can also consider the complexities of even larger units in the inspired original language text through discourse analysis, of allusions in later Biblical passages to earlier ones, and of many other matters where the tremendous value of knowing the Biblical languages is clear for those who thoroughly mine the boundless riches of God’s Word.

What is more, the student who does not know Greek and Hebrew will often find himself at the mercy of others in his understanding of the Biblical text. “[W]hile we are blessed with a multitude of fine commentaries, they can prove to be almost useless if we cannot follow the linguistic arguments involved.”^[77] Good commentaries are valuable, but they cannot replace the study of the original itself, and one who does not know the languages is at a real disadvantage in his ability to evaluate the arguments and conclusions of the commentaries he reads:

It is precisely because there are so many excellent commentaries available today that the use of the biblical languages in preaching becomes more important, not less. The proliferation of commentaries and resource materials simply means a proliferation of opinions about the biblical text. … [G]iven the many commentaries and Bible resources available today, not to use the languages in our preaching will either cost us too much time and cause frustration in the end, redefine our role as pastors altogether, or deny the very Bible we are purporting to preach. … [F]aced with the avalanche of commentaries … the busy pastor will have four basic choices. First, he can become an expert in taking notes and cataloging the opinions of others, and in the end decide which understanding of the text is best based on the opinion of others or the mood of the moment (i.e., which series the commentary is in, which commentary my seminary professor liked best, which commentary is the shortest, which one has a blue cover, which one is the most recent, or which one I happen to own because it was on sale in the bookstore). This approach is extremely time consuming; and in the end, since the pastor cannot really decide for himself, it is really just another way to look for someone else to tell us what the Bible means. Here the authority for preaching resides in our pope, wherever we find him. Second, faced with so many experts, the pastor can decide not to decide and present to his people a smorgasbord of opinions from the “experts,” showing that he is well read, but not well trained. This approach often gives the appearance of being scholarly, but in the end communicates to the people of God that the Bible is up for grabs when it comes to understanding what it really means. In taking this approach the pastor downsizes his role into that of a book reviewer. But what is worse, since the pastor is still going to “preach” this passage, it communicates to our people that the real meaning of the Bible does not reside in what the biblical authors originally intended, but in what we make of it. And we can make many things of it. Here the authority for preaching resides in the preacher. Third, he can ignore the whole thing, reasoning that, since the experts cannot agree on everything, it does not really matter which one is right. After all, what really matters is the rhetorical “power” of preaching, not its content. So instead of wrestling with the text, the busy pastor invests his time in searching out illustrations for a basic, thematic, generalized, and pietistic sounding “message.” This approach makes popular, entertaining preachers, but loses the Bible altogether, even though the biblical text may be read aloud before the fun begins. Here the authority for preaching resides in the life-experiences of others (since a good speaker knows that only so many stories can come from one’s own life).

The last option is for the busy pastor to use his precious time … hacking his way through the biblical text in its own language first, and in so doing come face to face with the glories and unresolved questions of the text for himself. The purpose of reading the Bible for ourselves is not, however, to out-commentary the commentaries (though you will be surprised what you can discover on your own). Nor is it to out-translate the translators[.] … Rather, our own work in the text provides a window through which we can see for ourselves just what decisions have been made by others and why. Instead of being a second-hander, who can only take someone else’s word for it, a knowledge of the text allows us to evaluate, rather than simply regurgitate. This will not mean that we will be able to out-expert the experts. We all have different gifts and callings. It does mean, however, that we will be able to explain to ourselves and to others why people disagree, what the real issues are, and what are the strengths of our own considered conclusions. It will allow us to have reasons for what we believe and preach, without having to resort to the papacy of scholarship or the papacy of personal experience. It will even provide for us the humility that comes from knowing when we really do not know something, which in itself is a great boon to the ministry. After all, progressive sanctification applies to intellectual understanding just as much as it does to moral development. …

Knowing the biblical languages [also] enables us to do something very few commentaries ever do: trace the flow of the argument of the text. Commentaries save us time by providing the historical, linguistic, cultural, canonical, and literary insights that we simply do not have time to mine for ourselves week in and week out. For $35.00 we can benefit from ten years of a scholar’s life! But in the end, what we preach is the point and argument of the biblical text, as informed by this backdrop, but not replaced by it. Commentaries and translations do not excel in tracing the flow of an argument and mapping out the melodic line and theological heartbeat of a text. By definition, most commentaries are atomistic, while a translation often must obscure the density and complexity or ambiguity of the original for the sake of its target language. So when all is said and done, we do not learn Greek [only] in order to do word studies, but in order to see where the conjunctions are and are not, where participles must be decoded, where clauses begin and end, where verb tenses really make a difference and where they do not, and, in the end, what the main point of a text actually is.^[78]

Without knowledge of the languages, the preacher must “take what other scholars say without the power of forming an individual judgment.”[79] It is not God’s will that preachers delegate the “first hand study of the Bible … to a priestly class of experts” who know the languages and can write commentaries, “while the rest of the pastors are content to be second class citizens[,] … preaching”^[80] with faith in commentators whose arguments men of God cannot properly evaluate.

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Help the Practice God’s Word

Ezra “prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it” (Ezra 7:10). In addition to carefully studying the speech of God in Scripture, Timothy needed to put it into practice; Paul commanded him to “shun profane and vain babblings” that “increase unto more ungodliness,” and “flee … youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:16, 22). True and sincere outward obedience to the Lord is only possible to those who first, like Ezra, prepare their heart; God’s people “prepare [their] hearts unto the LORD” so that they might “serve him only” (2 Samuel 7:3).

Through Scripture, God both inwardly prepares the hearts of His people and instructs them in the right practice that necessarily follows their inward dedication to Him. Christ prayed for His chosen ones: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). The Father answers His Son’s prayer as the Spirit of Christ renews believers’ minds (Romans 12:2) while they see Jesus’ glory in the mirror of Scripture and are transformed[81] into His likeness: “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18):

That is, whilst by faith we contemplate on the Glory of Christ as revealed in the Gospel, all Grace will thrive and flourish in us towards a perfect Conformity unto him. For whilst we abide in this View and Contemplation, our Souls will be preserved in holy Frames, and in a continual exercise of Love and Delight, with all other spiritual Affections towards him. It is impossible whilst Christ is in the eye of our Faith as proposed in the Gospel, but that we shall labour to be like him and greatly love him. Neither is there any way for us to attain unto either of these which are the great concernments of our Souls, namely to be like unto Christ and to love him, but by a constant view of him and his Glory by faith which powerfully and effectually works them in us.^[82]

The Spirit began to transform the saints at the moment of their new birth, when, begotten through the Word of truth (James 1:18; Romans 10:17), “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness … shined in [their] hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). The Holy Spirit carries on this transformation through the Word until at Christ’s return or their death the saints are fully “like him; for [they] shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). As they behold and meditate upon the glory of the Triune, saving God revealed in the mirror of the Word,[83] their nature is transformed into the likeness of their Mediator and Savior, Jesus Christ. This inward transformation wrought by the Holy Spirit results in believers being different and therefore acting differently (Romans 12:2).

The more believers behold Christ’s glory in Scripture, the more Christlike they become both inwardly and in their practice. Since knowing the Biblical languages is a powerful means to better one’s knowledge of God’s Word, Greek and Hebrew are powerful means to greater growth in holiness. After becoming the first man to walk on the moon, the famous astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered the famous words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Several decades later, Armstrong, a Christian, had the privilege of visiting Israel. Walking on the steps where the second Temple had once stood, Armstrong asked his guide, archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov, if Jesus would have actually walked in that place. Upon Ben-Dov’s answering in the affirmative, Armstrong said: “I have to tell you, I am more excited stepping on these stones than I was stepping on the moon.”[84] Although, in this dispensation, one’s proximity to the Jerusalem Temple is not significant for drawing nigh to the God who is a omnipresent Spirit but what matters is worship in spirit and truth (John 4:22-24), being able to visit the place where the Lord Jesus actually walked is still a great experience. Nevertheless, it pales to utter insignificance in comparison to the inestimable privilege of reading the actual words that Christ spoke.[85] The believer who reads the Greek New Testament can receive (John 12:47), study, meditate upon, and have abiding in him (John 15:7) the very “gracious words that proceeded out of [Christ’s] mouth” (Luke 4:22) when He was on earth. He reads in the New Testament the very words about which His Savior said, “[T]he words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). What could be more valuable than reading the very words concerning which Christ promised: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35)?

Indeed, the words of the entire Greek New Testament are the priceless gift of the Father, in which is revealed through the Spirit the dying love of the Redeemer who said: “I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me” (John 17:8). Erasmus, in his 1516 preface to the first printed edition of the Greek Textus Receptus, wrote: “These writings bring you the living image of [Christ’s] holy mind and the speaking, healing, dying, rising Christ Himself, and thus they render Him so fully present that you would see less if you gazed upon Him with your very eyes.”^[86] In the very words of the Greek New Testament—and by necessary consequence the Hebrew words of the Old Testament, which also speak of and are from Christ, who was Mediator for the saints of the Old Covenant as well (Zechariah 1:12; Luke 24:44-46; John 5:39)—believers have the very thought of the eternal Father, the perfect written logic and speech of the eternal personal Word, the Son of God, and the final and complete special revelation of the Spirit, who searches the deep things of God and reveals God’s Triune redemptive love to those to whom He says: “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3). Through these words, the Father, Son, and Spirit manifest themselves to the believer (John 14:21) and make him like God—holy. Through the Biblical languages, Christ’s bride can not only get the translated ideas of her spiritual Husband, but can pour over and savor every syllable of His love letter to her. Her heart can be ravished with responsive love, resulting in a life of devoted chastity and purity, as she pours over and treasures every detail that reveals her Bridegroom’s initiating love, infinite grace, and all-surpassing beauty.[87]

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Help the Teaching of God’s Word

The hand of Jehovah was upon Ezra, because he “had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments” (Ezra 7:9-10). He not only concentrated his whole being on the careful study and practice of Scripture himself, but he also taught the people of God to do the same. Likewise, because of the nature of the Scripture Timothy was carefully studying, Paul strongly commanded his son in the faith to preach all of it:

16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. 1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; 2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine (2 Timothy 3:16-4:2).

The ”word” that Timothy must “preach” is the “all Scripture”[88] that is given by inspiration of God. Every Greek and Hebrew word of the Bible has been dictated by the Lord of heaven, and every one of those words must be preached by pastors. This is no trifling command, but one to which is affixed: “I charge thee … before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.” God’s preachers are not just motivational speakers or overseers of community groups. The preacher[89] is an official herald entrusted with a specific message[90] from the risen Lord, a holy ambassador (2 Corinthians 5:20; Ephesians 6:20) of the King of heaven, sent by Him to boldly and unashamedly proclaim his Sovereign’s message—every inspired word of the Bible:

[I]f the minister is the mouth-piece of the Most High, charged with a message to deliver, to expound and enforce; standing in the name of God before men, to make known to them who and what this God is, and what his purposes of grace are, and what his will for his people – then … it is the prime duty of the minister to know his message; to know the instructions which have been committed to him for the people, and to know them thoroughly; to be prepared to declare them with confidence and with exactness, to commend them with wisdom, and to urge them with force and defend them with skill, and to build men up by means of them into a true knowledge of God and of his will, which will be unassailable in the face of the fiercest assault. No second-hand knowledge of the revelation of God for the salvation of a ruined world can suffice the needs of a ministry whose function it is to convey this revelation to men, commend it to their acceptance and apply it in detail to their needs—to all their needs, from the moment that they are called into participation in the grace of God, until the moment when they stand perfect in God’s sight, built up by his Spirit into new men. For such a ministry as this … [n]othing will suffice for it but to know; to know the Book; to know it at first hand; and to know it through and through. And what is required first of all for training men for such a ministry is that the Book should be given them in its very words as it has come from God’s hand and in the fulness of its meaning[.][91]

Few things could be of greater importance for powerful preaching and teaching than a comprehensive understanding of the specific words the risen Lord has sent His servants to proclaim. The Bible “is not merely one of the sources of the preacher’s inspiration … but the very sum and substance of what he has to say. But, if so, then whatever else the preacher need not know, he must know the Bible; he must know it at first hand, and be able to interpret it and defend it.”[92] Hezekiah Harvey’s Baptist classic The Pastor: His Qualifications and Duties notes:

The great work of a pastor is instruction in the truths of the Bible; and wherever else he may fail, he must at least be a master in the gospel. Ignorance on some … topics … may still be tolerated, but in the man who ventures into the pulpit as a public instructor in the Bible a want of biblical knowledge … can never be excused. No mere rhetorical power or seeming earnestness can atone for a want of thorough mastery of the themes of the pulpit. Biblical and theological investigation should, therefore, have a large place in the pastor’s plan of study. Here, first of all, and most important, is the direct study of the Bible, bringing the mind into living contact with God’s word. As students in the Hebrew and Greek, let a part of each day be given to careful, critical study of the Scriptures in the divine originals as they were indited by the Holy Spirit. No translation, however perfect, can possibly give one the whole impression of the original. A little careful work each day in reading the original Scriptures will soon make the process easy and delightful, and its value is above all price. … [T]he Bible … is God’s own word, the great instrument of his power, “the sword of the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit works only through divine truth, and that must ever be the mightiest pulpit which most fully and clearly unfolds these living words of God.^[93]

Knowledge of Greek and Hebrew powerfully aids the preaching of God’s Word.

The knowledge of Greek and Hebrew also helps to spread God’s truth in writing. While there seems to be “no end” to the “many books” by opponents of Christianity and by advocates of a compromised Christendom (cf. Ecclesiastes 12:12), the number of solid books, filled with sound exposition, application, and defense of God’s truth by people who believe and practice properly, is sadly limited. It should not be the case that one who is “considering bringing out a book on Baptist theologians” should get the reply, “Well, that shouldn’t take you very long. It will surely be a slender volume!”^[94] Too many of the limited number of books that are written by members of sound churches are poorly written or poorly exegeted—they are not read widely because they are not worth being read widely.

On the other hand, one is not surprised to discover that that John Broadus, “one of the founders of the Southern Baptist Seminary and the author of the most influential book on preaching ever written in America,”^[95] knew Greek well enough to teach it at the university level^[96] and believed that the “most indispensably important studies” were “Hebrew, Greek, Systematic Theology, and Homiletics”^[97] as he sought to train men with “true piety”^[98] who were “mighty in the Scriptures.”^[99] The English Baptist missionary William Carey, author of An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, “one of the most influential Baptist books of all time,”^[100] through whom “the birth of modern missions” came about, possessed a tremendous knowledge of the Biblical languages.^[101] Examples could be greatly multiplied—knowledge of the Biblical languages has been very important for the authors of many influential Baptist books.

It would be wonderful if, instead of men training for the separatist Baptist ministry having to read books by non-separatist evangelicals, independent Baptist books were of such quality, professionalism, and exegetical rigor that they were read by and impacted, not only others who were already committed to all the truth, but those adrift in the broad and confused world outside of Christ’s true churches, and even in society in general. Such books are unlikely to be written by men who are not equipped with the enhanced ability to study, know, practice, and proclaim God’s Word that comes through knowledge of Greek and Hebrew.

Not only for writing many books, but for translation of the Book into the many world languages that still lack its infallible truth, knowledge of Greek and Hebrew is essential:

There are multitudes who have not even a verse of the Bible simply because no one has ever translated it into their language. … Languages have diversified since the tower of Babel until today they number 7,100. No one has paid the price—admittedly a high price every time—to put God’s Word into approximately 4,000, or 56%, of these tongues. … Another category of Bibleless people are those with languages that have small portions of Scripture and a work in progress. … Unfortunately … most of this work in progress is being done by people translating from the Critical Text using … dynamic equivalence. The result is usually a paraphrase more like the Living Bible than a formal translation such as our Authorized Version. … [H]ow often [do you] pray for laborers for the unreached, Bibleless groups of the world[?][102]

Just as when one prays for daily bread (Matthew 6:11) he is then to manifest his trust in God to answer by engaging in honest work (2 Thessalonians 3:12), and as when one prays for healing he is to manifest his confidence in God’s power to answer by employing the best medicine available (James 5:14-15),[103] so one who prays for laborers to make faithful, literal translations of the preserved Word into the languages of the world’s perishing multitudes should strongly consider learning the Biblical languages so that he can be part of God’s answer to his prayer. The Christian Bible translator must not follow the example of the Watchtower Society, the so-called “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Their New World “Translation” was produced by a “New World Bible Translation Committee” composed of people ignorant of the Biblical tongues, and whose members the cult, in shame, seeks to conceal.[104] Rather, he should follow the example of pioneer missionary Adoniram Judson, whose knowledge of the original languages[105] enabled him to give the Burmese the Textus Receptus based Bible that, through its “conservative literalism,” is the “excellent translation”^[106] that “is still the most commonly used Burmese version to this day,”[107] and has been blessed by God to the conversion of countless sinners and the constitution of many churches. Knowledge of Greek and Hebrew is essential for the translation of vernacular versions into the many languages of this perishing world that yet lack the precious words of life.

Furthermore, boldness is crucial to God-glorifying preaching. Thus, as Christ preached boldly (John 7:26, παρρησία, parrēsia), so His people pray: “grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word” (Acts 4:29). The preacher should be “praying always” for “utterance” to “open [his] mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel” as Christ’s “ambassador … that therein [he] may speak boldly, as [he] ought to speak” (Ephesians 6:18-20). God answers such prayers by enabling His people to speak “the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31), “preac[h] boldly” (Acts 9:27, 29; 13:46; 14:3; 18:26; 19:8; 26:26 παρρησιάζομαι, parrēsiazomai), and have “all boldness” (Philippians 1:20), so that those who hear God’s preachers marvel at their confident courage (Acts 4:13), because they are “bold in [their] God” (1 Thessalonians 2:2). Preachers must have “a use of speech that conceals nothing and passes over nothing, outspokenness, frankness, plainness … a state of boldness and confidence, courage, confidence, boldness, fearlessness,”[108] so that they “express [themselves] freely, speak freely, openly, fearlessly.”[109] Knowledge of the original languages contributes greatly to bold preaching:

[O]ne of the greatest benefits of preparing sermons from the original languages is the boldness it gives you when you enter the pulpit. There are no lingering doubts that I am putting too much emphasis on something that seems important in the English translation but is actually not in the Greek or Hebrew. Because I have been there in the text myself, it gives me a great freedom to press hard into my own heart and into the lives of my hearers. … I am able to preach Christ week by week in Spirit-inspired confidence drawn from the Spirit-inspired text.[110]

Both bold expositors who have drunk deeply from the original language text of Scripture and their hearers understand by experience that “knowing the biblical languages … provides a sustained freshness, a warranted boldness, and an articulated, sure, and helpful witness to the truth.”^[111] Bible teachers and preachers who have seen the Spirit bless the careful study of His Hebrew and Greek text can testify experientially to the holy boldness such preparation has provided. How blest are the richly-fed sheep with such pastors—those who properly prize and set forth the treasures of the Word of God!

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Aid in Apologetics and the Refutation of Error

The believer who knows the original languages gains a tremendously valuable tool in engaging in apologetics and refuting false teaching. He is better equipped to obey the command of 1 Peter 3:15: “Be ready always to give an answer [ἀπολογία, apologia] to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” The Christian must be ready to “give a defense”[112] of God’s inspired revelation, the Old and New Testaments. The ability to study the exact words in which this revelation was dictated from heaven is of inestimable value in such a defense.

First, knowledge of the Biblical languages is extremely helpful in refuting the arguments of anti-Christ cults and false religions. Consider Revelation 20:10:

καὶ ὁ διάβολος ὁ πλανῶν αὐτοὺς ἐβλήθη εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ θείου, ὅπου τὸ θηρίον καὶ ὁ ψευδοπροφήτης· καὶ βασανισθήσονται ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων.

And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

kai ho diabolos ho planōn autous eblēthē eis tēn limnēn tou pyros kai theiou, hopou to thērion kai ho pseudoprophētēs; kai basanisthēsontai hēmeras kai nyktos eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn.

The verse, in context, is a powerful proof for the sobering reality of the eternal suffering of the wicked. The beast and the false prophet—the future human political and religious leaders of the one-world government and religion centered in Rome (Revelation 17-18)—are taken at the end of Daniel’s 70^th week (Daniel 9:24-27), the seven year future Tribulation period (Revelation 5-19), and are cast into the “lake of fire” when Christ returns to establish His Davidic throne and Millennial kingdom (Revelation 19:11-21). Christ then rules the earth for 1,000 years of peace and blessing. At the conclusion of this period, Satan initiates and loses a final rebellion (Revelation 20:1-10). Revelation 20:10 predicts that Satan will then be cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10)—but the verse also specifies that the beast and the false prophet “are” still there, a thousand years after they were banished into that place of punishment, and that they “shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” Then the rest of the wicked dead are also cast into this same lake of fire to receive the same just fate (Revelation 20:11-15; 21:8). Contrary to the affirmations of annihilationist, anti-hell cults like the Watchtower Society, Seventh-Day Adventism, the followers of Herbert W. Armstrong, and others, individuals are not burned up in the lake of fire, passing out of existence. On the contrary, even a thousand years after persons are cast into it, they are still there, consciously experiencing torment, and they will be thenceforward tormented day and night for ever and ever.

How do annihilationists attempt to evade the force of Revelation 20:10 and its context? The United Church of God cult (a group of followers of Herbert W. Armstrong), in their work What Happens After Death? claims that Revelation 20:10 should not say the beast and the false prophet “are” in the lake of fire, but that they “were placed” in it, where they experienced annihilation. According to this cult, no people, but only the devil, is tormented for ever and ever. They argue:

Does [Revelation 20:10] say that these two end-time individuals, the Beast and False Prophet, will be tormented for eternity?

The Beast and False Prophet are human beings. While still alive, they will be cast into the lake of fire … Revelation 19:20. … [A]ny human being thrown into the lake of fire will be destroyed [that is, annihilated, but] … will not be tormented for eternity.

Revelation 20:10 is speaking of Satan the devil being cast into the lake of fire at the end of Christ’s 1,000-year reign. Reference to the Beast and False Prophet being cast in is only parenthetical here—as they will have died … 1,000 years earlier. They will not still be burning there. Thus being tormented “forever and ever” applies principally to Satan—and presumably to his demonic cohorts as well (compare Matthew 25:41).

The Bible-student who knows only English will see that the word “are” in Revelation 20:10 is italicized in the KJV—there is no express Greek verb in the clause.[113] He may conclude that the present tense plural verb is supplied only because of the bias of the translators, and, accepting the cult’s argument, may be led astray and conclude that Revelation 20:10 should say that the beast and the false prophet “were” or “were cast” into the lake of fire, but are no longer there, having been annihilated a thousand years earlier, while (supposedly) only the devil is tormented for ever and ever.

