Too much history, greek, and philosophy?

[LankyLee]

How come it seems to some on here that I can't just read my Bible without first being fluent in ancient Greek, be a Biblical historian, or be a professor in philosophy; or there is no way I could possibly know what it really means.
I mean come on.

 

[faroukfarouk]

How come it seems to some on here that I can't just read my Bible without first being fluent in ancient Greek, a Biblical historian, or a professor in philosophy; or there is no way I could possibly know what it really means.
I mean come on.

Hi; good to see you; God bless His Word to you.

The Bible came to us somehow! It was via Greek and Hebrew. What we need is the Holy Spirit to reveal the things of Christ and His Cross to us. It can be helpful to refer to the original languages, though.

 

[Widlast]

How come it seems to some on here that I can't just read my Bible without first being fluent in ancient Greek, be a Biblical historian, or be a professor in philosophy; or there is no way I could possibly know what it really means.
I mean come on.

You do not need to have any knowledge of dead languages, that work has already been done for you. Get a good concordance.
Again, get a good concordance. Lots of Bibles come with commentary, use it. Philosophy has nothing to do with it.
Philosophy, for the most part, ends up being heathens trying to explain what they don't understand, and doing it POORLY.

 

[faroukfarouk]

You do not need to have any knowledge of dead languages, that work has already been done for you. Get a good concordance.
Again, get a good concordance. Lots of Bibles come with commentary, use it. Philosophy has nothing to do with it.
Philosophy, for the most part, ends up being heathens trying to explain what they don't understand, and doing it POORLY.

Actually, it's the original which is the reference point rather than the English!

 

[Widlast]

Actually, it's the original which is the reference point rather than the English!

??? Really? And since nobody on the planet speaks the original, this is pertinent how?
There is no KNOWLEDGE lost in the translation, so why be difficult?

 

[Paidiske]

Well, the way I see it is, the Bible is a collection of writings, written and edited over about a thousand years, in different cultures, social situations, and languages; and has then been compiled, translated, commented on and so forth, before it lands as a neat leather-bound parcel in our hands. To expect to be able to pick that up and know what it "really" means as if the author(s) were sitting opposite you, speaking to you in your own culture, social situation and language, is not really realistic.

To put it in perspective, most of us need a great deal of help to make sense of Shakespeare; and yet Shakespeare is much closer to us in culture, society and language than any of the Bible ever was; and we don't expect to read Shakespeare alongside Chaucer and the Chanson de Geste and Symmachus as if they were somehow all part of a unified whole. And if they were put in one volume we would need to do significant work to draw out the commonalities in theme and purpose of those quite disparate writings.

Not to say that God can't speak to our hearts as we read, of course God can; and that is a beautiful and sacred thing. But it's helpful to recognise the reality of what we're dealing with when we talk about "the Bible."

 

[John Hyperspace]

When we're talking about the "letter" then a translation simply will not do. A translation is not meant to be anything but a translation. There is much lost in translation. If a person is going to debate scripture, and only knows an English translation, they have no business in the debate. If you're studying the letter you are going to have to go deeper than a translation.

You need to understand the process that goes into translations; the practice will involve a great many biases. The translator must first conceptualize what he is translating, and this will always introduce doctrinal bias into any translation. In essence, with a translation, you are getting an output filtered through the bias of the translator.

You are also getting many words translated from one word, and are completely muddying the consistent use of that word in the language being translated. For instance, it's important to know that words such as "world" and "age" are two different words in English from the same word in Greek. Many verses completely change in meaning simply because of a translation of a certain word, or, adding in of punctuation. Don't even get me started on the English words "hell" and "everlasting" which are translated from Greek words that need not convey those meanings in English whatsoever.

The problems with translations are manifold. Take for instance, the loss of poetic schemes; things like acrostic which have relevant meaning. Did you know that Psalm 119 is a huge interlocking acrostic based on the letter heading? That the Lamentations are such?

Did you know that the headings of Psalms are in the wrong place? Historic theme at Psalm superscription and musical theme at subscription? Most translations put the subscription as the superscription of the wrong psalm.

But the good news is this: though the "letter" is complex to the point of incomprehensibility: the "spirit" is simple and easy: love others. You don't need Hebrew or Greek or history or philosophy to understand that. Hopefully.

 

[~Anastasia~]

I think there are levels of meaning, and it depends on what knowledge you are talking about.

Some things are so basic, a child can understand them. Some things are so deep, people who have spent decades in prayer, study, and devoting their entire lives to God can't fully grasp them.

So, it depends on how deeply you want to discuss.

How we should treat one another? Anyone should be able to pick up any decent translation and figure it out.

Understand the depths and finest points of the Trinity? It will take prayer, study, revelation, history, and language to get you as close as a human being can get ... and that won't encompass God in His Essence.

Most questions fall somewhere in between, and have their own various levels of meaning.

Understanding something about the language will add a depth you can't get, unless someone else who knows it gives it to you. Understanding history and especially culture adds a very great deal, sometimes making true sense of what seems nonsense, or is completely misunderstood without that context.

As for philosophy, it usually introduces more error than anything else. But a lot of times people CLAIM something true is based on philosophy (or even sometimes mythology) when it really isn't.