However, the Christian who knows Greek will quickly note that the verb “shall be tormented” (βασανισθήσονται, basanisthēsontai) is plural—referring to the immediate antecedents “beast” (θηρίον, thērion) and “false prophet” (ψευδοπροφήτης, pseudoprophētēs)—not singular, referring to the devil. The text plainly states, concerning “the beast and the false prophet,” that “they shall be tormented.” It is impossible to make the verb “tormented” refer to the devil only—the verse does not say “he” shall be tormented, but “they.” The Greek text transparently teaches the sobering truth of eternal torment for the lost, and the annihilationist Armstrongite argument to the contrary, while initially plausible to the student of English, is immediately overthrown by a glance at the Greek text. The italicized “are” of the KJV is not randomly supplied, but is a necessary consequence of the following plural verb and its reference to the still-existing, not-annihilated political and religious leader in the lake of fire.[114]

Second, knowledge of the Biblical languages is extremely helpful if one wishes to follow the pattern of Christ, the Apostles, and other Christians engaging in public disputations or debates over Biblical truth. Scripture contains many examples of such public discussions (Mark 12:28; John 8:12-59; Acts 6:9; 9:29; 15:7); many hearers were “persuaded” (Acts 18:4; 19:8, 26:28; 28:23) by the powerful exposition of truth and refutation of error, and “many believed on [Christ]” (John 8:30) through listening to such disputations. Following the pattern of Scripture, men of God such as the 17^th century Baptist pastor John Tombes[115] were “ready speaker[s] in public discussions,”^[116] engaging in the “honorable form” of not a few “public debate[s]”^[117]:

One such discussion took place in St. Mary’s Parish Church, Abergavenny, September 5th, 1653. The subject was “Believer’s Baptism,” and John Tombes disputed first with Henry Vaughan, then with John Cragge. Their arguments were afterward published. … Tombes … showed himself a most excellent disputant, a person of incomparable parts, well versed in the Hebrew and Greek languages. [Tombes also engaged in a] … similar debate with Baxter, [with the result that] … [a]ll scholars there and then present, who knew the way of disputing and managing arguments, did conclude that Tombes got the better of Baxter by far.^[118]

The result of Tombes’ debates were scores of people who had become Christ’s disciples by faith being added to the Baptist churches in the region by baptism.^[119] It is unlikely that an extensive argument is needed to convince those who have been present at such debates, whether with those outside of Christendom such as atheists or Muslims, or with members of false religions that identify as Christian, of the value of knowledge of the Biblical languages. This writer can think of many examples personally in such settings where the languages have been critical[120] in the defense of the truth and the refutation of error, along with comparable situations in the public disputations of other apologists. Similar considerations apply to written debates and other fora where truth and error publicly meet and contend.

Third, the Bible presents a pattern of personal evangelism both “publickly, and from house to house” (Acts 20:20).[121] Knowing the Biblical languages is both helpful for dealing with questions during times of street preaching and literature distribution and helpful in systematic house-to-house witnessing. Whether speaking to a skeptical and secular student who has been indoctrinated by his local university and thinks that the KJV cannot be trusted, or a Lutheran minister who misuses his own knowledge of Greek to argue for infants being saved at the moment of baptism, a Jew who employs Hebrew to deny that Jesus is the Messiah, a Muslim who claims Muhammad is predicted in Scripture, or a Mormon who claims that the Bible is “incorrectly translated” whenever it contradicts his religion, knowing Greek and Hebrew has many practical benefits in fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission to make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20; Mark 16:15).[122]

Fourth, knowledge of the Biblical languages helps Christians understand and defend the greatness of the Authorized, King James Version. For example, 1 Timothy 6:10a in the KJV declares: “For the love of money is the root of all evil,” translating the Greek ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστὶν ἡ φιλαργυρία (rhiza gar pantōn tōn kakōn estin hē philargyria). Modern versions tend to change the passage, affirming instead that love for money is “a root of all kinds of evil.”^[123] In a chapter on alleged mistranslations in the KJV, Reformed opponent of perfect preservation James White argues: “The Greek word for root does not have the article before it, hence the more literal translation would be the indefinite a root, not the definite the root.”^[124] Such an argument sounds superficially plausible, but the Christian who has studied Greek syntax is aware that in the type of construction found in 1 Timothy 6:10a, where the non-articular or anarthrous predicate nominative (“root”) comes before the subject of the sentence (“the love of money”), the “anarthrous pre-verbal PN [predicate nominative] is normally qualitative, sometimes definite, and only rarely indefinite”; indeed, studies of this Greek construction did not find even one absolutely conclusive instance of an indefinite pre-verbal predicate nominative in the New Testament.^[125] Rather than the translation “a root” being required by Greek, it is highly unlikely; “the root” is by far the more likely translational option.

In the Authorized Version, the model prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) begins with “Our Father” and ends with an expression of praise to Him:

οὕτως οὖν προσεύχεσθε ὑμεῖς· Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου· … καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ. ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας. ἀμήν.

houtōs oun proseuchesthe hymeis; Pater hēmōn ho en tois ouranois, hagiasthētō to onoma sou; … kai mē eisenegkēs hēmas eis peirasmon, alla rhysai hēmas apo tou ponērou. hoti sou estin hē basileia kai hē dynamis kai hē doxa eis tous aiōnas. amēn.

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. … And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matthew 6:9, 13).

Sadly, modern versions almost universally remove the doxology from the model prayer, although it is in approximately 98% of extant Greek manuscripts.[126] They also change the conclusion of what is left of the prayer after the omission of the doxology into a prayer for deliverance from the “evil one” (NIV, NKJV)[127] instead of “evil.” Christ’s disciples are no longer to end their prayers by giving glory to their Father for His eternal kingdom, power, and glory, but are to conclude with a focus on themselves; prayer must begin with “our Father,” but end with “the evil one,” the devil.[128] The Authorized Version teaches Christians to pray for deliverance from sinful evil in general—which includes the world and the flesh as well as the devil—and nicely balances the immediately preceding request for deliverance from “temptation.” Modern versions limit the request to deliverance from the devil. Arguing in favor of changing “deliver us from evil” to “deliver us from the evil one,” R. C. Sproul argues:

This petition is frequently translated and recited with these words: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The use of the word evil in this translation is not accurate, and it often causes a lot of misunderstanding. People come to all sorts of incorrect ideas about what “evil” means, but the original Greek makes the meaning perfectly clear.

In the Scriptures, in the New Testament Greek, the word for evil is poneron. The last two letters, [the suffix] –on, indicate something particular. In the Greek language, as in many languages, nouns can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. We sometimes do this even in English when we talk about ships or even cars and call them by feminine pronouns. Well, the –on ending puts this Greek word in the neuter form. In this form, it refers to evil in the abstract. But this is not the form in which the word appears in the Lord’s Prayer. Here, the Greek word is not poneron, it’s poneros—and the –os ending in the Greek indicates a masculine noun. Therefore, what Jesus is saying here is best translated not as “deliver us from evil” but as “deliver us from the evil one.” The New King James Version has it exactly right, for when the term poneros is used in the New Testament, it is a title specifically for Satan.^[129]

Similarly, Daniel Wallace argues:

Although the KJV renders [Matthew 6:13 as] “deliver us from evil,” the presence of the article indicates not evil in general, but the evil one himself. … This is one of the many passages mistranslated in the KJV: “deliver us from evil.” The prayer is not a request for deliverance from evil in general, but from the grasp of the evil one himself.^[130]

Sproul’s argument sounds convincing to someone who does not know Greek, and the student of Scripture who is limited to computer tools will note that the word “evil” in Matthew 6:13 is tagged as being masculine, not neuter, in both Accordance Bible Software and Logos Bible Software. However, an examination of the Greek text itself almost immediately clarifies that, contrary to Sproul’s affirmation, the form in Matthew 6:13 is neither the nominative singular masculine πονηρός (ponēros) nor the nominative singular neuter πονηρόν (ponēron) but the genitive singular πονηροῦ (ponērou)—a form which is identical in the masculine and neuter, and which occurs unambiguously in both the masculine (Matthew 13:38; 1 John 3:12) and the neuter (1 Thessalonians 5:22; 2 Timothy 4:8) elsewhere in the New Testament. That is, the Greek form in Matthew 6:13, considered on its own, could just as easily refer to “evil” in general or to “what is evil” as to the devil as an evil being. When Accordance and Logos tag the form as masculine rather than neuter, the software programs are not simply identifying Greek noun structure but are making an exegetical decision. Thus, even an elementary Greek student can quickly discover that Sproul’s argument is invalid.[131] Dr. Sproul seems to have made the rudimentary mistake of using the English text and Bible software without actually considering the Greek text itself, leading him to (undoubtedly unintentionally) preach a lie to his audience in the name of the Lord.

Daniel Wallace avoids Sproul’s rudimentary errors but argues for “the evil one” and against the translation of the KJV in a different way—he claims that “the presence of the article” proves that the passage refers to “the” evil one rather than to “evil in general.” Wallace’s argument may also seem initially plausible to one who is limited to the English language. However, Wallace’s grammar correctly quotes A. T. Robertson’s statement that the Greek article “often fails to correspond with the English idiom. … The vital thing is to see the matter from the Greek point of view and find the reason for the use of the article.”^[132] One cannot assume that English, which possesses both an indefinite article (“a”) and a definite article (“the”), uses its article in the same way as does the Greek language, which has only one article. What is more, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) Christ uses πονηρός (poneros) with the article two other times (Matthew 5:37, 39). In both passages a translation of “evil” fits perfectly, but the idea of “the evil one” does not work at all:

37 ἔστω δὲ ὁ λόγος ὑμῶν, ναὶ ναί, οὒ οὔ· τὸ δὲ περισσὸν τούτων ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ ἐστιν. … 39 ἐγὼ δὲ λέγω ὑμῖν μὴ ἀντιστῆναι τῷ πονηρῷ· ἀλλ’ ὅστις σε ῥαπίσει ἐπὶ τὴν δεξιάν σου σιαγόνα, στρέψον αὐτῷ καὶ τὴν ἄλλην·

37 estō de ho logos hymōn, nai nai, ou ou; to de perisson toutōn ek tou ponērou estin. … 39 egō de legō hymin mē antistēnai tō ponērō; all’ hostis se rhapisei epi tēn dexian sou siagona, strepson autō kai tēn allēn;

37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Clearly, Christ is not contradicting what His Spirit dictated to both James and Peter, that believers must “resist” the evil one, the devil (James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:8-9; both texts share the verb for “resist,” ἀνθίστημι, anthistēmi, with Matthew 5:39).[133] The immediate context provides a decisive confirmation of the translation of the KJV in Matthew 6:13. Furthermore, an examination of the uses of πονηρός (poneros) with the Greek article in the singular number in the LXX provides overwhelming majority support for the neuter sense of “evil” or for “what is evil.”[134] Texts such as: “[Y]e sinned in doing evil [ἡμάρτετε ποιῆσαι τὸ πονηρὸν, hēmartete poiēsai to ponēron] before the Lord God” (Deuteronomy 9:18, LXX) or “And the children of Israel wrought evil [ἐποίησαν οἱ υἱοὶ Ισραηλ τὸ πονηρὸν, epoiēsan hoi huioi Israēl to ponēron] before the Lord, and served Baalim” (Judges 2:11, LXX) are very common, while references to a demon as the “evil one” are very rare, and references to Satan in particular are entirely absent. Likewise an examination of the LXX for constructions comparable to Matthew 6:13’s ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ (apo tou ponērou), “from … evil,” indicates that the sense of “from what is evil” strongly predominates (Jonah 3:8; Jeremiah 18:11; 23:14; 25:5; 33:3; 42:15; 43:3; Ezekiel 13:22, etc.).[135] The baseline assumption for Christ’s original audience on the mountain would have been that the Lord’s expression in Matthew 6:13 meant “Deliver us from evil,” not “Deliver us from the evil one.” The translation of Matthew 6:13 in the King James Version is not only clearly defensible, but also is indubitably correct, as an examination of the Greek text indicates.

The student of the Biblical languages, instead of being swayed by dubious arguments that, misusing Greek and Hebrew, wish to persuade him to reject the KJV for modern versions, will both be able to understand the rationale behind the Authorized Version’s translational decisions and to explain and defend those decisions as he ministers to others. Knowing the languages, he will see the translators’ great wisdom and skill. He who receives God’s testimony to the perfect preservation of Scripture[136] will discover, again and again, that the KJV has excellent reasons for its translation choices, while its critics regularly come off the worse when they battle against it using the duller sword of modern Bible versions. He will understand why the definitive modern work on the Hebrew accent system by one of the leading Jewish authorities on cantillation states: “Translations from the Hebrew are taken from the King James Version.”[137] He will understand why leading scholars of New Testament and early patristic Greek place the Greek scholarship of the translators of the Authorized Version far above their own.[138] He will discover the superiority of the KJV on crucial Greek theological terms such as “only-begotten” (μονογενής, monogenēs).[139] He will see the fallacy of alleged Hebrew and Greek mistranslations in the KJV such as “God forbid.”[140] He will understand and be able to bless God for facts that even scholars who do not support the KJV today recognize:

[The KJV translators] were the best of the best that England possessed in regard to biblical knowledge and facility with the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. … [T]he King James style is as flexible and varied as what we find in the original text … because the King James translators accepted an essentially literal translation philosophy that preserved the stylistic range of the original text of the Bible. … [T]he style of the KJV is matchless, a blend of the simple and the majestic[.] … The most important translation in English [is] the King James Version, which … contain[s] the best of [earlier] translations. [T]he KJV is demonstrably the greatest English Bible ever[.]^[141]

Those who believe in the perfect preservation of Scripture, and consequently seek to understand and defend the King James Bible for English-speaking peoples, have strong reasons to master the Greek and Hebrew languages. Indeed, there are many priceless benefits for the defense of truth and refutation of error that arise from knowledge of the Biblical tongues.

Reasons Christians Can Learn Greek and Hebrew

Clearly, vast benefits and blessings await Christians who learn Greek and Hebrew. But are the languages learnable? Certainly they are. In relation to fulfilling God’s will, Scripture promises: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13). Nothing is too hard for the Almighty Jehovah (Genesis 18:14), His people’s strength and song (Exodus 15:2): “God is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect” (2 Samuel 22:33). In His hand “is power and might … to give strength unto all” (1 Chronicles 29:12). “[T]he God of Israel is he that giveth strength and power unto his people. Blessed be God” (Psalm 68:35). He helps His people fulfill even the seemingly hardest tasks that are in His will. As godly Caleb and Joshua encouraged Israel concerning their entry into the Promised Land, the Christian can say, “Let us go up at once … for we are well able” (Numbers 13:30)—the Lord is on the believer’s side, giving him sufficient strength for his kingdom service (Deuteronomy 33:25). “[I]f so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able … as the LORD said” (Joshua 14:12). Rather than fearing that the Biblical languages are too difficult, the Christian must remember that “the LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1). Jehovah “giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:29-31).

Rather than being afraid of his own weakness and inability, Christians can claim God’s promise: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isaiah 41:10). The languages may seem too hard to learn in one’s own strength, but Christ taught that “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). Believers should be accustomed to seeing their own inability, and the Triune God’s infinite ability, to profitably advance His kingdom and glory. They must recognize that Christ tells them: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness,” and each one must see that “when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10), being “strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might” (Ephesians 6:10).

If the languages seem difficult, let the believer remember: “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27). As in the Christian walk in general, in the holy work of learning the Biblical languages Christians are not “sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God” (2 Corinthians 3:5), and “God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). The Lord provides His gracious assistance to His needy people in fulfilling His will. Indeed, having prioritized God’s Word, the Christian seeking to learn Greek and Hebrew can plead promises such as, “Let thine hand help me; for I have chosen thy precepts” (Psalm 119:173) and “Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart” (Psalm 119:34). The Lord will help His beloved children understand the languages in which He gave them His revelation. They are not able only to barely squeak by, but can be “strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power,” resulting in enduring strength accompanied “with joyfulness” (Colossians 1:11). Challenges in learning Greek and Hebrew can be seen as opportunities to trust in and experience Christ’s strengthening grace by the Spirit. In learning the languages, as in all other aspects of God’s work, spiritual leaders can look to their Savior for enablement: “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry” (1 Timothy 1:12). Since even the most difficult tasks that are God’s will can be accomplished in His strength, Christians can learn the Biblical languages.

What is more, even the Spirit-dependent self-discipline and self-control that is involved in learning Greek and Hebrew contribute to one’s exercising himself unto godliness (1 Timothy 4:7; Galatians 5:23):

[T]he benefits of the languages for holy living are not limited to the ways they help us encounter God [in] his Word. Indeed, the arduous task itself of learning, keeping, and using the languages provides many opportunities for growth in character, discipline, boldness, and joy. … Our God, who is passionate for his own glory and our joy, calls people whose primary language is not Hebrew or Greek to handle his Word with care. The countless hours of memorizing, parsing, diagramming, and tracing the logical flow of thought are designed not only to help us grasp the biblical message but also to conform ourselves to it.[142]

Scripture provides verse after verse of condemnation of the fool (Proverbs 26:1-11), but then makes the shocking climactic statements that the one who is wise in his own eyes and so does not embrace God’s wisdom is worse than the fool (Proverbs 26:12), and that the lazy man is proud and is also worse than the fool (Proverbs 26:13-16). The disciplined effort involved in learning the Biblical languages should be part of the believer’s exercising himself unto godliness, mortifying or putting to death in the strength of the Spirit (Romans 8:13) the horrible evils of laziness and of a proud passionlessness for true wisdom. The sin of laziness does not just manifest itself in an unwillingness to do physical labor (Proverbs 24:30-34) but in a “refus[al] to labor” (Proverbs 21:25) in spiritual effort seeking God’s written wisdom and His personal Wisdom, Jesus Christ (Proverbs 26:13-16; 8:1-9:18). Such vices must be replaced with the Christ-like virtues of humble hard work, a recognition of the vastness of one’s ignorance, and a zealous hunger and thirst for true wisdom. The Christian who learns the Biblical languages rejects a self-satisfied and proud laziness that is satisfied with a lower level of knowledge of God to embrace linguistic effort as a means to conform him to the likeness of the constantly working Father and Son (John 5:17).

Thus, even if learning the languages is extremely difficult—indeed, impossible for unaided men—Christians can gain fluency with the help of the Almighty. But are the Biblical languages truly that difficult?

Consider, first, that Scripture is God’s revelation (Romans 16:25; Revelation 1:1). The Lord is not hiding Himself in Greek and Hebrew—He is showing, manifesting, disclosing Himself, “making [Himself] fully known.”[143] Ponder the days of Moses, Jehovah’s instrument through whom He brought Israel out of Egypt and revealed the Pentateuch. Israel’s King did not redeem to Himself a nation of mighty orators and credentialed scholars, but a motley crew of runaway slaves. These runaways were meant to understand the Hebrew Bible themselves and teach it to their children (Deuteronomy 6:1-7). They were meant to understand and put in practice Moses’ sermon—almost the entire book of Deuteronomy—when he preached it to them. Thus, God revealed Himself in the Hebrew Old Testament on a level that fugitive slaves can understand, and that the children of people who had little time to get an education because they were busy making bricks in the hot sun all day can understand, when illuminated by the Holy Spirit.[144] Similarly, the Greek New Testament is God’s final revelation, not His ultimate concealment. Not Christ and His Apostles, but Gnostic heretics taught that God’s revelation was intended and could be comprehended only by the elite few. The New Testament is a revelation designed specifically for all the saints and all the churches, containing the Father’s thoughts, given to His adopted children through the eternal Logos by the Spirit. If God would go to the flabbergasting length of uniting human nature to one of His three Persons to reveal Himself to mankind, surely He would make sure that the record of that revelation is something men can understand. Indeed, He has specifically told us that He has revealed Himself to babes and sucklings rather than the wise and prudent of this world (Matthew 11:25; 21:16). Christ said, in Greek, that such was the Father’s good pleasure—and the Greek New Testament is the infallible deposit of that infinitely glorious revelation for the babes, not the wise and prudent:

[N]ot many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are (1 Corinthians 1:26-28).

Jehovah wants those weak, lowly, and base ones whom He chooses to save to understand His revelation of Himself. His Hebrew and Greek speech is revelation. It is comprehensible.

Second, Biblical Hebrew and Greek were not highly challenging languages for only the elite few, but comprehensible languages of the common people, for century after century. For the 1,400 years between Moses and the Messiah, Jewish children learned the Hebrew of the Bible. Not only the runaway slaves of the first generation of the Israeli nation, but Jehovah’s overwhelmingly rural, simple, country people in Canaan were able to communicate fluently in the Hebrew tongue. If they could learn Hebrew fluently, there is no reason why the Lord’s people today cannot likewise learn Hebrew fluently. While work is certainly involved, for “learning … any language takes time and patience and a considerable amount of application,”^[145] Biblical “Hebrew is not a difficult language.”^[146] “Contrary to popular opinion, Hebrew is not a difficult language to learn. … Hebrew is no more difficult than any other language and is, indeed, a good deal simpler in its structure than most.”^[147] William Carey, the famous pioneer missionary to India, thought that “Greek is easier than” the native Indian language, “the Hebrew far easier than the Greek,” and “the combined difficulties of both are nothing” compared with what countless Indian nationals had already overcome in acquiring their native language.[148] The language in which God revealed the Old Testament is a comprehensible, learnable, attainable language.[149]

What is more, Koine Greek was a Weltsprache—a world language.^[150] Koine is the “simpler”^[151] language, easier than the Greek of classical Athens, that people learned after Alexander the Great conquered the known world. For centuries, vast numbers of little children and people with a limited education learned Greek. Many ancient people picked up Greek as a second language, just as the native English speaker today learns New Testament Greek. Indeed, “the majority of [Koine] Greek-speakers learned it as a second language.”^[152] This fact should encourage the student of Koine Greek today, for “any language which aspires to be a Weltsprache (world-language)” must be one which “the foreigner in his hurry and without contact with natives” can “master.”^[153] If busy farmers, merchants, tradesmen, and servants, all of whom were raised speaking a different language at home, could learn the Greek language, then busy people today—with jobs to work, kids to raise, and bills to pay—can learn Biblical Greek.

Indeed, considering the several levels of difficulty within extant Koine, the New Testament is not difficult Greek. The Greek of Scripture approximates to conversational Greek—the level of a sermon designed to reach all people, rather than to that of a work composed only for a literary elite. The New Testament is easier Greek than one finds in Josephus, Philo, or Plutarch, and much simpler than the Greek of Atticizing writers like Lucian or Dio Chrysostom.[154] There is a range, from the very simple (yet how profound!) Greek in the Gospel of John and 1 John to a greater complexity in Luke and Hebrews, but the inspired whole is still quite simple Greek. God wanted children, commoners without much formal education, slaves in early churches, and busy housewives to understand His Word. The Gospels are the Greek record of the messages of the Savior’s preaching, preaching that was comprehensible to the common folk in the land of Israel. The human instruments of the composition of the New Testament were not only scholars like Paul—who wrote more simply under the control of the Holy Spirit than he might have done otherwise—but also fishermen like Peter and John. Clearly, New Testament Greek is not too hard—simple people can learn and be transformed by it. In the words of the author of a widely used grammar of New Testament Greek:[155] “The Greek of the New Testament is by no means a difficult language; a very fair knowledge of it may be acquired by any minister of average intelligence.”[156]

Third, everyone who is reading this study has already achieved fluency in a language that is harder than New Testament Greek or Old Testament Hebrew—English. There are numbers of reasons why Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek are easier than modern English. English is a very “chaotic” language (or should that be “kaotic”?). It has rules like “I before e except after c,” that are full of weird (or should that be “wierd”?) exceptions. While “[n]ative English speakers” know what to do in the challenging language they have already mastered, “those learning English as a second language must consciously decide the process” for matters like “transformations of the verb … and often hurl accusations of illogic against the whole [English] language system.”^[157] Hebrew is easier:

Those who teach Biblical Hebrew usually insist that the student will more quickly learn to read in his Hebrew Testament than in German, [classical] Greek, or Latin literature. This claim is not without foundation, for the grammatical structure of Hebrew is comparatively simple, and furthermore there is a regularity in the language which makes it unnecessary for the student who understands its phonetic principles to rely on an analytical lexicon or to memorize the principal parts of a long list of irregular verbs.^[158]

Likewise, New Testament Greek is very regular—a wonderful contrast with English. “Greek is not an irregular language. It is tremendously regular,”^[159] much “more regular in both forms and syntax … [than] English.”^[160] “Part of the beauty of the Greek language is that it is so regular.”^[161] Thus, those who have already learned the difficult language of English should be able to learn the comparatively easy languages of Biblical Hebrew and Greek.

Vocabulary also illustrates that the Greek of the New Testament is not too hard. The average native English-speaker has a vocabulary of around 20,000-40,000 words. The average eight-year-old has a vocabulary of around 10,000 words; and the average 4-year-old, a vocabulary of around 5,000 words.[162] According to Accordance Bible Software, the Greek Textus Receptus has only 5,440 different vocabulary words covering the 140,793 inspired words in the New Testament. That is, to learn by heart every single vocabulary word in the New Testament involves learning only about as many vocabulary words as the average 4-year-old knows. The most widely-used modern textbook for learning New Testament Greek notes:

[T]here are only 313 words (5.78% of the total number [in the New Testament]) that occur 50 times or more. [Combined with six more words which] … occur less than fifty times … [but] should be learned for] special reasons[,] [t]hese 319 words account for 114,069 word occurrences, or 80.57% of the total word count, four out of five. … The point is that if you learn these 319 words well, you can read the bulk of the New Testament. … 319 words are not very many. Most introductory textbooks for other languages have about 2,000 words.^[163]

Does a Christian wish to master of all the vocabulary in the most popular modern first year Greek textbook? He only needs to learn the equivalent of around 7% of the English vocabulary that he knew when he was four years old. Learning Greek is not too hard!

Since the New Testament is approximately one-third as large as the Old Testament, one should not be surprised that the Hebrew Bible contains more vocabulary words than does God’s revelation in Greek. God has revealed Himself to His people in approximately 419,687 Hebrew words,^[164] containing 8,679 unique vocabulary words—far fewer words than the average vocabulary of a typical eight-year-old! But one does not need to learn nearly this many words in order to do quite well in the Old Testament. “Biblical Hebrew has a comparatively small working vocabulary. … To know thoroughly a dozen chapters is to acquire a vocabulary which has a wide usefulness.”^[165] There are only 418 words that occur more than 100 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Furthermore:^[166]

Students who master the 641 words that occur fifty or more times will be able to recognize over 80% of all words. Finally, those who are brave enough to master all 1,903 words … Hebrew words (excluding proper nouns) that occur ten or more times … will be equipped to recognize almost 90% of all words that occur in the Hebrew Old Testament. In other words, memorization of only 22% of the total stock of Hebrew vocabulary (1903 out of 8679 total lexical items) will enable a student to recognize 90% of all words appearing in the Hebrew Bible. The remaining 6,776 lexical items occur only 49,914 total times, a figure significantly less than the number of occurrences of the Hebrew conjunction וְ (and).^[167]

To know more than 80% of the vocabulary words of the Old Testament, one needs to learn only 641 words—slightly above 12% of the words he knew in English at the age of four! Ninety percent of God’s Word in Hebrew requires merely 38% of the vocabulary of a four-year old child. Of course, learning a language involves more than simply acquiring vocabulary, and mastering Greek and Hebrew takes work—real work. Nevertheless, these facts about Biblical vocabulary illustrate that learning Biblical Greek and Hebrew are far from impossible tasks. Not only in translation, but also in the original tongues Scripture is not hidden and far off, but near and accessible, that it may be “in thy mouth and in thy heart” (Romans 10:5-7; Deuteronomy 31:11-14).

The main reason native English speakers usually do not think of English as a difficult language, while they tend to assume that learning Greek and Hebrew is hard, is that in English the task is already complete—fluency has been achieved, and native English speakers simply utilize and enjoy the value of their accomplishment daily while rarely to never considering it. Since, to them, English is perfectly natural, they assume learning it is easy. Christians who are approaching the Bible in its original languages for the first time do not see Greek and Hebrew as perfectly natural, so they easily assume the tongues are very difficult. But since learning the Greek of the New Testament is much easier than learning the level of English that the overwhelming majority of those who read this article already have achieved, and learning the Hebrew of the Old Testament is also a much smaller task than has already been accomplished in English, instead of thinking “learning Hebrew and Greek is hard!” he should think: “Learning English is hard!—But I have already learned English, so I can learn Greek and Hebrew!”

It likewise deserves mention that Greek and Hebrew are not as different from English as one might initially suspect. In the past, many American children were encouraged to learn Latin as a method of mastering their own native tongue, based on facts such as that a “higher percentage of English words are derived from Latin than from any other source.”^[168] However, pioneer English Bible translator and martyr William Tyndale noted:

[T]he Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin. And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin. The manner of speaking is both one; so that in a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into the English, word for word; when thou must seek a compass in the Latin, and yet shall have much work to translate it well-favouredly, so that it have the same grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding with it in the Latin, and as it hath in the Hebrew. A thousand parts better may it be translated into the English, than into the Latin.^[169]

Hebrew grammars note that “the Hebrew system … presents many similarities to the English, so many, in fact, that it is important for students to bear in mind the many differences between the languages.”^[170] Likewise, “English grammars [are] very similar to the ancient Greek … grammars continuing the tradition of systematizing English according to the eight parts of speech.”^[171] Mounce’s widely-used introductory Greek grammar introduces many chapters with “a discussion of English grammar,” something possible and pedagogically helpful only because of the “many similarities between the two languages.”^[172] Numbers of other introductory Greek grammars likewise exploit the many similarities between the English and Greek languages, based on the “assumption … that Greek grammar and English grammar are sufficiently similar … that learning English provides the suitable linguistic basis for learning … Greek.”^[173] The English-speaker who understands his own native tongue well has already significantly simplified the steps to learning Greek and Hebrew.

In sharp contrast with Muslim claims about the Quran,[174] the tremendous difficulties involved in learning the original of the Sikh Granath Sahib,[175] and comparable difficulties for other uninspired religious texts, God has made His Word “easy of translation,”^[176] in order that “the Old Testament in Hebrew … and the New Testament in Greek … [might] be translated into the vulgar language of every Nation, unto which they come, that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner, and through patience and comfort of the Scriptures may have hope.”[177] Thus:

[T]he language of the OT is one extremely easy of translation into foreign tongues without loss of meaning or rhythm. … Hence the Psalms, for example, are [comparably] fine in their German or English versions [to what] they are in the original. Where the OT has been translated into the language of the country, it has become a classic. The English Bible is [at least] as important for the study of the English language as are the plays of Shakespeare.^[178]

God made His Greek and Hebrew revelation easy to translate and powerful when translated. Mastering the Biblical tongues certainly takes work—one cannot just open a Greek grammar, put his head down on a page, and take a nap, waiting for the contents of its pages to seep into his brain by osmosis. However, the task before the Christian who wants to learn the Biblical languages is eminently attainable.

The attainability of Biblical Greek and Hebrew may be illustrated from the example of luminaries of Christian history, many of whom taught themselves the Biblical languages without an instructor or any of the modern helps that greatly assist language learning. The famous English Baptist John Gill, “the first Baptist to develop a complete systematic theology and also the first Baptist to write a verse-by-verse commentary on the entire Bible,”^[179] “had read through the entire Greek New Testament … [b]y the age of ten[.] … Thereafter, he taught himself Hebrew with the aid of a secondhand grammar and lexicon he had acquired.”^[180] If Gill could fluently read the Greek New Testament at ten, a modern college student can fluently read it at age twenty. The famous Baptist missionary William Carey taught himself Greek and Hebrew while holding a secular job as a shoemaker and pastoring a church that could not afford to support the Careys’ financial needs.[181] The influential evangelical scholar and preacher W. H Griffith-Thomas was forced to drop out of school “before entering college, in order to earn a living working with his stepfather’s brother in London. … Thomas taught himself New Testament Greek by studying between 10:30 P.M. and 2:00 A.M. daily for three years”^[182] Despite many commitments in Christ’s service, he read his Greek New Testament daily from the date he entered the ministry until the day he entered heaven.^[183] Although slavery was legal in America and black people faced intense discrimination and prejudice, “mid-eighteenth-century pastor and bishop [Daniel] Payne was so dedicated to the inspiration and authority of Scripture that he taught himself Greek and Hebrew at a time when educational opportunities for African Americans were extremely limited.”^[184] The story of John Brown of Haddington is likewise inspirational:

There are few stories more thrilling than the simple narrative of John Brown of Haddington, as he came to be called. … John Brown, who became the greatest preacher and scholar of his people during this period … [possessed a] marvellous zeal … for acquiring knowledge. … His father was in winter a weaver of flax on the little farm and a fisher of salmon in the summer. He had taught himself to read and had current religious literature in his little home. Thus the son formed a taste for good reading. … When a school was held, it might be [in] a cowshed, a stable, a family vault, or a hovel. John Brown had a few months in a school like this, but the fire was kindled in his mind and soul that was to become a great light. He … [had only] a very few quarters at school, for reading, writing, and arithmetic[.] … [His] father dying about the eleventh year of [his] age and [his] mother soon after, [he] was left a poor orphan, who had almost nothing to depend on, but the providence of God. … In his twelfth year he was converted. He became the herd-boy for John Ogilvie for several years on the sheep farm of Mieckle Bein. … Young John Brown borrowed what Latin books he could and used them so well that he mastered the language. He had two hours at noon each day for rest. But he used this time to [learn] Latin[.] …

Latin led to Greek, but in a curious way. He hesitated to ask help about the Greek, as it was not so commonly known as Latin. So he took an old Latin grammar, his copy of Ovid, and went to work to find out the Greek alphabet by the use of the proper names in the genealogies of Christ in Matthew and Luke. This was the key to unlock the door between Latin and Greek. He had borrowed a copy of the Greek New Testament and kept on his comparative study till he learned the sounds of the Greek letters. He learned the meanings of the words by comparing short ones with the English translation. He made comparisons of the endings with the Latin and thus made a rough grammar for himself. Now and then he would ask questions of a Mr. Reid in the neighborhood.

He became anxious to get for himself a copy of the Greek New Testament. It was twenty-four miles to St. Andrews, where there was a copy to be had. He got his friend, Henry Ferney, to look after his flock, and set out one evening for St. Andrews and arrived there next morning. This was in 1738, and he was only sixteen. He was footsore and weary and found the book store of Alexander McCulloch.

Going in, he startled the shopman by asking for a Greek New Testament. He was a very raw-looking lad at the time, his clothes were rough, homespun, and ragged, and his feet were bare. “What would YOU do wi’ that book? You’ll no can read it,’ said the book-seller. “I’ll try to read it,” was the humble answer of the would-be purchaser. Meanwhile some of the professors had come into the shop, and, nearing the table, and surveying the youth, questioned him closely as to what he was, where he came from, and who had taught him. Then one of them, not unlikely Francis Pringle, then Professor of Greek, asked the bookseller to bring a Greek New Testament, and throwing it down on the counter, said: “Boy, if you can read that book, you shall have it for nothing.” He took it up eagerly, read a passage to the astonishment of those in the shop, and marched out with the gift, so worthily won in triumph. By the afternoon, he was back at duty on the hills of Abernethy, studying his New Testament the while, in the midst of his flock[.] This simple narrative is eloquent in its portrayal of the determination of the poor shepherd boy of Abernethy to know the Greek New Testament. This very copy of the Greek New Testament, a precious heirloom, has been handed down to the fifth John Brown in lineal descent of Greenhill Place, Edinburgh. … John Brown added Hebrew to his Latin and Greek[.] … [T]he young man fought his way on as peddler, soldier, schoolmaster, divinity student, and finally pastor at Haddington, theological professor and great scholar and author.

[His] story … puts to rout all the flimsy excuses of preachers today who excuse themselves for ignorance of the Greek New Testament or for indifference and neglect after learning how to read it. Any man today can learn to read the Greek New Testament if he wants to do it. There are schools in plenty within easy reach of all. But if circumstances close one’s path to the school, there are books in plenty and cheap enough for all. No one today has to make his own grammar and lexicon of the Greek New Testament or go without a teacher … [in order to] go on to the mastery of the noblest of all languages and the greatest of all books. Indeed, today one actually hears of young ministers who rebel against having to study books that help them learn the Greek New Testament, and who regard their teachers as task-masters instead of helpers. The example of John Brown of Haddington ought to bring the blush of shame to every minister who lets his Greek New Testament lie unopened on his desk or who is too careless to consult the lexicon and the grammar that he may enrich his mind and refresh his soul with the rich stores in the Greek that no translation can open to him. Difficulties reveal heroes and cowards. Every war does precisely that. The Greek New Testament is a standing challenge to every preacher in the world.[185]

A “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) in the Christian world testify that it is possible to learn Greek and Hebrew, despite the greatest hardships, and even without (the extremely valuable aids) of a teacher or even a grammar book.

“If someone who speaks three languages is trilingual, and someone who speaks two languages is bilingual, what do you call someone who speaks one language? An American.”[186] Unfortunately, there is too much truth in this generalization—but it need not be so. The land of Christ was one where many followers of the true God and people in general knew three languages—Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic—while some knew four tongues, adding Latin to the mix. “Greek served as the official and international commercial language, Hebrew was the religious language of Torah and worship, and Aramaic was the popular, vernacular dialect among indigenous people, particularly in the villages and rural areas.”^[187] “Roman officials” and those who worked with them would also have known “Latin.”^[188] Furthermore, modern nations from Switzerland and Belgium to the Seychelles and Mauritania are officially trilingual, while fifty-five modern nations are officially bilingual.[189] There is no reason why many Jews in Christ’s day could know three or even four languages, and vast numbers of modern people worldwide are trilingual or bilingual, but English-speaking Christians in true churches—who have the omnipotent Spirit within them to help them—cannot learn Greek or Hebrew.

Learning the Biblical languages is not only valuable, but very possible. Reading, understanding, loving, teaching, and preaching the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament is an attainable, practical, reasonable goal. Not just the elite scholar, but also the believer with ordinary or even below average intelligence can, through the aid of the Holy Spirit in conjunction with his diligence, learn the Biblical languages.

Answers to Objections: An Examination of Reasons Not to Learn Greek and Hebrew

and Reasons Why Learning the Languages Is (Allegedly) Not Possible

1.) “Greek letters look different from English ones! Hebrew letters, even more so! Greek and Hebrew must be hard languages!”

This writer has had students who have neglected to put in the work required for learning Greek or Hebrew and have dropped out. But he has never had a student who was unable to learn the alphabet. Just about anyone can learn the Greek alphabet, just like little children in Greece can. If toddlers in Israel can learn the Hebrew alphabet, so can grown-up students of Scripture. “Hebrew is not a difficult language to learn. It has the obvious initial impediment of a strange script and a direction of writing—from right to left—which is unfamiliar to [English speakers]. But once these difficulties have been surmounted, Hebrew is no more difficult than any other language.”^[190] What is more, large numbers of foreign-born Jews, some highly educated and others barely educated, immigrate to Israel every year. As part of the process of assimilation, the Israeli government requires them to learn Hebrew. The number of immigrants who are unable to learn the alphabet is either zero or approaches zero. If they can learn the Hebrew alphabet so that they can get jobs and make money, students of God’s holy Word can learn Hebrew to better know Him.

Furthermore, the English alphabet is related to the Greek alphabet, which is itself related to the Hebrew alphabet:

[One who has] already learned the Greek alphabet …. will note some similarities with Hebrew, because both the Greeks and the Israelites [are related to the] alphabet [of] the Phoenicians. The Greeks simply converted into vowels some of the Semitic letters that represented sounds that the Greeks didn’t use and added a few extras for Greek sounds not represented in Hebrew. We in turn get the English alphabet from the Greeks through Latin. [Note the] similarities in order and in the names of the Greek letters.^[191]

When one learns the Greek and Hebrew alphabet he is learning, not the radically different language of aliens from Mars, but the venerable alphabet of his linguistic grandparents and great-grandparents. He is learning the alphabet of relatives and friends, not aliens and enemies.

Furthermore, once one has learned the Biblical scripts, the way the letters look is no longer a problem. The 21^st century American thinks that Hebrew letters look strange, while Baruch, Jeremiah’s 6^th century B. C. scribe, would have thought the same thing of English letters. There is nothing categorically harder in learning the alphabet for the Biblical languages than there is in learning the English alphabet—and if someone is reading this, he must have figured the English alphabet out already, no?

2.) “Learning Greek and Hebrew is dangerous: such knowledge makes the person who knows the languages proud.”

There is no reason that learning God’s Word better—which is what one is doing when he learns Greek or Hebrew—should make him proud. Is there any evidence that the godly martyr and Bible translator William Tyndale was proud because he knew Greek very, very well? Readers may know missionaries who were involved in a Bible translation into a native tribal language—if they do, they will almost certainly find out that such translators are godly and humble people who have sacrificed tremendously for the Lord Jesus Christ. Did learning Greek and Hebrew make these men proud, or are they godly and humble Christian servants? A Bible translator has the inestimable privilege of engaging in extremely carefully study of God’s words so that he may render God’s very speech—sentences that are the breath of God, and the communication of the mind of God—into a receptor language. Should not the privilege of such an intimate study of God’s Word, and the immeasurable privilege of providing His revelation to others for Jehovah’s glory and their good, lead one to fall on his face and cry in deepest humility, “Who am I, O Lord GOD?” (2 Samuel 7:18)—not make one proud? If so, should not the study of Greek and Hebrew passages of Scripture in a Biblical language class for the purpose of learning and translating them do the same—for are they not the same ineffably powerful words?

Rather than the Biblical languages making people proud, on the contrary, the better Christians know the exalted, glorious God—the God who is known through His revealed Word, the God who revealed Himself in Hebrew and has sent down from heaven His final revelation before Christ’s return in Greek—the more humble they will be. Of course, sin has the terrible ability to infect and corrupt even the most holy and righteous endeavors. Learning the English Bible well, or memorizing large amounts of Scripture, or gaining skill in effectively using the Bible in evangelism with false religions or cults, or dressing modestly, or spending much time in prayer and fasting, or being raised in a godly Christian home, or preaching powerful messages that the Spirit blesses in a great way, can all, through the terrible power of indwelling sin, lead someone to pride. Should Christians therefore refrain from learning the Bible well in English, or from memorizing Scripture, or from learning how to skillfully refute error and defend truth, or from prayer? Should they dress immodestly to avoid becoming proud from wearing modest clothing, or discourage parents from having godly homes so that their children do not become proud over their godly heritage? Should they refrain from seeking the Spirit’s blessing on their preaching and teaching? Of course not. No more should Christians refrain from learning Greek and Hebrew, even if one grants (for the sake of argument) that learning the languages tends to make people proud.

While Scripture never warns that learning the original languages of the Bible will make one proud, it does warn that the pastoral office lends itself to a special temptation to pride and therefore warns that the overseer must not be “a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:6). If pastors can be tempted towards pride in a special way, should godly men shun the leading of the Spirit and the direction of their churches into the office of the overseer? Clearly not. The argument that one should refrain from learning Greek and Hebrew because the languages make people proud has no merit.

3.) “Learning Greek and Hebrew is too hard.”

The idea that learning the Biblical languages is too difficult has already been examined above. Learning the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament is emphatically not too hard. However, if (for the sake of argument) one were to concede that learning the languages is indeed very hard, where does Christ say that following Him is going to be easy? Does He not rather say: “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34)? Christ calls every one of His people to be willing to suffer shame, torture, and a painful death for Him. Compared to the persecution of cross-bearing, learning Greek and Hebrew is extremely easy. So if the Father has decreed that “all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12), and He is likewise pleased by some of His servants and sons learning the Biblical languages, does it matter if fulfilling His will is difficult?

If one were given the option of learning Greek or getting beaten, whipped, and then suffering a lingering and excruciatingly painful death by crucifixion, who would not prefer to go to a comfy chair at home or in the library, sip a refreshing glass of juice or ice water, and do some translating and memorizing? Yet Christ calls His people to take up the cross and follow Him. Daily cross-bearing is hard—learning a language, by comparison, vastly less so. Yet however hard the task, the Christian can rejoice that “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

4.) “Greek and Hebrew can be abused.”

Yes, of course people can—and do—commit the great sin of misusing the glorious Greek and Hebrew words that God revealed in Scripture. But people also abuse their vernacular Bible all the time.[192] The official English Bible of the Mormons is the King James Version,[193] which they grossly abuse as they attempt to prove their terrible heresies. Should Christians stop using the KJV because the Mormons abuse it? The world, the flesh, and the devil do not seek to twist the Bible only in Greek and Hebrew; they will try to misuse the Bible in any language.

Indeed, knowledge of Greek and Hebrew plays “a key role in preventing interpretive mistakes … [and] disprov[ing] heretical ideas. … [P]roficiency in the biblical languages provides the framework that promotes responsibility in the handling of the text.”^[194] Knowing the Biblical languages contributes tremendously to reducing the sinful abuse and misuse of the inspired text of Scripture, and to greatly increasing powerful, rightly-divided (2 Timothy 2:15) preaching and teaching of God’s holy Word.

5.) “I do not have time to learn Greek and Hebrew—I am too busy preparing for ministry or too busy, already serving in the ministry.”

Unless one is going to sinfully save time (or would it be better to say, “misuse time”?) by not studying Scripture carefully, knowing Greek and Hebrew actually saves time in the long-term. Without knowing Greek and Hebrew, a teacher will either have to settle for an impoverished understanding of Scripture or have to spend vastly more time in order to attempt to reach a level of comprehension attained much more quickly by those who know the languages:

Learning Greek well enough to use it effectively … save[s] time in sermon or teaching preparation. The danger of relying on commentaries is that they often do not agree at certain points. Thus, when preparing a message, the pastor is often compelled to read commentary after commentary to make sure something is not missed. Instead of reading the opinions of others, it would be better—and much quicker—for pastors to be like the Bereans and check the Scriptures for themselves to see whether these things are so (Acts 17:10–15).^[195]

The time-saving value of knowing the languages has been recognized for many years. Centuries ago, the Reformers recognized that some time studying the original language would enable the interpreter to understand Scripture much better than a great deal of time studying the available patristic commentaries, which often erred through their authors’ ignorance of Greek and Hebrew:

[It is a foolish] undertaking to attempt to gain an understanding of Scripture by laboring through the commentaries of the fathers and a multitude of books and glosses. Instead of this, people should have devoted themselves to the languages. Because they were ignorant of languages, the dear fathers at times expended many words in dealing with a text. Yet when they were all done they had scarcely taken its measure; they were half right and half wrong. Still, you continue to pore over them with immense labor even though, if you knew the languages, you could get further with the passage than they whom you are following. As sunshine is to shadow, so is the language itself compared to all the glosses of the fathers.

Since it becomes Christians then to make good use of the Holy Scriptures as their one and only book and it is a sin and a shame not to know our own book or to understand the speech and words of our God, it is a still greater sin and loss that we do not study languages, especially in these days when God is offering and giving us people and books and every facility and inducement to this study, and desires the Bible to be an open book. O how happy the dear fathers would have been if they had had our opportunity to study the languages and come thus prepared to the Holy Scriptures! What great toil and effort it cost them to gather up a few crumbs, while we with half the labor—yes, almost without any labor at all—can acquire the whole loaf!^[196]

In other words: “[L]earn[ing] the languages … sav[es] … countless hours of exertion and frustration. One hour with the text is worth ten in secondary literature.”^[197] Perhaps it would be better for people studying for the ministry to say: “I don’t have time not to learn Greek and Hebrew.”

6.) “The many computer tools and other study helps available today make knowledge of the original languages superfluous.”

This objection has already been dealt with above—computer tools, while very valuable, do not enable one to understand many of the technical details of the inspired words God has given His people. Furthermore, someone who does not understand the original languages is more likely to misunderstand and misinterpret the data computer tools provide for him:

There are many ancient language tools available today that are incredible, time-saving devices. But placing such tools in the hands of someone with minimal knowledge of Greek may be like giving a chainsaw to a little toddler. High-powered tools are dangerous without sufficient knowledge about the subject—whether it is cutting wood or exegeting Greek. Before the available tools will profit you, you must become familiar with the subject. Otherwise instead of cutting straight God’s words with precision, you may be horrendously hacking them with a chainsaw.^[198]

Computer software and other study tools are wonderful gifts from God, and churches should utilize them to the fullest. But computers and other study tools by no means eliminate the immense value of personally knowing the original languages.

7.) “People have gone to big-name seminaries, learned Greek and Hebrew, and come back full of doctrinal compromise.”

Tragically, this certainly has happened. But is that the fault of the Greek and Hebrew, or the fault of the compromise and disobedience to Scripture in the big-name seminary, combined with the sinful inclinations that remain, before heaven, within even the godliest Christian’s heart (cf. Romans 7:14-25)? People have also gone to big-name seminaries, eaten breakfast regularly, and come back full of doctrinal compromise. Should everyone skip breakfast? Judas heard many sermons from Christ, learned countless practical facts and theoretical truths from Him, and was very close to Him during His earthly ministry. Should the Divine Teacher in Christ’s school for ministry be blamed for the actions of Judas?

Everyone must follow what Scripture teaches about ecclesiastical and personal separation (Romans 16:17 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1; Ephesians 5:11; 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 14) and follow the Biblical model of getting their training for God’s work in God’s church (Matthew 28:18-20; 1 Timothy 3:15) where “no other doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3) is allowed besides that of Christ and the Apostles. When this sort of God-glorifying methodology is followed, learning the languages in which God perfectly and infallibly revealed His mind will not at all contribute to greater spiritual weakness. On the contrary, it will contribute powerfully to greater spiritual strength, greater fervent zeal to militantly fight for all the faith (Jude 3), and greater ability to serve in and advance Christ’s kingdom.

8.) “There have been godly servants of the Lord who never learned the Biblical languages.”

Certainly there have been vast numbers of godly saints who never learned Greek or Hebrew. Who would think of denying this fact, or fail to thank God for such precious children of the Most High? There have also been godly servants of Jehovah who Christ was pleased to use despite their having almost no education at all. There have been godly servants of the Lord who never learned to read or write. This writer thanks God for the faithful Christian service of a blind man in his church who, despite being unable to read because of his handicap, listens to an audio Bible, is faithful to services, joins the church in prayer, and has spent many hours helping his seeing brethren in house-to-house evangelism and assisting while others engage in street preaching. What is more, there have even been people who were not upright in heart, but were stubborn and rebellious, and yet God greatly used them—an unwilling Jonah who hated the Ninevites was the human instrumentality for what is likely the greatest revival in the entire history of the Assyrian nation (Jonah 1-4). The question is not whether God has graciously glorified Himself using such people, but whether God used people because of their inability to read or write, because of their almost total lack of education, or because of their inability to understand Greek or Hebrew, or even because of their stubbornness and rebelliousness, or rather despite their lack of education, training, or even stubborn rebelliousness. When Scripture requires church overseers to painstakingly study Scripture and also be “apt to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2), is not the answer to such a question very clear?

9.) “I have heard that learning the Biblical languages was useless.”

This writer has never run into anyone who, knowing the Biblical languages well, says that they are useless—such statements seem to be made only by people who do not know Greek and Hebrew.[199] The testimony to the contrary among those who know the languages is either universal or almost so: “Every scientific [careful and technical] student of the New Testament without exception knows that Greek is really necessary to his work.”[200] “I have never met anyone who, having learned Greek well, said it was a waste of time or unproductive.”^[201] Someone who claims the original tongues have no value should be asked: “Do you claim that Hebrew and Greek are useless for understanding the Bible because of your experience and in-depth study of those languages, or are you making that claim from a position of ignorance?”

10.) “Learning Greek and Hebrew undermines the King James Version.”

Why? Does this objection implicitly assume that the English translation choices of the KJV cannot be defended, and that learning Greek and Hebrew will, therefore, lead one to despise the Authorized Version? If so, who is undermining the KJV with his presuppositions? In the King James Version, the Lord Jesus Christ refers to “jots” and “tittles”—Hebrew letters—and promises that the Hebrew text and its message would not pass away, although heaven and earth would do so (Matthew 5:18-19; 24:35). Someone who believes in the KJV must follow Christ and His view of the perfect preservation and eternal value of the Hebrew language. Furthermore, the 1611 marginal notes in the Authorized Version, which are very useful and are still reprinted in editions of the KJV from the Trinitarian Bible Society and some other publishers, make statements such as: “the word in the original signifieth” (Matthew 5:15 marginal note); “in the original …” (Matthew 10:29); “in the original, [the Greek reads] with the fist” (Mark 7:3); “sorrows: The word in the original, importeth, the pains of a woman in travail” (Mark 13:8; see also Matthew 17:24; Mark 4:21; Luke 16:6-7). The preface to the KJV calls “the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek of the New … the two golden pipes, or rather conduits, where-through the olive branches empty themselves into the gold … truth be tried by these tongues.”^[202] The KJV translators would be shocked to discover that anyone was using their blessed translation to undermine the study of Greek or Hebrew. They, and just about all the non-Catholics in the Christendom of their day, would have viewed the denigration of Greek and Hebrew in favor of a translated Bible as a Catholic dogma that undermined the gospel. They would have agreed with Luther:

In proportion then as we value the gospel, let us zealously hold to the languages. For it was not without purpose that God caused the Scriptures to be set down in these two languages alone—the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New in Greek. Now if God did not despise them but chose them above all others for his word, then we too ought to honor them above all others. St. Paul declared it to be the peculiar glory and distinction of Hebrew that God’s word was given in that language, when he [wrote] Romans 3[:1–2] … Hence, too, the Hebrew language is called sacred. … Similarly, the Greek language too may be called sacred, because it was chosen above all others as the language in which the New Testament was to be written, and because by it other languages too have been sanctified as it spilled over into them like a fountain through the medium of translation.

And let us be sure of this: we will not long preserve the gospel without the languages. The languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit [Eph. 6:17] is contained; they are the casket in which this jewel is enshrined; they are the vessel in which this wine is held; they are the pantry in which this food is stored … they are the baskets in which are kept these loaves and fishes and fragments. If through our neglect we let the languages go (which God forbid!), we shall … lose the gospel[.] … it is inevitable that unless the languages remain, the gospel must finally perish.

Experience too has proved this and still gives evidence of it. For as soon as the languages declined to the vanishing point, after the apostolic age, the gospel and faith and Christianity itself declined more and more until under the pope they disappeared entirely. After the decline of the languages Christianity witnessed little that was worth anything; instead, a great many dreadful abominations arose because of ignorance of the languages. On the other hand, now that the languages have been revived, they are bringing with them so bright a light and accomplishing such great things that the whole world stands amazed and has to acknowledge that we have the gospel just as pure and undefiled as the apostles had it, that it has been wholly restored to its original purity, far beyond what it was in the days of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. In short, the Holy Spirit is no fool. He does not busy himself with inconsequential or useless matters. He regarded the languages as so useful and necessary to Christianity that he often brought them down with him from heaven.[203]

Luther stated that, if he had not learned the Biblical languages, he would never have attacked and separated from Roman Catholicism: “[I]f the languages had not helped me and given me a sure and certain knowledge of Scripture … I should have left undisturbed the pope, the sophists, and the whole anti-Christian regime. … Holy Scripture and the languages leave the Devil little room on earth, and wreak havoc in his kingdom.”^[204] The importance of the original languages appear as early as the first five of Luther’s 95 Theses, which argue that the Greek verb μετανοέω (metanoeō) means “repent” and is mistranslated and misinterpreted in the Latin Vulgate’s poenitentiam agite, “do penance.” Therefore, the New Testament commands to “repent” “cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.”^[205] Historians recognize that the revival of the knowledge of Biblical Hebrew and Greek was an indispensable element in the destruction of the tyranny of medieval Roman Catholicism and the rise of the Reformation: “[T]he Reformers went back to the sacred Scriptures in the original languages and revived the spirit of apostolic Christianity.”^[206] That is:

The study or neglect of the original languages of the Scripture is inseparably connected with the prosperity or decay of religion and pure doctrine. … In the Middle Ages the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew almost disappeared from the Latin [so-called] Church; the study of the Bible was sadly neglected, and all sorts of unscriptural traditions were accumulated, and obscured the Christian faith. The Revival of Letters in the 15th and 16th centuries by Agricola, Reuchlin, Erasmus, Melanchthon, and others, was a very important preparation for the Revival of primitive Christianity. The Reformers were good Greek and Hebrew scholars, and rank among the best translators and commentators of all ages. … The Greek language furnished the key to … a revival of Christianity. … The Reformation of the sixteenth century, by raising the standard of the Bible, as the sovereign rule of Christian faith and life, in opposition to the yoke of papal and scholastic tyranny, kindled an intense enthusiasm for biblical studies. It cleared away the obstructions of traditional dogmatism and brought the believer into direct contact with the Word of God in the original Hebrew and Greek. … It enabled him to drink from the fresh fountain instead of the muddy river, and to walk in the daylight of the sun instead of the night-light of the moon and the stars.^[207]

The translators of the King James Version, with close to the unanimous consent of the anti-Catholic Protestants of their day, would have viewed study of the original languages as crucial to the existence of pure Biblical truth and critical in the overthrow of the corruptions in general and of the corruptions of Roman Catholicism in particular. The idea that studying the original languages undermines the King James Bible contradicts what Christ Himself says in the King James Version, contradicts the KJV’s marginal notes and preface, and contradicts the views of the translators of that blessed and monumentally valuable English Bible.[208]

11.) “Maybe Protestants valued Greek and Hebrew, but Baptists did not.”

Such a claim displays significant historical ignorance. Indeed, not infrequently, as with pioneer Protestant missionaries Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice, “stud[ying] their Greek New Testaments … [on] the question of infant baptism … [led] the Judsons and Rice [to become] convinced Baptists.”^[209] The Greek New Testament is the powerful instrument that the Spirit uses both to turn lost sinners into Christians and to turn Catholics and Protestants into Baptists.

What is more, a great host of Baptists who have done great service for Christ’s kingdom have drunk deeply from, and shared with many others, the tremendous spiritual refreshment that flows from the Greek and Hebrew texts of Scripture. Consider Baptist Bible translators like Hetzer and Denck:

The first translation of the complete Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek was given to the Germans by the Anabaptists. …[T]he so-called Worms Bible, of the year 1529, had its origin from the Baptists. … This first gift to Germany of the full Bible translated directly from the originals was by two Anabaptists — Ludwig Hetzer and Hans Denck — accomplished scholars, thoroughly versed in Hebrew and Greek, as well as in Latin.^[210]

Consider great missionaries like William Carey, the “father of modern missions”:

William Carey … is called the “father of modern missions.” Prior missionary movements had been concerned with home country or colonial territories; Carey’s vision was to take the gospel to the entire world. Born near Northampton (England), he apprenticed to a shoemaker at age fourteen. Converted at eighteen, Carey directed his vigorous intellect to mastering Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and Dutch. He was ordained by the Particular Baptists in 1787 and began to urge that worldwide missions be undertaken. In 1792 Carey preached a sermon based on Isaiah 45:2–3, coining the now familiar aphorism: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.” That message took hold, aided by Carey’s eloquent missionary appeal, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen (1792). The same year, the Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen (later called the Baptist Missionary Society) was formed. Members paid dues to support the society. Carey sailed to India the following year as part of the society’s first overseas contingent.

Carey was joined by William Ward and Joshua Marshman in 1799, and the three became known as the Serampore Trio. They founded 26 churches and 126 schools (total enrollment ten thousand), translated Scripture into 44 languages, produced grammars and dictionaries, and organized India’s first medical mission, savings bank, seminary, Indian girls’ school, and vernacular newspaper (in Bengali). … Carey’s efforts inspired the founding of other mission boards, among them the London Missionary Society in 1795, the Netherlands Missionary Society in 1797, the American Board in 1810, and the American Baptist Missionary Union in 1814. Carey’s work sparked the entire Christian world to carry out the Great Commission. His tombstone reads: “A wretched, poor, and helpless worm/On thy kind arms I fall.”^[211]

Consider powerful preachers like Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910), who was “dedicated to exegesis of the original Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture”^[212] and was called a “prince of preachers”:^[213]

McLaren’s preaching … was always expository and theological, never sensational, [as] all his wide reading, in English and German, was brought to bear upon the text he sought to expound, which he dutifully studied either in the original Hebrew or Greek, effortlessly eliciting its principal (normally three) parts. Beyond such technical homework was the power of his own prayerful preparation for the sharing of the Word of God, which he so aptly expressed and illustrated that it immediately took root within the lives of his hearers. For them he developed a peculiar sympathy, which one biographer calls an “instinct for souls,” whilst another author comments on his fruitful study of “the living book of humanity.” … [He was] A fierce defender of all the supernatural elements in the Gospel record, from the virgin birth to the ascension.^[214]

Consider faithful Baptist martyrs like Felix Mantz:

Felix Mantz … martyr of the Anabaptists … [was] [b]orn in 1498 in Zurich … [and] schooled in Greek, Hebrew and Latin. … A public disputation was held in January of 1525 in which Mantz, along with Conrad Grebel, representing those opposed to infant baptism, took issue with the Zwinglians. … Mantz soon became an outspoken advocate of the … movement. He took part in further public debates and his preaching helped to spread the … faith in the area surrounding Zurich. He was arrested and jailed numerous times during the next year. Each time he was released, he picked up his agitation where he had left it. The sentencing became increasingly severe, and by January of 1527, he was sentenced to death. He was taken out in a boat on Lake Zurich, where, bound with ropes, he was thrown overboard and drowned. He was not yet thirty years old.^[215]

Consider militant fundamentalist separatists, fighting for all the truth out of love for Christ, using Greek and Hebrew to combat error, like James Josiah Reeve:

The so-called Fundamentalist reaction to the growing influence of liberal theology … [was manifested in] 1910 with the publication of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth in twelve volumes. … [T]hese volumes were sent free to three hundred thousand preachers, missionaries, Sunday school leaders, and others throughout the English-speaking world. … Baptists [who] contributed to the series include[ed] E. Y. Mullins … James Josiah Reeve … and C. B. Williams[.] … J. J. Reeve … [was among the] first faculty of the new Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. B. H. Carroll was the founder and first president. From 1909 to 1913, he served as the professor of Hebrew, cognate languages, and biblical theology of the Old Testament. Reeve published an article on the value for a preacher of the study of the biblical languages. … [H]e wrote: “A knowledge of Greek and Hebrew is valuable to the modern preacher to help fortify him against error. Say what we will there are many ‘isms’ in the land that would not be if our ministers knew their Bibles better. Besides this the rationalistic movement of the Higher Criticism is slowly but surely filtering into the pulpit and pews of our Baptist ranks. These movements are the greatest menace [to] the church today.”^[216]

Consider passionate defenders of Baptist doctrine and polity like Ben Bogard. Dr. Bogard “studied Greek” as part of his desire to “make the most careful and the fullest and best preparation possible … to be a preacher,”[217] and the Bible college and seminary run by his Baptist church[218] instilled a “love of biblical languages” in its students, offering Greek and Hebrew to all and requiring them for its top degree programs.[219]

Bogard … a Landmark Baptist icon[.] … served as a pastor, newspaper editor, seminary teacher, seminary president, debater, traveling evangelist, associational missionary, radio preacher, and publisher. … During the first half of the 20^th century, the mantle of the great 19^th century premillennialists, dispensationalists, and … the Landmark Baptist movement … fell upon the shoulders of Ben M. Bogard[.] . . . This great Baptist . . . casts a giant shadow across the independent fundamental Baptist movement even today.^[220]

Along with many other forms of ministry, Bogard conducted “two hundred and thirty-seven formal debates” in his distinguished lifetime; “many became Christians because of debates and many from other denominations joined the Baptists.” He is known as the “ablest defender of Landmark Baptist doctrine in the first half of the twentieth century” and “the most popular Landmark Baptist in America” for many years.^[221] Were original language study a Protestant distinctive rather than a good Baptist practice, Bogard and the countless Landmark Baptists preachers he impacted would not have strongly commended Greek and Hebrew.

Clearly, over the course of their two-thousand-year-old history, countless Baptists have highly valued knowledge of the Biblical languages.[222] Study of the Biblical languages is not a man-made tradition invented by Protestants, but a Biblical practice strongly supported by Baptists.

12.) “It is wrong for a woman to learn the original languages of Scripture.”

As mentioned earlier, there are many godly Christians, both men and women, who serve the Lord faithfully without knowing the Biblical languages. Nevertheless, there is no Scriptural basis for limiting to men the great gain possible through knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. Older women are commanded to teach younger women (Titus 2:3-5) and children (1 Timothy 5:10, 14). Should these women teachers not explain the Word of God with the greatest God-glorifying precision possible? Scripture never places a premium on ignorance for either men or women. On the contrary, the person is commended who “criest after knowledge, and liftest up [his] voice for understanding,” who “seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures” (Proverbs 2:3-4), since loving God with all one’s intellectual capacities is part of the greatest of all commandments (Matthew 22:36-38). Scripture never once limits such a thirst for the knowledge of God and His Word to men or commands women to pursue the teaching of Scripture with less fervency and diligence. It is valuable for both men and women to know not only the substance of God’s mind in translated Scripture, but also the form in the original language.

In the same context in which the Bible sets forth the distinct roles of men and women (1 Timothy 2:11-15), and in sharp contrast to the surrounding cultures of paganism and anti-Christ Judaism, which viewed educating women as a vice, not a virtue,[223] Paul commands: “Let the woman learn” (γυνὴ … μανθανέτω, gunē … manthanetō). As frequently in the Authorized Version, the Greek third person imperative or command form is translated in 1 Timothy 2:11 as “Let + verb,” but the idea is not that of bare permission, but of an order. Spiritually mature women must teach other women, and women must learn, not be ignorant. Since the original languages help one learn and teach God’s truth, women are benefited by learning Greek and Hebrew. There is no reason to think that the intricate structural beauty of the acrostic poem[224] praising the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31:10-31 must be hidden from all women whose native language is not Hebrew. There is every reason to think that thousands and thousands of godly Jewish mothers and grandmothers (2 Timothy 1:5), as well as fathers and grandfathers, taught their children Hebrew so that the next generation could read the Word of God in its original language even when, as in New Testament times, Greek was the language of public discourse. Thus, there is no Biblical reason whatever for excluding women from learning the Biblical languages, while there are many advantages to women learning them.

The historical records of the early centuries of Christianity also mention “Christian women [who] seized upon the study of the Bible and of Hebrew and Greek,”^[225] while after the Reformation writers like the early American Baptist Roger Williams could testify that he knew “very eminent men and women … Baptists, [who] give themselves up to serious study of the Hebrew Language,” like those “heavenly spirits set on work from heaven to dig out the knowledge of the Hebrew and the Greek,” unlike in false religions such as Quakerism, where the “horrible crime of laziness” is perpetrated by “not studying the original languages themselves.”^[226]

Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew:

Conclusion

In conclusion, arguments against the study of Greek and Hebrew are unconvincing. On the other hand, the reasons why Greek and Hebrew are extremely valuable, and clearly learnable, are compelling. May the Father who revealed His glory and redemptive mind and heart in the Hebrew and Greek words He gave His Son to deliver to His saints by His Spirit bless these facts to the flourishing of reverent study, loving practice, and bold proclamation of those infallibly inspired and perfectly preserved words to His eternal glory and the advance of His spiritual kingdom. Amen!

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[1] Of course, a section of Ezra and of Daniel is in Aramaic, as is Jeremiah 10:11. Thus, there are technically three Biblical languages, but the third one covers a much smaller proportion of the inspired text.

[2] Compare R. Bruce Compton, “1 Corinthians 13:8-13 and the Cessation Of Miraculous Gifts.” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal (2004): 97-145, elec. acc. https://faithsaves.net/theology-proper-christology-and-pneumatology/.

^[3] Athalya Brenner and Jan Willem van Henten, eds., Bible Translation on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century: Authority, Reception, Culture, and Religion (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 122.

^[4] Philip Mauro, Chapter VII: Life in the Word, vol. 2 of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, ed. R. A. Torrey et. al. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005), 168-172

^[5] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2 (Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 549; cf. Jonathan Edwards, Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith, ed. Sang Hyun Lee and Harry S. Stout, vol. 21, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2003), 232.

^[6] John Henry Bennetch, “The Advantage in Knowing the Biblical Languages,” Bibliotheca Sacra 100 (1943), 178.

^[7] W. G. Blaikie et al., “Editorial Notes,” The Presbyterian Review 6:21–24 (1885): 134–136.

[8] Owen Strachan & Douglas Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards: Lover of God (Chicago: Moody, 2010), 25-26.

[9] Robert Brown explains:

Jonathan Edwards was heir to a long tradition of Christian humanism that stressed the value of literacy in the biblical languages[.] … The importance of Greek and Hebrew for Christian faith found renewed emphasis during the Reformation, as the doctrine of sola Scriptura led Protestants to value their mastery, both to buttress arguments for the authority of the Bible and to gain a more accurate understanding of its meaning. … The Puritans brought this tradition of scholarship to New England …The language curriculum at Yale [which was founded for educating men for the ministry, included] Hebrew [starting] … in the first year, and both Greek and Hebrew were studied thereafter. Daily recitations of the Bible required translation exercises in Hebrew and Greek. Literacy in Greek and Hebrew by way of examination was required before the BA degree was conferred. … After his time at Yale he continued to acquire works on Hebrew and Greek; his interest in both languages would remain throughout his professional career. (Robert E. Brown, “Biblical Languages (Hebrew and Greek),” ed. Harry S. Stout, The Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017], 69–70)

^[10] John Henry Bennetch, “The Advantage in Knowing the Biblical Languages,” Bibliotheca Sacra 100 (1943), 178.

^[11] John Henry Bennetch, “The Advantage in Knowing the Biblical Languages,” Bibliotheca Sacra 100 (1943), 182-186.

[12] Concerning Christ’s blessed identification with man in his ignorance, Torrance notes:

[W]hile the Son or Word of God who is of one and the same being as the Father enjoys a relation of mutual knowing between himself and the Father, nevertheless in his self-abasement in the form of a servant he had condescended, for our sakes, really to make our ignorance along with other human limitations his own, precisely in order to save us from them. He incorporated the ignorance of men in himself, that he might redeem their humanity from all its imperfections and cleanse and offer it perfect and holy to the Father. … It was an economic and vicarious ignorance on our Lord’s part by way of a deliberate restraint on his divine knowledge throughout a life of continuous kenosis [self-emptying] in which he refused to transgress the limits of the creaturely and earthly conditions of human nature[.]

As the Word or Mind of God become flesh Jesus Christ was the incarnate wisdom of God, but incarnate in such a way as really to share with us our human ignorance, so that we might share in his divine wisdom. That was not just an appearance of ignorance on his part, any more than his incarnating of the Word or Mind of God was only in appearance. Had either been in appearance only, it would have emptied the economic condescension of the Son to save and redeem of any reality. Unless the Son of God had assumed the whole nature of man, including his ignorance, man could not have been saved. … Jesus Christ came among us sharing to the full the poverty of our ignorance, without ceasing to embody in himself all the riches of the wisdom of God, in order that we might be redeemed from our ignorance through sharing in his wisdom. … Thus throughout his earthly life Christ laid hold of our … human mind in order to heal and enlighten it in himself. In and through him our ignorant minds are brought into such a relation to God that they may be filled with divine light and truth. … [What] we … are … has been taken up by Christ into himself in order that he might bring it under the saving, renewing, sanctifying, and enlightening power of his own reality as the incarnate wisdom and light of God. (Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church, 2^nd ed. [London: T&T Clark, 2016], 186–188.)

[13] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature [BDAG], (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 172, βέβαιος.

[14] Compare Thomas Ross, “The Canonicity of the Received Bible Established from Reformation and Post- Reformation Baptist Confessions,” elec. acc. https://faithsaves.net/baptist-canonicity-textus-receptus/, for the belief in preservation as manifested in historic Baptist ecclesiology.

[15] BDAG, κεραία. Numbers of indicators, such as the pausal forms associated with ʾaṯnaḥ and sillûq, point to the unity of the Hebrew vowel and accent system.

^[16] George S. Bishop, Chapter IV: The Testimony of the Scriptures to Themselves, vol. 2 of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, ed. R. A. Torrey, A. C. Dixon, et al. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005), 92. Bishop explains: “The Bible asserts the inspiration of the very vowel points, because it says, ‘Words which the Holy Ghost teacheth’—the words…. Consonants are not words[.] … Our Saviour tells us that … never … a vowel point … of the Law shall perish … Matt. v:18” (George S. Bishop, “The Inspiration of the Hebrew Letters and Vowel-Points,” in The Doctrines of Grace [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1977], 45-46). For an introductory analysis of the evidence for the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points, see Thomas Ross, “The History of the Controversy over the Inspiration of the Hebrew Vowel Points” & “Evidences for the Inspiration of the Hebrew Vowel Points,” elec. acc. https://faithsaves.net/history-hebrew-vowel-points/ & https://faithsaves.net/inspiration-hebrew-vowel-points/.

[17] By way of contrast, the theological liberal who, as a minister of hell, not of heaven, rejects the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture, is consistent if he denies the importance of Greek and Hebrew:

Hebrew and Greek should not be required of all students. … For many students the study of Hebrew is a sheer waste of time. Its requirement is a tradition from the days … when the doctrine of verbal inspiration called for microscopic exegesis of the text in the original. … German is of more value to theological students than either Hebrew or Greek. (George Harris et al., “Modifications in the Theological Curriculum,” The American Journal of Theology 3:2 [1899], 325–326.)

The contrasting visions are clear: “If ministers are to be merely overseers of religious programs, agents designed to advance modern culture, or inspirational speakers, then certainly Hebrew and Greek are unnecessary. But if ministers are called to be specialists in the Word and winsome advocates for the truth, everything changes” (Jason S. DeRouchie, “The Profit of Employing the Biblical Languages: Scriptural and Historical Reflections,” Themelios 37:1 [2012], 46).

^[18] Ludwig Koehler et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament [HALOT] (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000), 233, דָּרַשׁ.

^[19] Francis Brown, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs, Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon [BDB] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 205, דָּרַשׁ.

^[20] David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew [DCH] (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993–2011), 2:474, דָּרַשׁ.

^[21] Leonard J. Coppes, “דָּרַשׁ,” ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 198.

[22] The verbs γίνεσθε (ginesthe, 2x) and νηπιάζετε (nēpiazete), “be” not children in understanding, but “be” men or mature, τέλειοι (teleioi), “full-grown, mature, adult” (BDAG), and “be ye children” in malice or evil, are 2^nd person imperatives in Greek.

[23] “Consider” in 2 Timothy 2:7, νόει (noei), is another 2^nd person imperative.

[24] BDAG, νόει.

[25] BDAG, σπουδάζω, 2 Timothy 2:15’s Elizabethan English “study”; compare “study to be quiet” in 1 Thessalonians 4:11 for the sense of the English.

[26] In 2 Timothy 2:15’s “word of truth,” τὸν λόγον τῆς ἀληθείας (ton logon tēs alētheias), “of truth” is an attributive genitive, “similar to a simple adjective in its semantic force, though more emphatic … with more sharpness and distinctness. … This genitive is more emphatic than an adjective would have been. Thus, although the denotation is the same, the connotation is not” (Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996], 86–87). Paul emphasizes that God’s Word is true.

[27] The ἀμαθής, (amatheis), “unlearned” of 2 Peter 3:16. Scripture never commands ignorance or lack of knowledge about God’s revelation; on the contrary, the “unlearned” receive “destruction” when they commit the heinous sin of misinterpreting Scripture.

[28] στρεβλόω (strebloō), “torture, torment … distort a statement so that a false meaning results, twist, distort” (BDAG).

[29] 1 Timothy 4:12; Titus 2:7, τύπος (typos).

[30] Note in 2 Timothy 4:22 the plural “you.” Compare the “you all” in Titus 3:15—these pastoral epistles, while directed individually to Timothy and Titus, were always intended to provide teaching to all the churches of Christ.

^[31] Jason S. DeRouchie, “The Profit of Employing the Biblical Languages: Scriptural and Historical Reflections,” Themelios 37:1 (2012), 36.

^[32] Jason S. DeRouchie, “The Profit of Employing the Biblical Languages: Scriptural and Historical Reflections,” Themelios 37:1 (2012), 39. Schaff notes:

The necessary preparation for Exegesis is Biblical philology; that is, the knowledge of the original languages of the Bible,—the Hebrew of the Old, and the Greek of the New Testament. Language is the key to unlock the reason, and the medium of communication of mind to mind. Ratio and oratio, the two significations of the Greek logos, are intimately connected. The thought is the inward word, or the speech of the mind; the word is the outward thought, its necessary form and expression. “To speak in his heart,” means, in Hebrew, to think. We cannot conceive an idea, without clothing it in words, whether we utter them or not. To say, “I know it, but I cannot express it,” amounts to a confession that the thought is not yet born, or is involved in obscurity.

By means of translations it is possible to get an intimate knowledge of the Bible sufficient for practical purposes. It would indeed be disastrous for the great mass of mankind, if they had to study Greek and Hebrew before they could understand the sacred volume which teaches them the way of life and salvation. But without the knowledge of the original we would have no translation at all. And there is a difference between a popular or practical, and a critical or theological understanding and interpretation. For the latter some acquaintance with the original is indispensable. It is a general characteristic of scientific operation to go to the source, to the prime fountain and principle. …

Even if we had a perfect translation, it could never be an equivalent for the original. … It is an inestimable privilege to study the Bible face to face as it came from the hands of its inspired authors, and to drink the water of life as it gushes fresh from the primitive rock. … It must, of course, not be supposed that a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, however profound, is of itself sufficient to make a theologian. A poor philologist may be a profound divine, while a master in the languages may be a rationalist or unbeliever. All depends at last on the proper spirit. Without faith it is impossible to understand the spiritual depths of the Bible. (Philip Schaff, Theological Propædeutic: A General Introduction to the Study of Theology [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893], 101–102)

[33] In the words of the 2^nd London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689:

The Old Testament in Hebrew, (which was the Native language of the people of God of old) and the New Testament in Greek, (which at the time of the writing of it was most generally known to the Nations being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular care and Providence kept pure in all Ages, are therefore authentical; so as in all controversies of Religion, the Church is finally to appeal unto them. But because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have a right unto, and interest in the scriptures, and are commanded in the fear of God to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every Nation, unto which they come, that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner, and through patience and comfort of the Scriptures may have hope. (Chapter 1:8, W. J. McGlothlin, Baptist Confessions of Faith [Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1911], 230.)

Note that the original language text is “immediately” inspired, while a translation is not “immediately” inspired, but inspired in a way that leaves the translation dependent upon the original for its authority—that is, a translation is derivatively inspired. Compare also Thomas Ross, “Thoughts On the Word Theopneustos, “given by inspiration of God” in 2 Timothy 3:16, and the Question of the Inspiration of the Authorized Version,” elec. acc. https://faithsaves.net/theopneustos/. Richard Muller writes:

[T]ranslations can be authoritative quoad res [according to the substance or thing] because the authority is not so much in the words as in the entirety of the teaching as distributed throughout the canon. … [T]he issue of “things” (res) and “words” (verba) … is crucial to the Protestant [and Baptist] doctrine of Scripture[.] … [T]he words of the text are signs pointing to the doctrinal “things.” This distinction between signa and res significata, the sign and the thing signified, carries over into the language typical of scholastic Protestantism, of the words of the text and the substance of the text, of the authority of translations not strictly quoad verba but quoad res, according to the substance or meaning indicated by the original. … [O]nly the [original language] sources are inspired (theopneustoi) both according to their substance (quoad res) and according to their words (quoad verba)[.] This must be the case, since holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, 2 Pet. 1:21, who dictated to them not only the substance (res) but also the very words (verba). For the same reason, the Hebrew and the Greek are the norms and rules by which the various versions are examined and evaluated. . . . [There is] a distinction between authenticity and authorship quoad verba, which belongs only to the Hebrew and Greek originals, and authenticity and authority quoad res, which inheres in valid translations. . . . Thus translations can be used, but with the reservation that only the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the authentic norms of doctrine and the rule by which doctrinal controversy is to be decided[.] Versions that are congruent with the sources are indeed authentic according to substance (quoad res); for the Word of God [may be] translated into other languages: the Word of God is not to be limited, since whether it is thought or spoken or written, it remains the Word of God. Nonetheless they are not authentic according to the idiom or word, inasmuch as the words have been explained in French or Dutch. In relation to all translations, therefore, the Hebrew and Greek texts stand as antiquissimus, originalis, and archetypos. Thus, translations are the Word of God insofar as they permit the Word of God to address the reader or hearer: for Scripture is most certainly the Word of God in the things it teaches and to the extent that in and by means of it power of God touches the conscience. Even so, in translations as well as in the original the testimony of the Holy Spirit demonstrates the graciousness of God toward us. All translations have divine authority insofar as they correctly render the original: the tongue and dialect is but an accident, and as it were an argument of divine truth, which remains one and the same in all idioms. (Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy; vol. 2, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (2nd ed.), Richard Muller [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003], 269, 326-327, 403, 416, 427-428)

Thus, the original language text has the two-fold Divine authority, the authoritas Divina duplex, in its words and in its substance, while accurate translations retain the authority of the thing or the substance:

[The] authoritas divina duplex [is a] twofold divine authority; a distinction [exists] between (1) the authoritas rerum, or authority of the things of Scripture, the substantia doctrinae (substance of doctrine), and (2) the authoritas verborum, or authority of the words of Scripture, arising from the accidens scriptionis, the … incidental property … of the writing. The authority of the substantia, or res, is a formal, inward authority that belongs both to the text of Scripture in the original languages and to the accurate translations of Scripture. The authoritas verborum is an external and … incidental property[’s] … authority that belongs only to the text in the original languages and is a property … lost in translation. Thus the infallibilitas of the originals is both quoad verbum and quoad res, whereas the infallibilitas of the versions is only quoad res. (Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985], 19, 51-52, entries “accidens” & “authoritas divina duplex”)

That is, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life” (KJV), “Verely verely I saye vnto you he that beleveth on me hath everlastinge lyfe.” (Tyndale) and “Truly, truly, I say to you, He that believes on me has everlasting life” (author’s translation) are accurate renderings of John 6:47’s ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ὁ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμέ, ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον (amēn amēn legō hymin, ho pisteuōn eis eme, echei zōēn aiōnion). “Believeth,” “beleveth,” and “believes” are accurate translations, and, as such, convey the truth and mind of God in English. But woe to the man who changes one letter of the Greek and Hebrew texts dictated by the Holy Spirit (Proverbs 30:5-6; Revelation 22:18-19)!

[34] Compare the statement of Benjamin Keach on Biblical paranomasia:

Paronomasia … or likeness of words … is when by the change of one letter or word, the signification thereof is also changed. This figure is frequent in the Latin, and is very ornamental … [a]nd the native beauty of it being peculiar to the original languages can hardly be shown in English. There are many in the Hebrew, of the Old; and the Greek of the New Testament[.] … [A] few English examples, by which you may judge of the rest; as, friends turned fiends. You are like to have a bare gain out of this bargain. Bolder in a buttery than in a battery.—Wine is the blood of the vine.—No stumbling but tumbling; errors will cause terrors. Scripture examples are many[.] (Benjamin Keach, Tropologia: A Key to Open Scripture Metaphors [London: William Hill Collingridge, 1856], 201–202.)

Even a perfectly accurate English translation will have only a limited ability to replicate the instances of paranomasia that the Father gave His adopted children in the Hebrew and Greek Bible for their instruction and delight.

[35] Silva notes the negative changes when the original languages can no longer be addressed:

It should go without saying that if a professor in biblical studies is unable to deal with technical linguistic arguments in a class because most of the students have not taken Greek and Hebrew, the level of instruction necessarily drops. Moreover, the important education that takes place as students converse with one another also plummets several notches. The natural tendency to gravitate toward “relevancy” and pragmatism can do nothing but flourish in such an environment. And the end result is an increase in the poisonous anti-intellectualism that has already taken its toll in the … church. (Moisés, Silva, ed., Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996], 279.)

[36] Note that John 7:15 by no means condemns the knowledge of “letters”—Christ knew them, indeed, knew them very well, although He had not learned them in the corrupt schools of the Pharisees.

[37] BDAG, γράμμα. Compare Isaiah 29:11-12 (LXX), “a learned man” (Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament: English Translation [London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1870]; ἀνθρώπῳ ἐπισταμένῳ γράμματα, anthrōpō epistamenō grammata, “a man knowing letters”); “a man that is unlearned” (Brenton’s LXX, ἀνθρώπου μὴ ἐπισταμένου γράμματα, anthrōpou mē epistamenou grammata, “a man that is not knowing letters”); and “I am not learned” (Brenton’s LXX, Οὐκ ἐπίσταμαι γράμματα, Ouk epistamai grammata, “I know not letters.”); Daniel 1:4 (LXX), “to teach them the learning and language of the Chaldeans” (Brenton’s LXX; διδάξαι αὐτοὺς γράμματα καὶ διάλεκτον Χαλδαϊκὴν, didaxai autous grammata kai dialekton Chaldaikēn, “to teach them the letters and language of the Babylonians”). In these texts γράμματα (grammata) renders the Hebrew (סֵפֶר, sēp̱er), where the fundamental idea “book” has become “book-learning” (BDB, סֵפֶר) The “one that is learned” (Isaiah 29:11 KJV) is the one who is “knowing the book” (יוֹדֵעַ הַסֵּפֶר, yôḏēaꜥ hassēp̱er), and to “teach the learning” of a people is to “teach” their “book” (וּֽלֲלַמְּדָ֥ם סֵ֖פֶר, ûlᵃlammᵉḏām sēp̱er, Daniel 1:4).

^[38] Gottlob Schrenk, “Γράφω, Γραφή, Γράμμα, Ἐγγράφω, Προγράφω, Ὑπογραμμός,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 762.

[39] Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1889), 120–121.

^[40] Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 327.

[41] Hayyim Nahman Bialik (1873–1934), cited in Benjamin L. Merkle, “Keep the End in Sight,” in Greek for Life: Strategies for Learning, Retaining, and Reviving New Testament Greek (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 4. An attempt to trace this quotation ad fontes was not successful, but its content is picturesque, regardless.

[42] A. T. Robertson, The Minister and his Greek New Testament (New York: George Doran, 1923), 19-21.

[43] While deeper exegetical insight into specific texts of Scripture is a clear, tremendous, and easily-illustrated benefit of knowing Greek and Hebrew, Silva notes:

Quite possibly, however, the most significant benefit of acquiring a knowledge of the biblical languages is intangible. Most of us are conditioned to think that nothing is truly valuable that does not have an immediate and concrete payoff, but a little reflection dispels that illusion. Consider the teaching we all received from birth. Has most of it been immediately rewarding? We are simply not conscious of how deeply we have been molded by countless experiences that affect our perspective, our thinking, our decisions. Similarly, a measure of proficiency in the biblical languages provides the framework that promotes responsibility in the handling of the text. Continued exposure to the original text expands our horizon and furnishes us with a fresh and more authentic perspective than that which we bring from our modern, English-speaking situation. … [T]hose rich “exegetical nuggets” [are] not necessarily where the [most significant and] substantial payoff lies. (Moisés Silva, ed., Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996], 278.)

^[44] David W. Baker, “Book Reviews of Neal Windham, New Testament Greek for Preachers and Teachers: Five Areas of Application, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991) & James A. Brooks and Carlton L. Winbery, Syntax of New Testament Greek (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988),” Ashland Theological Journal (1996), 167.

[45] Compare Edward Young, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 19–39, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1969), 274–280.

[46] The Bible Baptist Bookstore distributes the works of disqualified (1 Timothy 3; Titus 1) “Baptist” pastor Peter Ruckman, who placed the KJV above the perfectly preserved Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture. Consider the description of a commended volume by Ruckmanite Kyle F. Stevens: “The Bible admonishes believers to lay precept upon precept … line upon line. … [D]octrine is … precept upon precept, line upon line” (Elec. acc. https://store.kjv1611.org/building-thereupon/). As Mr. Stevens explains:

[Believers must engage in] careful and conscientious laying of precept upon precept; line upon line; here a little, and there a little (Is. 28:13). … One can only properly understand doctrine (Is. 28:9) by building precept upon precept; … line upon line; … here a little, and there a little (Is. 28:13)” (Kyle Stevens, Building Thereupon: How Sound Faith and Good Doctrine are Properly Laid [Bloomington, IN: LifeRich Publishing, 2020], “Preface.”).

Ironically, while grossly misunderstanding Isaiah 28:9-13—something much easier for him to do because of his rejection of the Hebrew original—Stevens in the same section condemns “misapplying Scripture fragments” and ignoring “contexts” to twist the Word of God.

Concerning Mr. Ruckman and Ruckmanite heresy in general, see David Cloud, What About Ruckman? (London, ON: Bethel Baptist Print Ministry, 2012).

[47] See the discussion in Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 266–269.

[48] See Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 278–284. Paul’s inspired Greek syntax provides exegetical support to answer in the negative the very practical question of whether the first-grade girls’ Sunday School teacher needs to be a pastor—and an exegetical answer from the inspired text of Ephesians is far superior to a merely pragmatic answer.

[49] A comparison of the Hebrew text with the KJV’s “she may go” indicates that the English should be viewed as expressing something that is possible, rather than something that is permitted. “She may go and be another man’s wife” has a sense of possibility, comparable to “She may become very angry and speak sinful, insulting words” or “She may become bitter and then join herself to other angry and bitter women.” The sense is not permission—“she may go and become another man’s wife” does not mean “she is permitted to lawfully and without sin remarry.” Compare the KJV’s “they may serve other gods” (Deuteronomy 7:4), or “And they [the sodomites] called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them” (Genesis 19:5). Serving other gods and committing sodomite gang-rape are awful sins, not acts that please God. Neither is remarriage while a former spouse is alive pleasing to God. The KJV’s translation is defensible. However, a knowledge of Hebrew makes it easy to see that Deuteronomy 24:1-4 does not condone remarriage, while a reader who is only looking at the English text could easily assume Deuteronomy 24:2 permits divorce, rather than only specifying a situation that may potentially occur.

Similarly, that Deuteronomy 24:1 allows for the writing of a bill of divorcement indicates that in the Mosaic civil law, divorce was legal—a fact which does not require that it was pleasing to God. Covetousness, alcohol consumption, jealousy, a hard-hearted refusal to assist the poor, lust, and other sins were also legal in Israel—they had no civil penalty, although God has always viewed such actions as wicked. Because of the hardness of men’s hearts, there were many sins, from violating the Tenth Commandment (Exodus 20:17) to the abomination of wearing the opposite gender’s clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5), that were legal in the civil code of the Israelite republic.

[50] Compare Robert B. Chisholm, From Exegesis to Exposition: A Practical Guide to Using Biblical Hebrew (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 119–142.

[51] Readers who do not know Hebrew should be aware that wᵉ and û are different ways to pronounce the same Hebrew word: “and.” The alternative pronunciation is based on the form of the following word while the meaning is identical. As an analogy, consider the somewhat different sound but identical meaning of the British English “aeroplane” and the American English “airplane.”

[52] The two verbal commands in 25:4, לֹא־יוּכַ֣ל (lōʾ-yûḵal) and וְלֹ֤א תַחֲטִיא֙ (wᵉlōʾ ṯaḥᵃṭı̂ʾ), are actually imperfects indicating what will not happen in the future as a method of commanding, a method of prohibition commonly found in Hebrew (e. g., in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20: “Thou shalt not …”)

[53] Note that Deuteronomy 24:1-4 in the LXX likewise supports the fact that 24:4 contain the only positive commands by Moses:

[“If” clauses / protasis, 24:1-3]:

Ἐὰν δέ τις λάβῃ γυναῖκα

καὶ συνοικήσῃ αὐτῇ,

καὶ ἔσται ἐὰν μὴ εὕρῃ χάριν ἐναντίον αὐτοῦ,

ὅτι εὗρεν ἐν αὐτῇ ἄσχημον πρᾶγμα,

καὶ γράψει αὐτῇ βιβλίον ἀποστασίου

καὶ δώσει εἰς τὰς χεῖρας αὐτῆς

καὶ ἐξαποστελεῖ αὐτὴν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας αὐτοῦ,

καὶ ἀπελθοῦσα γένηται ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ,

καὶ μισήσῃ αὐτὴν ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἔσχατος

καὶ γράψει αὐτῇ βιβλίον ἀποστασίου

καὶ δώσει εἰς τὰς χεῖρας αὐτῆς

καὶ ἐξαποστελεῖ αὐτὴν ἐκ τῆς οἰκίας αὐτοῦ,

ἢ ἀποθάνῃ ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἔσχατος,

ὃς ἔλαβεν αὐτὴν ἑαυτῷ γυναῖκα,

[“then” clauses / apodosis with only actual commands, 24:4]:

οὐ δυνήσεται ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ πρότερος ὁ ἐξαποστείλας αὐτὴν ἐπαναστρέψας λαβεῖν αὐτὴν ἑαυτῷ γυναῖκα

μετὰ τὸ μιανθῆναι αὐτήν,

ὅτι βδέλυγμά ἐστιν ἐναντίον κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ σου·

καὶ οὐ μιανεῖτε τὴν γῆν,

ἣν κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν δίδωσιν ὑμῖν ἐν κλήρῳ.

[“If” clauses / protasis, 24:1-3]:

And if any one should take a wife,

and should dwell with her,

and it will be if she should not have found favour before him,

because he has found a shameful thing in her,

and he will write for her a bill of divorcement,

and give it into her hands,

and he shall send her away out of his house,

and if, having gone out, she becomes another man’s,

and the last husband should hate her,

and write for her a bill of divorcement,

and should give it into her hands,

and send her away out of his house,

or the last husband should die,

who took her to himself for a wife;

[“then” clauses / apodosis with only actual commands, 24:4]:

[then] the former husband, who sent her away, shall not be able, having returned, to take her to himself for a wife,

after she has been defiled;

because it is an abomination before the Lord thy God,

and ye shall not defile the land,

which the Lord thy God is giving thee to inherit.

[54] There are only 51 Hothpael forms in the entire Old Testament: Genesis 25:22; 43:18; Exodus 9:17; Leviticus 13:55–56; Numbers 1:47; 2:33; 11:1; 26:62; Deuteronomy 14:1; 24:4; 1 Samuel 21:13; 2 Samuel 20:12; 1 Kings 17:21; 18:28; 20:27; Isaiah 24:19; 34:6; 46:8; 52:5; 59:15–16; 63:5; Jeremiah 5:7; 16:6; 25:16; 41:5; 46:8–9; 47:5; 50:38; 51:7; Hosea 7:8; Micah 5:1; Nahum 2:4; Habakkuk 3:6; Zephaniah 2:1; Zechariah 9:16; Psalm 58:7; 60:4; 73:21; 76:5; 84:10; 141:4; 143:4; Proverbs 18:24; Ecclesiastes 7:16; Lamentations 3:39; Daniel 8:27.

Deuteronomy 24:4 is the only Hothpael of טָמֵא (ṭāmēʾ) out of the 161 uses of the verb: Genesis 34:5, 13, 27; Leviticus 5:3; 11:24-28, 31-36, 39-40, 43-44; 12:2, 5; 13:3, 8, 11, 14-15, 20, 22, 25, 27, 30, 44, 46, 59; 14:36, 46; 15:4-11, 16-24, 27, 31-32; 17:15; 18:20, 23-25, 27-28, 30; 19:31; 20:3, 25; 21:1, 3-4, 11; 22:5-6, 8; Numbers 5:3, 13-14, 20, 27-29; 6:7, 9, 12; 19:7-8, 10-11, 13-14, 16, 20-22; 35:34; Deuteronomy 21:23; 24:4; 2 Kings 23:8, 10, 13, 16; Isaiah 30:22; Jer. 2:7, 23; 7:30; 32:34; Ezekiel 4:14; 5:11; 9:7; 14:11; 18:6, 11, 15; 20:7, 18, 26, 30-31, 43; 22:3-4, 11; 23:7, 13, 17, 30, 38; 33:26; 36:17-18; 37:23; 43:7-8; 44:25; Hosea 5:3; 6:10; 9:4; Haggai 2:13; Psalms 79:1; 106:39; 2 Chronicles 36:14.

[55] הֻטַּמָּֽאָה (huṭamāʾâ) Hothpael (passive of the reflexive Hithpael stem) of טָמֵא (ṭāmēʾ), “to be or become unclean” (BDB, טָמֵא); in the Hothpael, she “defiles herself.”

[56]

A misunderstanding of the Greek language leads some to conclude from the present tense verbs in Luke 16:18 that the parties to a second marriage are engaged in continual sin and thus must divorce and go back to their first spouses (cf. Joseph Warren Kniskern, When the Vow Breaks: A Survival and Recovery Guide for Christians Facing Divorce [Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1993], 80–81—Kniskern discusses but does not endorse this aberrant view), an action which Scripture says is an “abomination” that “causes the land to sin” (Deuteronomy 24:4)—language that makes any idea that the prohibition of Deuteronomy 24:4 is limited to Israel in the Mosaic dispensation impossible.

Luke 16:18 reads:

πᾶς ὁ ἀπολύων τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ καὶ γάμων ἑτέραν μοιχεύει· καὶ πᾶς ὁ ἀπολελυμένην ἀπὸ ἀνδρὸς γαμῶν μοιχεύει.

Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.

Continuing action is certainly one use of the Greek present tense, and the verb μοιχεύει, “committeth adultery,” is in the present tense, potentially misleading those with no knowledge or a superficial knowledge of Greek to conclude that those who remarry do not commit an act of adultery, but are engaging in continual adultery. However, ἀπολύων, “putteth away,” and γάμων, “marrieth,” are also in the present tense, yet are clearly not continual and ongoing actions. The present tense forms in Luke 16:18 clearly fit the category of the gnomic or timeless present—continual marriage ceremonies, continual divorces, and continual adultery are not at all in view, any more than the present tense verbs in Galatians 5:3; 6:13 specify continually getting circumcised or the present tense verb in Hebrews 5:1 specifies being ordained to the priesthood over and over again:

The present tense may be used to make a statement of a general, timeless fact. … The action or state continues without time limits. The verb is used in proverbial statements or general maxims about what occurs at all times. … The gnomic present is distinct from the customary present in that the customary present refers to a regularly recurring action while the gnomic present refers to a general, timeless fact … the gnomic present is generally atemporal.

[The most common] semantic situation[n] in which the gnomic present occurs … [is] the use of the present in generic statements … [a] gnomic verb typically takes a generic subject or object. Most generics will be subjects … the present participle, especially in such formulaic expression as πᾶς ὁ + present participle and the like, routinely belong here. [As a] [k]ey to [i]dentification … especially note whether the subject is generic … [such as the] substantival participle (especially with πᾶς). (Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 523–524)

Note that the generic subjects in Luke 16:18 fit the category of the gnomic present perfectly. Luke 16:18 does not teach that those who have committed the grievous sins of divorce and remarriage should commit another abomination (Deuteronomy 24:4) by leaving their current spouses for the previous ones. Rather, in this passage the “present … [specifies] [a] class … of those who … once do the act the single doing of which is the mark of … the class … [as in] Luke 16:18” (Ernest De Witt Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek, 3rd ed. [Edinburg: T&T Clark, 1898], 56-57). The destruction of one family unit through remarriage, the physical consummation of which is an act of adultery, is bad enough; it must not be compounded with a further abomination. A proper—and an improper—understanding of the Biblical languages in Luke 16:18 and Deuteronomy 24:1-4 has immense practical consequences.

[57] Leviticus 18:24 employs the active Hithpael form תִּֽטַּמְּא֖וּ (tiṭṭammᵉʾû) of טָמֵא (ṭāmēʾ), that is, “defile yourselves,” corresponding to Deuteronomy 24:4’s passive Hothpael הֻטַּמָּֽאָה (huṭamāʾâ). Note the further connection between the two texts in the reference to causing the land to sin (Deuteronomy 24:4) or the land being defiled (Leviticus 18:25, 27), and the sins forbidden in the respective texts being “abomination” (תּוֹעֵבָה, ṯōwꜥēḇâ, Deuteronomy 24:4; Leviticus 18:26).

^[58] Bruce K. Waltke and Michael Patrick O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 28–29. Note that Waltke & O’Connor, despite rejecting the perfect preservation of Scripture and the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel and accent system, still recognize their crucial value for exegesis, as well as their accurate representation of ancient information:

In addition to ancient evidence for the general validity of the MT, there is modern evidence, both systematic and incidental. On the whole the grammar of the MT admirably fits the framework of Semitic philology, and this fact certifies the work of the Masoretes. When in the 1930s Paul Kahle announced his theory that the Masoretes made massive innovations, Gotthelf Bergsträsser sarcastically observed that they must have read Carl Brockelmann’s comparative Semitic grammar to have come up with forms so thoroughly in line with historical reconstructions. Further, there are numerous individual patterns of deviation within the MT which reflect ancient phonological and morphological features of Hebrew known from other sources; yet again, numerous isolated oddities in the MT have been confirmed by materials unearthed only in this century. The evidence shows that the language of the MT represents the grammar of the Hebrew used during the biblical period. (Ibid., 28-29)

Happily, even some modern non-preservationist Hebrew scholars declare: “[T]he vocalizing and the chanting of the Scripture reflect the divinely inspired text. … not only in its consonants and the vowels, but the accents or the power of the accents,” quoting the 1675 Helvetic Confession’s statement: “[T]he Hebrew original of the Old Testament, which we have received and to this day retain … is not only in its consonants, but in its vowels—either the vowel points themselves, or at least the power of the points—not only in its matter, but in its words, inspired of God.” (Russell T. Fuller & Kyoungwon Choi, Invitation to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2017], 352). Those who receive Christ’s testimony in the Gospels and other Scriptural principles that require the inspiration and preservation of the Hebrew vowels and accents have no grounds to doubt the intellectual warrant for their faith, as it is revealed by the all-wise God.

^[59] John Adams, Sermons in Accents: or, Studies in the Hebrew Text (London: T&T Clark, 1906), 3–4.

[60] אַתְנָח / אֶתְנַחְתָּא, ʾaṯnāḥ / ʾeṯnaḥtāʾ.

[61] טִפְחָה, ṭip̄ḥāh.

^[62] Mark D. Futato Sr., Basics of Hebrew Accents (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 68.

^[63] John Adams, Sermons in Accents: or, Studies in the Hebrew Text (London: T&T Clark, 1906), 3–6.

[64] Compare Nehemiah 9:8 also.

[65] A goodly number of texts of this sort are found in the Old Testament that do not specifically contain the word believe; cf. Deuteronomy 10:16; 30:6-10; Isaiah 55:1-3; Jeremiah 3:22; 4:4; Hosea 14:2, etc. Such an employment of other terms for saving faith and conversion appears in the New Testament also, of course (e. g., Matthew 7:13; John 6:37, 57; 10:9; Revelation 22:17).

[66] Habakkuk 2:2. The word לוּחַ (lûaḥ), employed in Habbakuk 2:2 of the tables upon which the message that the just shall live by faith was to be engraved, was also employed of the tables of the Decalogue (Exodus 24:12).

[67] Habakkuk 1:5; Acts 13:39-41.

[68] Habakkuk 1:6ff.

[69] אֱמוּנָה (ʾᵉmûnâ).

[70] Note that אֱמוּנָה (ʾᵉmûnâ) is translated in the LXX by pistis with some frequency. “The context … justifies πίστις, even in the sense ‘trust’ … and it was so translated by Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion, and in the other Greek versions” (J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Lightfoot’s Commentaries on the Epistles. Accordance electronic ed. [Altamonte Springs: OakTree Software, 2006], par. 914, on Galatians 3:11). Furthermore, the meaning “‘belief, trust’ … [for] אֱמוּנָה … seems decidedly to have [been] adopted … in the rabbinical Hebrew” (J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, Lightfoot’s Commentaries on the Epistles. Accordance electronic ed. [Altamonte Springs: OakTree Software, 2006], paragraph 1044, sec. “The Words Denoting ‘Faith’”). In both the Old and New Testament, “[t]he trusting man (מַאֲמִין = πιστεύων) is also the faithful man (נֶאֱמָן = πιστός).” (Rudolf Bultmann, “Πιστεύω, Πίστις, Πιστός, Πιστόω, Ἄπιστος, Ἀπιστέω, Ἀπιστία, Ὀλιγόπιστος, Ὀλιγοπιστία,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament vol. 6 [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–], 198.)

[71] Kaiser notes:

[I]n Habakkuk 2:4, faith was simply an unwavering trust in God’s word. In contrast to the overbearing disposition of the wicked, the believer, like Abraham in Genesis 15:6 and Isaiah in Isaiah 28:16; 30:15, put an immovable confidence in the God who had promised his salvation and the coming Man of promise. It was a steadfast, undivided surrender to [Jehovah], a childlike, humble and sincere trust in the credibility of the divine message of salvation” (Walter C. Kaiser Jr, The Promise-Plan of God: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008], 196.).

^[72] The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Romans 1:17.

^[73] The NET Bible, 1^st ed. (Biblical Studies Press, 2005), Romans 1:17.

^[74] The Holy Bible: The Good News Translation, 2nd ed. (New York: American Bible Society, 1992), Romans 1:17.

[75] See the extensive exposition in Thomas Ross, “‘The Just Shall Live by Faith’—A Study of Faith’s Connection with Salvation in All its Justifying, Sanctifying, and Glorifying Fullness,” elec. acc. https://faithsaves.net/just-faith/.

[76] מֵירְכָה, mêrᵉḵāʾ.

^[77] Moisés Silva, “God, Language and Scripture: Reading the Bible in the Light of General Linguistics,” in Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation, ed. Moisés Silva (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 278.

^[78] Scott Hafemann, “The SBJT Forum: Profiles of Expository Preaching,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 3:2 (1999), 81–89.

[79] A. T. Robertson, The Minister and his Greek New Testament (New York: George Doran, 1923), 81.

^[80] Scott Hafemann, “The SBJT Forum: Profiles of Expository Preaching,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 3:2 (1999), 81.

[81] Note the use of the Greek verb μεταμορφόω (metamorphoō) for the progressive transformation of believers, utilizing the Greek present tense to indicate ongoing action (Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 3:18). The Greek aorist of the same verb indicates the instantaneous transfiguration of Christ (Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2).

^[82] John Owen, Meditations and Discourses Concerning the Glory of Christ, in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1862), 392.

[83] The verb κατοπτρίζω (katoptrizō) in 2 Corinthians 3:18 means to “look at something as in a mirror, contemplate something … the noun κάτοπτρον [katoptron] is the most common term in the papyri for [a] mirror” (BDAG, κατοπτρίζω). The New Testament employs the related noun ἔσοπτρον (esoptron) exclusively for the mirror of the Word (1 Corinthians 13:12; James 1:23).

[84] Jonathan Feldstein, “Neil Armstrong’s Most Significant Steps, Where Jesus Walked,” Opinion, 7/16/2019, elec. acc. https://www.israel365news.com/133487/Neil-Armstrongs-most-significant-steps-where-Jesus-walked-opinion/.

[85] Contrary to the view of theological liberalism and to a distressingly high percentage of modernist-influenced evangelicalism, the gospels contain Christ’s very words—His ipsissima verba. See Thomas Ross, “Evangelical Modernism: A Comparison of Scriptural or Fundamentalist Analysis of the Synoptic Gospels with that of the Majority of Modern Evangelicalism,” elec. acc. https://faithsaves.net/synoptic-gospels/.

^[86] Desiderius Erasmus, Paraclesis, cited in Timothy George, Reading Scripture with the Reformers (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: 2011), 92; cf. John C. Olin, ed., Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus With the Life of Erasmus by Beatus Rhenanus, rev. ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1975), 106.

[87] What is more, even the Spirit-dependent self-discipline and self-control that is involved in learning Greek and Hebrew contribute to one’s exercising himself unto godliness (1 Timothy 4:7; Galatians 5:23):

Scripture provides verse after verse of condemnation of the fool (Proverbs 26:1-11), but then makes two shocking and climactic statements: 1.) He who is wise in his own eyes and so does not embrace God’s wisdom is worse than the fool (Proverbs 26:12), and 2.) The lazy man is proud and also worse than a fool (Proverbs 26:13-16). The disciplined effort involved in learning the Biblical languages should be part of the believer’s exercising himself unto godliness, mortifying or putting to death in the strength of the Spirit (Romans 8:13) the horrible evils of laziness and of a proud passionlessness for true wisdom. The sin of laziness does not just manifest itself in an unwillingness to do physical labor (Proverbs 24:30-34) but in a “refus[al] to labor” (Proverbs 21:25) in spiritual effort seeking God’s wisdom (Proverbs 26:13-16). Such vices must be replaced with the Christ-like virtues of humble hard work, a recognition of the vastness of one’s ignorance, and a zealous hunger and thirst for true wisdom.

[88] The Greek article in “the word,” τὸν λόγον (ton logon) in 4:2, is anaphoric, referring back to “Scripture,” γραφὴ (graphē) in 3:16. The Greek anaphoric article “point[s] back to the substantive previously mentioned” (Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996], 218-219). That is, the “word” that Timothy must preach is “all Scripture.” The overseers in Christ’s church must preach every single book, chapter, and word inspired by God. While topical sermons are appropriate at times, the command of 4:2 is best fulfilled through regular expository preaching through books of Scripture, verse-by-verse, based on the exegesis of the original language text, that every word revealed by the God who has “manifested his word through preaching” (Titus 1:3) may profitably and powerfully impact the saints in the church.

[89] κῆρυξ, kēryx, 1 Timothy 2:7; 2 Timothy 1:11; 2 Peter 2:5, related to 2 Timothy 4:2’s verb “preach,” κηρύσσω, kēryssō.

[90] κῆρυξ, BDAG.

[91] Benjamin B. Warfield, “Our Seminary Curriculum.” Elec. acc. http://articles.ochristian.com/article12949.shtml.

[92] J. Gresham Machen, “The Minister and His Greek New Testament.” orig. pub. The Presbyterian (February, 1918), elec. acc. Reformation Ink, https://web.archive.org/web/20031214150311/http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/jgmmingreek.htm.

^[93] Hezekiah Harvey, The Pastor: His Qualifications and Duties (Watertown, WI: Roger Williams Heritage Archives, 1879), 145–146.

^[94] Timothy George and David S. Dockery, eds., Theologians of the Baptist Tradition (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), xiii. Note that the Apostle John is called a “theologian” or θεολόγος (theologos) in the heading the book of Revelation (in English, the “divine”: “This title is given to John in the inscription of the Apocalypse, according to the Received text” [Thayer].). The theologian is one who engages in θεολογεῖν (theologein), that is, “one who speaks of God or divine things, God’s herald” (BDAG). Every Christian should be a theologian, one who speaks for and about God. Compare θεολογία (theologia), the “science of things divine” (Lidell-Scott). In Greek Christendom “John bears the epithet ‘the theologian (θεολόγος),’ for teaching most clearly the divinity of Christ (τὴν θεότητα τοῦ λόγου)” (Philip Schaff and David Schley Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 1 [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910], 430).

^[95] R. Kent Hughes, Acts: The Church Afire, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1996), 247.

^[96] A. T. Robertson, Life and Letters of John Albert Broadus (Philadephia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1902), 139.

^[97] A. T. Robertson, Life and Letters of John Albert Broadus (Philadephia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1902), 219.

^[98] R. Kent Hughes, Acts: The Church Afire, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1996), 247.

^[99] A. T. Robertson, Types of Preachers in the New Testament (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1922), 16.

^[100] H. Leon McBeth, A Sourcebook for Baptist Heritage (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1990), 135.

^[101] Tim Dowley and Nick Rowland, Atlas of Christian History (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 142. Note that the Biblical term for what is commonly called a “missionary” is an “evangelist”; the office of the evangelist (εὐαγγελιστής, euaggelistēs, Ephesians 4:11) is that of one who preaches the gospel (εὐαγγελίζω, euaggelizō) for the purpose of seeing new churches organized (Acts 8:4-40; 21:8), not one who goes from one established church to another one preaching about the Christian life (however commendable it may be to exhort established churches about such wonderful truths on sanctification). This fact is not only clear from the New Testament evidence, but from the practice of the earliest Christian centuries:

[T]he disciples … animated with a more ardent love of the divine word … leaving their country, they performed the office of evangelists [ἔργον ἐπετέλουν εὐαγγελιστῶν, ergon epeteloun euaggelistōn] to those who had not yet heard the faith, whilst, with a noble ambition to proclaim Christ, they also delivered to them the books of the holy gospels. After laying the foundation of the faith in foreign parts as the particular object of their mission, and after appointing others as shepherds [pastors] of the flocks, and committing to these the care of those that had been recently introduced, they went again to other regions and nations, with the grace and co-operation of God. (Eusebius Pamphilus, An Ecclesiastical History to the 20th Year of the Reign of Constantine, trans. S. E. Parker [London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, 1847], 140–141; 3 Eusebius 37:2-3)

While the modern “missionary” is really the Biblical “evangelist,” the modern term is used in the body of this composition.

[102] “Without a Bible,” Baptist Bible Translators Institute. Elec. acc. https://baptisttranslators.com/without-a-Bible/.

[103] That is, the “anointing with oil” in James 5 is a medicinal, not ceremonial, anointing, a fact which receives support from the Greek word used:

The oil specified was olive oil (elaion) which was freely available … [and] was used for dietetic, toilet and medical purposes. There is no indication that the oil needed to be specially consecrated for its use in anointing the sick. Two different words are used for the application of oil in the New Testament. Aleipho is the humbler one and usually means to apply oil for toilet purposes (Matt. 6.17, Luke 7.46). Chrio is the ritual and official word for anointing and is used only in the figurative sense of anointing by God. Here in James the humbler word is used. … [A]n analysis of the usage of the verb aleipho in the New Testament appears to support the medical view [of James 5:14] rather than the religious one. . . . It is never used in the gospels of anointing for a religious purpose, but only for toilet or medical purposes. … Anointing with oil … was used only for the healing of physical disease in the New Testament. … James was saying that normal medical methods should be used in the name of the Lord and based on prayer … we may translate [the relevant] clause in verse 14 as ‘”Giving him his medicine in the name of the Lord.” … James held that healing should be a combination of medical and non-medical methods, and in illustration referred to a contemporary medical method of anointing with oil which he said should be used in the name of the Lord and with prayer. … [In] James’ reference to anointing with oil … he is here recommending the employment of both physical and non-physical methods of healing. … [Methods of] medical healing … are God’s gifts to suffering humanity and are to be used in healing the sick” (John Wilkinson, “Healing in the Epistle of James.” Scottish Journal of Theology 24 (1971) 338-339, 343).

[104] While the Watchtower Society seeks to hide the identity of the men on their “translation” committee, sources such as the former Watchtower Governing Body member Raymond Franz identify the constituents of the committee as seven men: Fred Franz, Nathan Knorr, Milton Henschel, Albert Schroeder, Karl Klein, and George Gangas. The majority of these “translators” were high school drop-outs. None had ever graduated from college. Only one of them had any training whatever in the Biblical languages—Fred Franz had taken one 2 credit hour course in New Testament Greek and a number of courses in classical Greek. None of the “translators” had ever taken any courses in Hebrew (or Aramaic) in their lives; they had no knowledge of the language of the Old Testament and consequently were totally unable to translate it. See pg. 50, Raymond Franz, Crisis of Conscience (Atlanta, GA: Commentary Press, 1985), 50; Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, rev. ed., (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany Fellowship, 1977), 64; Ronald Enroth, A Guide to Cults and New Religions (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983), 105-106, 207.

[105] See, e. g., Brian Trainer, “Adoniram Judson: Father of American Missions.” Maranatha Baptist Theological Journal 1:2 (2011), 254, 259; Richard V. Pierard, “The Man Who Gave the Bible to the Burmese,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 90: Adoniram & Anne Judson: American Mission Pioneers (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 2006).

^[106] C. C. Bitting, Bible Societies and the Baptists (Roger Williams Heritage Archives, 1897), 79.

[107] John de Jong, “Textual Criticism, the Textus Receptus, and Andoniram Judson’s Burmese New Testaments,” Pacific Journal of Baptist Research 13:2 (2018), 51-60. “Judson was suspicious of Griesbach’s critical NT text … the power of the Textus Receptus had a hold on Judson. … [His translation included TR passages such as] 1 Tim 3:16 and 1 John 5:7-8” (Ibid, pgs. 59-60).

[108] παρρησία, BDAG.

[109] παρρησιάζομαι, BDAG.

[110] Chad Ashby, “Should a Pastor Use Greek and Hebrew in his Sermon?” elec. acc. https://equip.sbts.edu/article/pastor-use-Greek-Hebrew-sermon/.

Any preacher, whether he knows the languages or not, can on occasion commit the grievous sin of misinterpreting Scripture. However, there are some preachers who, neglecting careful study, neither know nor care if what they preach has any basis in the Hebrew and Greek text, and very often neglect to study even the English—yet they brashly proclaim their own thoughts, Bibles in hand. Their boldness is not that of Christ and the Apostles, but of cruel Simeon and Levi (Genesis 34:25-26), who through lies, bold butchery, and rash, sinful boldness slaughtered many people and almost destroyed the Messianic line (Genesis 34:30). So do some preachers claim “thus saith the LORD” for what He never said, telling lies with boldness—a form of blasphemy against the name of the Lord. Such men dishonor Christ, hinder the growth of the saints, and slay the lost spiritually (cf. Thomas Ross, “When is Bad Preaching a Separating Issue?” https://kentbrandenburg.com/2019/05/31/when-is-bad-preaching-separating-issue/).

^[111] Jason S. DeRouchie, “The Profit of Employing the Biblical Languages: Scriptural and Historical Reflections,” Themelios 37:1 (2012), 46.

[112] Compare BDAG, ἀπολογία & Acts 22:1; 25:16; 1 Corinthians 9:3; 2 Corinthians 7:11; Philippians 1:7, 17; 2 Timothy 4:16; 1 Peter 3:15.

[113] One of the tremendous benefits of the Authorized, King James Version that is lost in modern versions is the use of italics for words that are necessarily supplied in English but are not specifically represented in the underlying language text. The formal equivalence of the KJV allows English readers to have confidence that every word they read in their native tongue represents an original language counterpart, with the sole exception of the words in italics. This distinction between words implied and supplied in English because of the necessities of receptor language syntax, and thus italicized, and words with specific Greek and Hebrew equivalents, is lost in the vast majority of modern versions.

For example, in John 8:58, Christ identifies Himself as Jehovah, the I AM (Exodus 3:14):

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγώ εἰμι.

eipen autois ho Iēsous, Amēn amēn legō hymin, prin Abraam genesthai, egō eimi.

The italicized “he” of John 8:24 helps the English speaking reader to understand that one who does not recognize Christ is the I AM, God in the flesh, will die in his sins:

I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

εἶπον οὖν ὑμῖν ὅτι ἀποθανεῖσθε ἐν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν· ἐὰν γὰρ μὴ πιστεύσητε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι, ἀποθανεῖσθε ἐν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν.

eipon oun hymin hoti apothaneisthe en tais hamartiais hymōn; ean gar mē pisteusēte hoti egō eimi, apothaneisthe en tais hamartiais hymōn.

Sadly, the reader with a different English version is likely to miss the connection Christ intended in the discourse recorded in John 8.

[114] Readers who do not know the Biblical languages should recognize that the italicized words in the KJV are overwhelmingly instances where the supplied English words are implied in the Greek and Hebrew syntax, rather than words randomly supplied for no good reason. Students of the original tongues are likely to already be aware of this fact.

[115] William Cathcart, ed., The Baptist Encyclopædia (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), 1156–1157.

^[116] William Cathcart, ed., The Baptist Encyclopædia (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), 1157.

^[117] Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists (Roger Williams Heritage Archives, 1886), 603.

^[118] Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists (Roger Williams Heritage Archives, 1886), 603.

^[119] Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists (Roger Williams Heritage Archives, 1886), 603.

[120] E. g., in the two-part Dan Barker-Thomas Ross debate the atheist Barker’s argument for the Old Testament’s being copied from pagan myths collapsed as its egregious fallacies became manifest, fallacies connected Mr. Barker’s and his source, Dorothy Murdock’s ignorance of Hebrew (cf. https://faithsaves.net/Barker-Ross-debate/ & https://faithsaves.net/Barker-Ross-review/). In the Thomas Ross-Shabir Ally debate (cf. https://faithsaves.net/Shabir-Ally-debate/ & https://faithsaves.net/Shabir-Ally-debate-review/) the alleged contradictions in the Gospels advanced by Muslim apologist Shabir Ally vanished through an examination greatly aided by the knowledge of Greek. The refutation of the arguments for baptismal regeneration by Douglas Jacoby, a leading minister in the sect of Alexander Campbell, would have been greatly handicapped without knowledge of the Biblical languages (cf. https://faithsaves.net/baptism-born-again-debate-Douglas-Jacoby/). Without knowledge of the original languages, it would have been very difficult to defend the verbal, plenary preservation of Scripture in the James White-Thomas Ross debate, “The Legacy Standard Bible, as a representative of modern English translations based upon the UBS/NA text, is superior to the KJV, as a representative of TR-based Bible translations” (https://faithsaves.net/james-white-debate-bible-versions-kjv-lsb/).

[121] Note the resources on equipping believers for evangelism at https://faithsaves.net/ecclesiology/.

[122] Compare the studies for members of the religions referenced at https://faithsaves.net/different-religions/.

^[123] E. g., The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 1 Timothy 6:10.

^[124] James R. White, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust Modern Translations?, 2^nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2009), 182. Similarly, White defends the modern English versions’ removal of the fall of Lucifer (Isaiah 14:12) from Scripture, arguing: “Why should I believe Jerome was inspired to insert this term at this point? Do I have a good reason for believing this?” (Ibid, pg. 181). White supplies no citations in KJV-Only literature for the very curious idea that God inspired or breathed out the patristic writer Jerome, nor are any KJV-Only authors cited who believe in the inerrant translation of the Latin Vulgate. Nor does he reference any of the Hebrew lexica that validate the legitimacy of Lucifer as a translation (e. g., Jan Bergman, Helmer Ringgren, and H. Haag, “בֵּן,” ed. G. Johannes Botterweck, trans. John T. Willis, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977], 152; Willem VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997], 88-89, 326, 942; Payne, J. Barton. Harris, R. Laird, Gleason L. Archer, & Bruce K. Waltke, eds. Theological Workbook of the Old Testament [Chicago: Moody Press, 1980], 875, 905, etc.), nor, for that matter, the KJV marginal note on Isaiah 14:12: “O Lucifer: or, O day star.”

^[125] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 262.

[126] Wilbur Pickering, ed., New Majority Greek Text Based on Original Text Theory, ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΤΘΑΙΟΝ, 8. Elec. acc. https://prunch.com. The NIV has a less-than-helpful footnote indicating that “some” Greek manuscripts have the doxology. The typical reader of the NIV is very unlikely to associate “some” with “98%.”

[127] The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Matthew 6:13; The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Matthew 6:13. Clearly, the New King James Version is not merely updating expressions in the King James Bible that are allegedly too hard to understand. Compare Kent Brandenburg, “What’s the Scoop on the New King James Version?” (elec. acc. https://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2009/10/whats-scoop-on-new-king-james-version.html) & Thomas Ross, “The NKJV—Just “Easier to Read,” or an Inferior Translation that, among other Problems, is Weaker on Sodomy?” (elec. acc. https://kentbrandenburg.com.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-nkjvjust-easier-to-read-or-inferior.html).

[128] Whitney notes:

[B]oth the English and the American Revisions have rendered τοῦ πονηροῦ [tou ponērou] in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:15) … [as] “Deliver us from the evil one[.]” … Perhaps no one thing has hindered the acceptance of the [Revised] version of 1885 so much as th[is] rendering[.] [I]t has been spoken of with severity as a wholly gratuitous dragging of Satan into the most sacred form of words that ever passes human lips. (Henry M. Whitney, “The Latest Translation of the Bible,” Bibliotheca Sacra 59:234 [1902]: 235–236.)

^[129] R. C. Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), 89–90.

^[130] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 233, 294. Wallace avoids making Sproul’s elementary mistake of assuming τοῦ πονηροῦ (tou ponērou) is masculine, not neuter, and he is aware of the articular Matthew 5:39 (Ibid, pg. 294). Note that Wallace makes a definite effort in his grammar to criticize the KJV, while he points out very few to none of the egregious mistranslations found in many modern Bible versions. The only other English version for which Wallace’s grammar offers some critique is the cultic New World Translation. It appears that the egregious inaccuracies of the most dynamic “equivalent” modern version needs no critique, but the KJV—a formal equivalent translation—requires repeated criticism.

[131] Sproul’s statement that “when the term poneros is used in the New Testament, it is a title specifically for Satan” is also very curious, as while Satan is certainly designated as the “evil one” in the New Testament (Matthew 13:19; 1 John 5:18), the nominative masculine singular πονηρός (ponēros) also appears in texts such as Matthew 6:23 (“thine eye” is “evil,” so it is Satan?) 12:35 (an “evil” man, so he is Satan?), etc.

^[132] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 208, citing A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Logos Bible Software, 2006), 756-757.

[133] James “shows a knowledge of Matthew’s Gospel” and contains “over thirty-five parallel passages … with Matthew’s Gospel” (F. David Farnell, ed., Vital Issues in the Inerrancy Debate [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015] 472-475), including the Sermon on the Mount in particular; see. e. g, Matthew 5:34–37, James 5:12; Matthew 6:19, James 5:2; Matthew 6:24, James 4:4; Matthew 7:1, James 4:11, 12, 5:9, etc. James is simply not going to flatly contradict what Christ preached in the Sermon on the Mount.

Note as well that in Matthew 5:39a, “Resist not evil” fits the second half of the verse better than “Resist not the evil man,” for 5:39b refers to an evil action, and 5:37 cannot refer to an “evil man,” but to “evil.” The translation “evil” works very well for all three of the articular uses of πονηρός (poneros) in Christ’s sermon.

[134] See the complete list of texts in both the canonical and apocryphal books: Genesis 39:9; Exodus 33:4; Numbers 14:27, 35; 20:5; Deuteronomy 9:18; 13:6, 12; 17:2, 7, 12; 19:19-20; 21:21; 22:21-22, 24; 24:7; 28:60; 31:29; Judges 2:11; 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6; 13:1; 1 Samuel 15:19; 16:23; 2 Sam. 12:9; 14:17; 1 Kings 11:8; 12:24; 14:22; 15:26, 34; 16:19, 25, 30; 20:20, 25; 22:53; 2 Kings 1:18; 3:2; 8:18, 27; 13:2, 11; 14:24; 15:9, 18, 24, 28; 17:2, 17; 21:2, 6, 9, 15-16, 20; 23:32, 37; 24:9, 19; 2 Chronicles 12:14; 21:6; 22:4; 29:6; 33:2, 6, 9, 22; 36:2, 5, 9, 12; Nehemiah 9:28; 13:17; Esther 7:6; Psalms 50:6; 100:4; Ecclesiastes 4:3; 8:11-12; Job 21:30; Amos 5:14; Jonah 3:8; Isaiah 5:20; 65:12; 66:4; Jeremiah 3:17; 7:30; 16:12; 18:11-12; 23:14; 25:5; 33:3; 39:30; 42:15; 43:3, 7; Ezekiel 13:22; 18:23; also 1 Esdras 1:37, 42, 45; Tobit 3:8, 17; 1 Maccabees 1:15; Prayer of Manasseh 12:10; Sirach 14:5; Baruch 1:22; 2:8.

[135] However, note to the contrary 1 Samuel 16:23.

[136] See Kent Brandenburg, ed. Thou Shalt Keep Them: A Biblical Theology of the Perfect Preservation of Scripture. El Sobrante, CA: Pillar and Ground Publishing, 2003.

[137] Joshua R. Jacobson, Chanting the Hebrew Bible: The Art of Cantillation, rev. & exp. 2^nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 2017), xxv. The sentence mentions, after the KJV, that translations may also be from “TANAKH: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures” or “are the author’s.” No translations are taken from any Bible version in common use among Christians except the KJV, for the Authorized, King James Version does a far better job representing the Hebrew accent system, which both Baptists and Protestants in 1611 recognized as inspired, than do modern Bible versions in Christendom, which were made by translators who almost universally reject the high view of the accents represented by the KJV.

[138] E. g., Bart Ehrman stated:

[The KJV] translators … were all skilled, highly skilled, in Greek and Hebrew. Today, when somebody is highly skilled in Greek … ([as I am considered] highly skilled in Greek) that means we can kind of slosh our way through a Greek text if we have a dictionary. … [T]hese guys … could speak Greek, and did speak Greek to each other when they felt like it. And they could read Hebrew like the newspaper[.] … These were serious, serious scholars … they didn’t have TV … they sat around and studied Greek … and Latin and Hebrew. (“What Kind of a Text is the King James Bible? Manuscripts, Translation, and the Legacy of the KJV,” lecture at Loyola Marymount University, 2/7/2013, 21:00-22:00, elec. acc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehnEZtqj2Mo)

Dr. Ehrman is the editor of the Loeb Classical Library volumes on the Apostolic Fathers and the author of many other scholarly books and articles on the New Testament and early Christianity. He is on the opposite end of the spectrum from anyone who would have King James Only sympathies, writing: “I am not a Christian, and I have no interest in promoting a Christian cause or a Christian agenda. I am an agnostic with atheist leanings” (Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth [New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2012], 5).

[139] Compare Charles Lee Irons, “A Lexical Defense of the Johannine ‘Only Begotten,’” in Retrieving Eternal Generation, ed. Fred Sanders and Scott R. Swain (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 98-116.

[140] See Thomas Ross, “Is ‘God Forbid’ a Mistranslation in the KJV?” elec. acc. https://faithsaves.net/God-forbid-KJV/.

^[141] Leland Ryken, “Ten Fallacies about the King James Version,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15:4 (2011), 5, 11, 13, 15. Ryken’s praise does not arise from King James Only sympathies, but from the simple facts of the matter. In the same article, he states: “I myself do not regard [the KJV] as the best English Bible to use today. … I have not used the KJV as my primary Bible for nearly half a century” (Ibid, pg. 13).

[142] Jason S. DeRouchie, “The Profit of Employing the Biblical Languages: Scriptural and Historical Reflections,” Themelios 37:1 (2012), 45.

[143] BDAG, ἀποκάλυψις.

[144] It is not surprising that one of the earliest known instances of Hebrew archaeologists have discovered, the Isbet Sartah ostracon, dating to c. 1200 B. C., is an example of a schoolboy practicing his letters, in a humble village on an obscure bit of pottery in a typical Israelite house, supporting both the existence of spoken and written Hebrew by 1200 B. C. and the value the common people placed upon literacy, so that they could read God’s Hebrew Scriptures. (See “From Israel: The Oldest Known Hebrew Writing.” Bible and Spade 7:1 [Winter 1978], 25-30.)

^[145] James D. Martin, Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar, 27th ed. (London: T&T Clark, 1993), 2.

^[146] Bruce K. Waltke and Michael Patrick O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 55.

^[147] James D. Martin, Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar, 27th ed. (London: T&T Clark, 1993), 1.

[148] William Carey, Joshua Marshman & William Ward, College for the Instruction of Asiatic Children and Other Youth (London: Black, Kingbury, Parbury & Allen, 1818), 31. Specifically, Greek and Hebrew were being favorably contrasted with Sanskrit.

[149] James D. Martin, Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar, 27th ed. (London: T&T Clark, 1993), 2.

^[150] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 15.

^[151] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 19.

^[152] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 15.

^[153] A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Logos Bible Software, 2006), 64.

[154] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 21–23.

[155] J. Gresham Machen, New Testament Greek for Beginners (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924).

[156] J. Gresham Machen, “The Minister and His Greek New Testament.” orig. pub. The Presbyterian (February, 1918), elec. acc. at Reformation Ink, https://web.archive.org/web/20031214150311/http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/jgmmingreek.htm.

^[157] Michael P. V. Barrett and Robert D. Bell, Bob Jones University Seminary Hebrew Handbook, ed. Mary Schleifer, Sixth Edition. (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 2007), 51.

^[158] D. W. Young, “Review of Hebrew Vocabularies by J. Barton Payne,” Bibliotheca Sacra 114 (1957), 86.

^[159] William D. Mounce, The Morphology of Biblical Greek, Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 18.

^[160] William G. Frost, “Greek among Required Studies,” Bibliotheca Sacra 42:166 (1885), 343.

^[161] William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, 3^rd ed; Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 179.

[162] Nickee LeonHuld, “How Many Words Does the Average Person Know?” elec. acc. https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-does-the-average-person-know/.

^[163] William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar 4^th ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 19. While Mounce’s numbers come from the critical text, not the Textus Receptus, the results are only slightly different, and the overall conclusion is unaffected.

^[164] Miles V. Van Pelt and Gary D. Pratico, The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), ix.

^[165] James D. Martin, Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar, 27th ed. (London: T&T Clark, 1993), 1.

^[166] William R. Osborne and Russell L. Meek, A Book-by-Book Guide to Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Academic, 2020), 1.

^[167] Miles V. Van Pelt and Gary D. Pratico, The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), ix.

^[168] Joyce Littlejohn et. al. ed., Collins Latin Dictionary Plus Grammar (Glasgow: HarperCollins, 1997), 138. While there is certainly benefit to learning Latin, as it was the language of Western Christendom for most of its history, Mounce has well stated: “So why learn Greek rather than Latin? I learned Latin and read Caesar’s Gallic Wars; it was interesting. I learned Greek and read the Bible; it was life changing” (William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar 4^th ed. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019], 3). This writer would similarly recommend that most parents prioritize Greek and Hebrew for their children above Latin and recommend that, to learn English well, children should read much well-written English literature, rather than learning Latin (or Middle English, or Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, or German, all of which are more closely related to modern English than Latin) as an indirect method of improving one’s English language abilities. It is better to go ad fontes with God’s Word while reading some classics of Christian literature in an English translation than to be able to read Christian and pagan Latin classics but be ignorant of the Biblical tongues.

^[169] William Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises and Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures, ed. Henry Walter, vol. 1, The Works of William Tyndale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1848), 148–149.

^[170] Bruce K. Waltke and Michael Patrick O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 236.

^[171] Phillip Miller, English Grammar for Bible Language Students (Bryant, AR: Phillip Miller, 2012), 32.

^[172] William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek: Grammar, ed. Verlyn D. Verbrugge, 3^rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), xvi–xvii.

^[173] Stanley E. Porter, “The Usage-Based Approach to Teaching New Testament Greek,” Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics 3 (2014): 123–124.

[174] “Muslims believe that the Qur’an … cannot be translated into any other language. Consequently, all so-called translations are really renditions and not translations at all” (Irving Hexham, Understanding World Religions [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011], 403). That the Quran cannot be translated, while the Bible can, is one of the many perfections in which the Bible manifests its superiority to the Quran. Of course, the most important difference is that the Bible is God’s infallible Word, while the Quran is not.

[175] The Sikh holy book, the Granath Sahib, was composed in “an obscure dialect of the Panjabi called Gurmukhi[.] … Hymns are found also in Prakrit, Hindi, Marathi, Multani, and a number of local dialects” (Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge [New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908–1914], 408). Its many incredible difficulties, including “the numerous languages and dialects therein represented,” leave “no doubt that, even speaking as guardedly as possible, the Granath Sahib is perhaps the most difficult book in the world.” To “the great mass of the Sikhs” it is “almost totally unintelligible” (Max Arthur Macauliffe, “The Holy Writings of the Sikhs,” in The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review 5:9-10 [January-April 1898], 363-364), and it has been estimated in times past that “there are not ten persons living who are able to read the entire Granath in its original text intelligently. Of these, few or none is capable of giving an English interpretation” (Robert Ernest Hume, The World’s Living Religions: A Historical Sketch [New York: Charles Scribener’s Sons, 1927], 94). How much easier to understand is the true God’s glorious revelation of Himself in the Hebrew and Greek Testaments!

^[176] Thomas Hunter Weir, “Languages, of the Old Testament,” ed. James Orr et al., The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Company, 1915), 1836.

[177] W. J. McGlothlin, Baptist Confessions of Faith [Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1911], 230; Chapter 1:8 of the 2^nd London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

^[178] Thomas Hunter Weir, “Languages, of the Old Testament,” ed. James Orr et al., The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Chicago: The Howard-Severance Company, 1915), 1836.

^[179] Timothy George and David S. Dockery, eds., Theologians of the Baptist Tradition (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 12.

^[180] Timothy George and David S. Dockery, eds., Theologians of the Baptist Tradition (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 13.

[181] Kenneth B. Mulholland, “From Luther to Carey: Pietism and the Modern Missionary Movement.” Bibliotheca Sacra 156:621 (January 1999), 87-88.

^[182] John D. Hannah, “The ‘Thomas’ in the W. H. Griffith Thomas Memorial Lectureship.” Bibliotheca Sacra 163:649 (January-March 2006), 5.

^[183] Thomas H. Cragoe, “W. H. Griffith Thomas,” ed. Walter A. Elwell, Handbook of Evangelical Theologians (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1998), 68–69.

^[184] John Bray and Glenn R. Kreider, “Review of The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity by Thabiti M. Anyabwile,” ed. Matthew S. DeMoss, Bibliotheca Sacra 166 (2009), 494.

[185] A. T. Robertson, The Minister and His Greek New Testament (New York: George H. Doran, 1923), 103-108.

[186] Debra Aarons, Jokes and the Linguistic Mind (New York: Routledge, 2012), 171

^[187] Leo G. Perdue, The Sword and the Stylus: An Introduction to Wisdom in the Age of Empires (Grand Rapids, MI; Eerdmans, 2008), 232.

^[188] Mark L. Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 97.

[189] “Compendium of Language Management in Canada,” elec. acc. https://www.uottawa.ca/clmc/55-bilingual-countries-world/.

^[190] James D. Martin, Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar, 27th ed. (London: T&T Clark, 1993), 1.

^[191] Lee M. Fields, Hebrew for the Rest of Us: Using Hebrew Tools without Mastering Biblical Hebrew (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 1–2. Indeed, since Hebrew was the original and the pre-Flood language, all languages come from Hebrew and different linguistic groups can be traced back to the judgment at Babel (Genesis 11). Unfortunately, the vast majority of modern linguistics is dominated by evolutionary theory that rejects this truth.

See Douglas Petrovich, The World’s Oldest Alphabet: Hebrew as the Language of the Proto-Consonantal Script (Jerusalem: Carta, 2016) for the attempt of at least one modern scholar to question the removal of Hebrew’s ancient heritage (and for a critique of Petrovich, see Ronald Hendel in Five Views on the Exodus: Historicity, Chronology, and Theological Implications, ed. Mark D. Janzen and Stanley N. Gundry, Counterpoints Bible and Theology [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2021], 73–74, and the sources cited by Hendel).

[192] cf. D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996) & Tabletalk Magazine, January 2014: Hermeneutical Fallacies (Sanford, FL: Ligonier Ministries, Inc., 2014). Naturally, these resources themselves must be read critically and with discernment.

[193] “[T]he King James Version is used as the official Bible of the Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints].” (“Gospel Topics,” Elec. acc. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/bible?lang=eng).

^[194] Moisés Silva, ed., Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 278. Silva uses the abuse of John 1:1c by anti-Trinitarian cults as an illustration:

Greek syntax … can disprove certain heretical ideas. For example, proponents of some cults are fond of pointing out that the last reference to God in John 1:1 does not include the definite article and so should [allegedly] be translated “a god” or “divine.” Someone with little or no knowledge of Greek could easily be persuaded by this argument. A reasonably good understanding of predicate clauses in Greek, however, is all one needs to demonstrate that the argument has no foundation whatever (the article that accompanies the predicate noun is routinely dropped to distinguish the predicate from the subject of the clause—besides, there are numerous and indisputable references to God, as in verses 6, 13, and 18 of the same chapter, that do not include the article) (Silva, ibid.).

^[195] Benjamin L. Merkle, “Keep the End in Sight,” in Greek for Life: Strategies for Learning, Retaining, and Reviving New Testament Greek (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 7.

^[196] Martin Luther, ed. H. Ashley Hall, “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools,” in Christian Life in the World, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Kirsi I. Stjerna, and Timothy J. Wengert, vol. 5, The Annotated Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1524), 264–266. Of course, heresies like sacramental and works-based salvation were also hugely influential in driving away the illuminating Spirit of the Lord from a distressingly high percentage of patristic commentators.

^[197] Scott Hafemann, “The SBJT Forum: Profiles of Expository Preaching,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 3:2 (1999), 87–88.

^[198] Andrew D. Naselli, “A Review Article: Scholar’s Library: Gold,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 11 (2006), 159.

[199] E. g., Mrs. Gail Riplinger, in her book Greek and Hebrew Study Dangers (Ararat, VA: AV Publications, 2008, electronic ed.) argues against the study of Greek and Hebrew and against the use of original language study tools. When she is not (as too frequently) taking the writings of others out of context, she makes arguments such as: “Give one insight found in the ancient Koine Greek New Testament that cannot be found in the English Bible or another widely available vernacular Bible” (pg. 545, elec. ed.). Of course, as she has degrees in art and home economics but does not know Greek or Hebrew (Phil Stringer, The Messianic Claims of Gail Riplinger, [Old Paths Publications, 2010], 4; elec. acc. https://deanburgonsociety.org/PDF/StringerOnRiplinger.pdf), it is easy for her to argue against the value of the languages, as she would have great difficulty explaining what, say, a Granville-Sharp construction is, in diagramming a passage in the Greek New Testament so that the main points of a sermon can be the main points of the text, or in comprehending insights from syntactical or discourse analysis. Furthermore, the vast majority of her intended audience is likewise unable to comprehend such matters, enabling them to find her invalid arguments convincing. In any case, over the course of many wearisome pages, she never cites any Christian scholar fluent in Greek and Hebrew who says that the languages are useless.

While Mrs. Riplinger’s book is generally unhelpful, she is correct when she points out that many people lacking the new birth have been involved in the creation of modern Greek and Hebrew lexica. Of course, the same is true for modern English dictionaries, and the same is true for the Greek and Hebrew resources utilized by the King James translators. There is no fundamental difference between how an English dictionary defines a word—usage—and how a Greek or Hebrew lexicon does so, and while for a small number of controversial terms political correctness and other unscriptural ideologies can influence word definitions, for the vast majority of English words, from “apple” to “building” to “run,” the definitions are not changed by the spiritual state of the scholars who made the dictionary. What is true for English dictionaries is also true for Greek and Hebrew lexica—they are generally highly reliable and very useful, but must be used with spiritual discernment. Regrettably, even for the purpose of discovering the theological errors of the authors of many lexica, Mrs. Riplinger’s tendency towards inaccurate and out-of-context quotation greatly limits the usefulness of her book. One constantly wonders if the individual is indeed a heretic, is simply being portrayed as one by Mrs. Riplinger but is not, or is a heretic for reasons that are completely different from the ones she assigns.

[200] J. Gresham Machen, “The Minister and His Greek New Testament.” orig. pub. The Presbyterian (February, 1918), elec. acc. at Reformation Ink, https://web.archive.org/web/20031214150311/http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/jgmmingreek.htm.

^[201] Scott Hafemann, “The SBJT Forum: Profiles of Expository Preaching,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 3:2 (1999), 88–89.

^[202] Preface to the King James Version of 1611, Accordance electronic ed. (Altamonte Springs: OakTree Software, 2006), paragraph 29.

[203] Martin Luther, trans. H. Ashley Hall, “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools,” in Christian Life in the World, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Kirsi I. Stjerna, and Timothy J. Wengert, vol. 5, The Annotated Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1524), 259–261. Obviously, quoting Luther to illustrate a widespread Reformation-era belief does not involve agreement with baptismal regeneration, consubstantiation, rejection of the Regulative Principle of worship, or other grave Lutheran doctrinal errors. (Compare Thomas Ross, “Bible Truths for Lutheran Friends,” elec. acc. https://faithsaves.net/Bible-truths-Lutheran-friends/.)

Luther’s affirmation that losing the languages is connected to losing the gospel certainly seemed to receive support in the context of the corruptions Roman Catholicism introduced to the gospel, but one might wonder if it is an overstatement. However, Ruckmanites not only attack Greek and Hebrew but also teach the wretched heresy that in other dispensations justification is not by faith alone. Other extremists who attack the languages in a misguided attempt to elevate the KJV also often advocate the anti-repentance heresy of Jack Hyles (cf. Thomas Ross, “Hyles-Anderson College & First Baptist of Hammond: Do They Now Please God?” elec. acc. https://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2020/02/hyles-anderson-college-first-baptist-of.html) should lead one to seriously consider the possibility of a connection between the gospel and the languages. Most importantly, the diminished ability to study Scripture connected with the loss of the languages would naturally be associated with an increased risk of apostatizing from the gospel.

While recognizing the significant historical challenges involved in positing what people who have passed on would do were they in the counterfactual situation of being yet alive (cf. David Hackett Fisher’s Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought [New York: Harper & Row, 1970], 15ff.), the extant primary and secondary historical sources substantiate the positive attitudes toward original language study by the KJV translators in their own day; the idea that they would reverse their opinion were they yet alive seems highly improbable.

^[204] Martin Luther, trans. H. Ashley Hall, “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools,” in Christian Life in the World, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Kirsi I. Stjerna, and Timothy J. Wengert, vol. 5, The Annotated Luther (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1524), 266–267.

^[205] Martin Luther, Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences: October 31, 1517, electronic ed. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 1996), Thesis 2.

^[206] Philip Schaff and David Schley Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 7 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 17.

^[207] Philip Schaff, Theological Propædeutic: A General Introduction to the Study of Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), 101-102, 212–213. Of course, “vernacular versions” were also crucial for the rise of the Reformation, as Schaff makes clear on the pages quoted above as well.

[208] Many in the King James Only movement have a commendable knee-jerk reaction to defend the translational choices in the Authorized Version. Since God “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1:11), there is every reason to think that His providential guidance would especially be involved in what He foresaw would be the standard Bible for hundreds of years in the world’s most influential language. Nevertheless, if—which is very difficult—one were to establish that a translation in the KJV is utterly indefensible and indubitably wrong, the English text must yield to the perfectly preserved Greek and Hebrew words dictated by the Holy Spirit through the apostles and prophets.

^[209] John Mark Terry, Ebbie C. Smith, and Justice Anderson, Missiology: An Introduction to the Foundations, History, and Strategies of World Missions (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 204–205.

^[210] J. W. Porter, The World’s Debt to the Baptists (Roger Williams Heritage Archives, 1914), 139. Schreiner and Wright note:

The “conversion” of the Judsons and Rice to a new understanding and practice of baptism became the catalyst for the rise of the modern missionary movement among Baptists in America. But their experience was not unique. … [A] steady stream of evangelical Christians had come to this same conclusion, and often by the same route—a careful reading of the NT[.] … [William] Carey himself, while still working as a journeyman shoemaker in England, had come to the same place and he was baptized as a believer in the River Nene in 1783. Likewise, many “new light” Congregationalists who had been converted under the preaching of George Whitefield left that connection to become “new light” Baptists when they found no evidence of infant baptism in the apostolic church. When told of this development, Whitefield famously quipped that he was glad to hear about the fervent faith of his followers but regretted that so many of his chickens had become ducks! (Thomas R. Schreiner & Shawn D. Wright, Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ [Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2006], xv–xvi.)

^[211] M. Fackler, “Carey, William,” ed. J.D. Douglas and Philip W. Comfort, Who’s Who in Christian History (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992), 137–138.

^[212] Diana Wallis, Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church’s Great Preachers (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2001), 398.

^[213] A. T. Robertson, Types of Preachers in the New Testament (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1922), 16.

^[214] J. Y. H. Briggs, “McLaren (MacLaren), Alexander,” ed. Timothy Larsen et al., Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 398.

^[215] Daniel Liechty and Bernard McGinn, eds., Early Anabaptist Spirituality: Selected Writings, trans. Daniel Liechty, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994), 17.

^[216] L. Russ Bush and Tom J. Nettles, Baptists and the Bible, Revised and expanded. (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999), 312–314.

[217] J. Kristian Pratt, The Father of Modern Landmarkism: The Life of Ben M. Bogard (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2013), 4.

[218] L. D. Forman & Alta Payne, The Life and Works of Benjamin Marcus Bogard, vol. 2 (Little Rock, AK: Seminary Press, 1966), 382.

[219] J. Kristian Pratt, The Father of Modern Landmarkism: The Life of Ben M. Bogard (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2013), 147, 149.

[220] J. Kristian Pratt, The Father of Modern Landmarkism: The Life of Ben M. Bogard (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2013), 188-192. Quotation marks from the citation of other sources have been removed in the text reproduced above. Bogard was a leading advocate of church-sent evangelists or missionaries, the now universal independent Baptist practice, rather than the then dominant practice of convention-board sent missionaries, which is still followed in the Southern Baptist Convention and among other Convention-affiliated Baptists; indeed, Bogard’s first public debate was over whether conventions or churches should send missionaries: the “Throgmorton-Bogard Debate on the Mission Board Question” (L D. Forman & Alta Payne, The Life and Works of Benjamin Marcus Bogard, vol. 2 [Little Rock, AK: Seminary Press, 1966], 146-193; cf. 312-317, 345).

[221] J. Kristian Pratt, The Father of Modern Landmarkism: The Life of Ben M. Bogard (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2013), 15, 133-136, 153; for records of those converted and baptized as a result of his debates, see L D. Forman & Alta Payne, The Life and Works of Benjamin Marcus Bogard, vol. 2 (Little Rock, AK: Seminary Press, 1966), 18, 22-23, 29, 30-32, 38-39, 42, 87-89, 91; on at least one occasion, a new Baptist church was organized as a result of a debate (pg. 36, ibid).

[222] Of course, references to the influential Baptists above is not an unconditional commendation of all of their beliefs and practices. Much less is the references to the other authors referenced in this study. All the persons mentioned above “made … mistakes. No man is perfect” (L D. Forman & Alta Payne, The Life and Works of Benjamin Marcus Bogard, vol. 2 [Little d. Rock, AK: Seminary Press, 1966], 509). For example, the culture of the early 20^th century American South contributed to Ben Bogard being a member of unbiblical organizations (pg. 393, ibid), while some of Carey’s practices in India should have been reformed in the light of Biblical principles on ecclesiastical separation. Similarly, Abraham, the father of the faithful (Romans 4:16) and David, the sweet psalmist of Israel (2 Samuel 23:1) should not have followed the culturally acceptable practice of polygamy—they should have recognized God’s pattern of one man for one woman for life (Genesis 2:24). Nor should the Apostle Peter have denied Christ three times (Luke 22:54-62). Such facts do not mean that Christians cannot learn from and be thankful for godly men like Abraham, David, Peter, Carey, and Bogar

[223] What is distinctive in 1 Timothy 2:11 is not that women should be in respectful and quiet submission—that was commonly accepted by all—but that they were commanded to learn. In pagan Greek society, virtuous married women did not learn—only prostitutes did:

Virtuous Grecian women during the apostolic age, and long before, were seldom or never in public assemblies, except as converts to Judaism or Christianity. The condition of pagan Grecian women was far inferior to that of their Hebrew sisters. … Pagan Grecian men had but little respect for the character of woman, and regarded her capacities as much inferior to their own. … Virtuous Grecian women, previous to marriage, were chiefly kept confined at home. After marriage they were not allowed to leave their dwellings except on special permission of their husbands. … The life of a Greek woman of good repute was one of strict seclusion. She lived with her children and servants in what was called the gynaeconitis, always in the rear of the dwelling; or, in Homer’s time, in the upper story. The men occupied the andronitis, the front first story and chief part. Strangers were never admitted to the apartments for women. As a rule the virtuous women were not well educated, except in the duties of a housekeeper. The unvirtuous women were often well educated, like Aspasia, the famous mistress of Pericles. … The superior education of some of the hetaerae [prostitutes] was owing to their unrestrained social intercourse with men. Virtuous wives were in general shut out from the thoughts and aspirations of intellectual society. They could not mingle with men, nor yet with educated courtesans—enemies of their peace—who associated with their husbands. No women but the hetaerae could listen to the philosophers in the arcades, or to the orators in the Areopagus. None but they could ride through the streets with uncovered face and in richness of apparel. With their society the men became familiar, and instead of loving their own wives often treated them as furniture and chattels. If retirement, restraint, ignorance of the world, and legalized respect were the portion of married women, freedom, education, and the homage of men, ending in contempt, fell to the lot of the hetaerae. Young women destined for this pursuit received a careful education, such as was denied daughters intended for the marriage state. Hence the hetaera was connected with the arts, the literature, and even the religion of her country; and this gave her a kind of historical importance (William Deloss Love, “Women Keeping Silence in Churches,” Bibliotheca Sacra 35, no. 137 [1878]: 12–14).

Pagan Roman customs contemporary to the pastoral epistles likewise viewed a woman’s education as something that would tempt to immorality, and thus as a negative for the virtuous woman:

The Romans knew nothing of the relations of modern society in which the sexes mutually encourage each other in the virtues appropriate to each.… The women were never associated in their husband’s occupations, knew little of their affairs, and were less closely attached to their interests than even their bondmen. They seldom partook of their recreations, which accordingly degenerated for the most part into debauches. Systematically deprived of instruction, the Roman matron was taught indeed to vaunt her ignorance as a virtue. … Education, and even pleasing conversational powers were, in the opinion of Sallust, such seductive fascinations as formed the charm and fixed the price of the courtesan. Virtue was under temptation to apostasy. Man’s infidelity to the marriage state had long been nearly universal, and woman’s at length became so common as to alarm even corrupt emperors for their subjects. Virtuous women did not break through these chains and attempt a social equality with man; they rather pined in solitude. They could not have the companionship of even their brothers or other male relatives for their own improvement. Consequently, when woman was allowed any intercourse with the world, her ambition sought vain and gaudy show; her conduct was generally frivolous, often boisterous and vicious. She was unblushingly bought and sold for marriage; her capacities for even that relation were ridiculed; and marriage was at length avowedly and boastfully renounced by many citizens. She came practically to be without rights, without the ownership of property, and nearly without respect from her own or the other sex. Her status was that of a child. Her life of bondage was first controlled by her father, and then transferred at his option to her husband (ibid, pgs. 17–18).

The common view of Judaism that rejected the Lord Jesus’ Messiahship and thus rejected the Old Testament was too often conformed to the views of pagan society: “The men came [to the assembly] to learn, the women came to hear; for what purpose were the children brought? Only that those who brought them should be rewarded” (Michael L. Rodkinson, trans., The Babylonian Talmud: Original Text, Edited, Corrected, Formulated, and Translated into English, vol. 6b [Boston, MA: The Talmud Society, 1918], 3). “Woman has no wisdom except at the distaff … [Do] not … answer her with a single teaching from the Torah … Let the teachings of the Torah be burned, but let them not be handed over to women.” (Jacob Neusner, The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008); Sota 3:4, III.2.A-D). By contrast, since Christ taught women, as recorded in the Gospels, the inspired Apostolic admonition of 1 Timothy 2 agreed with the Lord’s practice of teaching women and requiring them to learn, as men must learn. One should also by no means assume that the view of women in pre-Christian true Judaism, which trusted in Jehovah and His coming Messiah on the basis of the Old Testament, was in line with that of the Pharisaic Judaism that reacted against the Messiah, Jesus, and produced the Mishnah and Talmud. The Old Testament commands all—men, women, and children—to learn God’s Word (Deuteronomy 31:12).

[224] Waltke notes:

The poem … is structured as an acrostic (i.e., the initial consonant of each verse follows the order of the Hebrew alphabet), and … draws the book [of Proverbs] to its conclusion. By describing the capable wife within such a rigorous structure, the poet and his audience experience in a most memorable way the catharsis of having fully expressed themselves (“everything from A to Z”)[.] … [In addition to] this obvious structure … [there are] many … other embroidered structures. … In addition to being an acrostic, this eulogy to the Valiant Wife is arranged logically. Its broad thematic divisions are:

Introduction: her value 10–12
Her general worth inferred from her scarcity 10
Her worth to her husband 11–12
Body: her activities 13–27
Her cottage industry 13–18
Seam (or janus) 19
Her social achievements 20–27

III. Conclusion: her praise 28–31

By her family 28–29
By all 30–31

The acrostic’s rhetorical artistry re-enforces its thematic unity. The introduction and conclusion progress logically from her blessing of her husband to his praise of her. The conclusion is connected chiastically with its introduction by the three catchwords: ʾiššâ “wife/woman” (vv. 10, 30), ḥayil “valiant/valiantly” (vv. 10, 29) and baʿal “husband” (vv. 11, 28). This seven verse frame consists of two chiastically matched parts: the wife’s worth/praise generally (vv. 10, 30–31) and her worth/praise with reference to her husband (vv. 11–12, 28–29). The itemization of her activity proceeds logically from her income based on her skill in weaving and expanded through trading (vv. 13–19) to her accomplishments on that economic base (vv. 20–27). Verse 27 is joined with verse 26 by its initial qualifying participle, making them one sentence. Counting the seam (or janus) in verse 19 with the first half of the body and verse 27 as a grammatical unity with verse 26, the two halves of the main body also consist of seven sentences each (Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 15–31, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005], 514–516).

Should godly women be forbidden from having direct access to the structural beauties of this poem? Does not all that pertains to the study, belief, and practice of Scripture fall within the scope of the Pauline command for women to learn (1 Timothy 2:11)?

^[225] Catherine Kroeger, “The Neglected History of Women in the Early Church,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 17: Women in the Early Church (Worcester, PA: Christian History Institute, 1988).

^[226] Roger Williams, George Fox Digg’d out of His Burrovves, or An Offer of Disputation on Fourteen Proposalls Made This Last Summer 1672 (so Call’d) unto G. Fox Then Present on Rode-Island in New-England, Early American Imprints, 1639-1800; No. 228 (Boston: John Foster, 1676), 44.

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Greek and Hebrew: Reasons Christians Should Learn the Biblical Languages

Greek and Hebrew: Reasons Christians Should Learn the Biblical Languages

Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn

Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages

by Thomas Ross

Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew:

Introduction

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Lord Jesus Christ Learned These Languages

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

To Show Reverence for God’s Inspired and Preserved Revelation

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Aid the Study of God’s Word

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Help the Practice God’s Word

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Help the Teaching of God’s Word

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Aid in Apologetics and the Refutation of Error

Reasons Christians Can Learn Greek and Hebrew

Answers to Objections: An Examination of Reasons Not to Learn Greek and Hebrew

and Reasons Why Learning the Languages Is (Allegedly) Not Possible

Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew:

Conclusion

Bibliography

About the Author: Thomas Ross

Greek and Hebrew: Reasons Christians Should Learn the Biblical Languages

Greek and Hebrew: Reasons Christians Should Learn the Biblical Languages

Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn

Greek and Hebrew, the Biblical Languages

by Thomas Ross

Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew:

Introduction

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Lord Jesus Christ Learned These Languages

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

To Show Reverence for God’s Inspired and Preserved Revelation

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Aid the Study of God’s Word

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Help the Practice God’s Word

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Help the Teaching of God’s Word

Reasons Christians Should Learn Greek and Hebrew:

The Languages Powerfully Aid in Apologetics and the Refutation of Error

Reasons Christians Can Learn Greek and Hebrew

Answers to Objections: An Examination of Reasons Not to Learn Greek and Hebrew

and Reasons Why Learning the Languages Is (Allegedly) Not Possible

Reasons Christians Should and Can Learn Greek and Hebrew:

Conclusion

Bibliography

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About the Author: Thomas Ross

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