Yes, you can read your Bible and get a great deal. But you will miss some things too, and probably won't even realize what you're missing. When something doesn't seem to fit, or is confusing, or seems contradictory, or doesn't feel right, those are excellent points to seek more knowledge.

Maybe you will discover you like learning more, and decide to pursue it. Maybe not. Fortunately, knowledge in itself is not what saves us. But a true understanding of some topics in particular can really deepen and enhance one's faith, and give one much help we were meant to have in the journey.

God be with you.

 

[Ken Behrens]

There is no KNOWLEDGE lost in the translation, so why be difficult?

This is simply not so. Just the verb tenses alone would settle a lot of arguments we now have in the modern church. Not to mention the Hebrew names of God, the distinction between types of love, types of death, types of miracles and signs, the meanings of each name. And then to get into the different ways we can see time and God's causality operating through it and independently of it.......

To the OP, you can spend a lot of time here, or anywhere among Christians, and never need Greek or Hebrew. It's a question of which Christians you want to spend time with.

 

[2 know him]

How come it seems to some on here that I can't just read my Bible without first being fluent in ancient Greek, be a Biblical historian, or be a professor in philosophy; or there is no way I could possibly know what it really means.
I mean come on.

If you spoke more than one language you would understand the problem more clearly, but you cannot know what you don't know until it is revealed to you.

There is an old saying that "something was lost in translation". We often misunderstand and misinterpret something someone is expressing in English, now imagine trying to translate ideas from one language to another, when 30% of the words used in one language don't have the same meaning in another language.

What you have in your English bible is not the words of their authors, what you have is a simplified version of what the authors actually wrote. In order to properly give you the authors words one would have to explain many of the concepts behind he Greek or Hebrew words used, in order for the concept to be properly understood by you and even then there would be some words that could not be translated and thus not understood properly.

 

[Thursday]

How come it seems to some on here that I can't just read my Bible without first being fluent in ancient Greek, be a Biblical historian, or be a professor in philosophy; or there is no way I could possibly know what it really means.
I mean come on.

Context is important. If you don't even know what the word mean, how can you expect to interpret them?

Thankfully, Jesus gave us a Church to settle these questions.

 

[bling]

I have a strong “academic knowledge” of scripture and have no problem teaching a room full of Biblical scholars, but I was labelled a “newbie” (naivest) by a group of young recently baptized Christian men (13-21) in my first Sunday School class for youth prisoners at the state prison and they were totally right. Some of these guys could barely read, but they had studied the subject together for over 40 hours the week before my teaching them.

My experience went like this:

I got thrown into (volunteered if needed) with prisoners program teaching Bible (one hour on Sunday morning to a group of 14 with three other Christians teaching groups of 14) and taught three groups of “Christians”. The first group is guys (going to school it is called) that start out their stay causing trouble getting thrown in the tank. Then they start increasingly attending the services, carrying their Bible, being nice, and say they are Christians. By the time the parole board meets they have this glowing report showing continued improvement tied to their increased spirituality and are released. These guys still carry weapons, are members of a gang, and every prisoner know they just “went to school” to get out. The second group were converted before they went to prison (grandma conversions), but watch raunchy TV, hang with a loss group, laugh at off colored jokes, are not always talking about Jesus and are not trying to convert others. Their first day the snitches see this, the snitches talk to the Bulls that approach these “Christians” saying you are not a Christian and make them a slave (often sexual) or at best gang member. They still come to Bible study on Sunday so they can tell Granny (who visits them Sunday afternoon) what they learned, but they are slaves (sometimes sexually) to some bull. The third group is fanatical, they stick close to each other, they: study, pray, witness to everyone, and avoid even a hint of insincerity that the snitches could see. They carry no weapons, but step between those that are being beaten especially in persecution. They had grown over the last 3 years from just a couple of guys to now 42, but it came at a high price. Each convert had on the day he was baptized given up the protection of his gang membership, turned over his weapons along with all his possessions (the gang owns everything including them), they were beaten if not by the gang they left, then by other gangs looking for payback and then they were watch constantly looking for any sign the snitches might interpret as weakness (anything less than what Christ would do in the situation, would result in a beating). There is absolutely no privacy and these Christians never wanted to be found alone. They slept in barracks where at least one stayed awake all night praying over them so they could sleep without the fear of being smashed in the head in the middle of the night. These guys believed and counted on power from the Holy Spirit, I did not know existed. They come battered and bruised each week hungry for some real meaningful Christ like lesson that goes beyond their group study of 40+hours that week on the same subject, which I could not provide. They mostly helped me with my poor example of Christianity and lack of knowledge and lack of wisdom.

The point is gang members could attend my class without retribution from their gang, but as soon as they committed to emersion baptism they were putting their life on the line, both from their old gang and gangs they had fought in the past.


One example of what I learned from them was: “You do not even try to keep from sinning (be on the defensive), but try to be involved in the next minute, in doing something really good (constantly on the offensive) then the Holy Spirit can be involved with you in doing and you keep doing good stuff all day and night and pick it up the next day. You just do not have time to be involved in any sinning.

 

[Paul Yohannan]

You do not need to have any knowledge of dead languages

Greek is not a dead language, even if it has progressed beyond Koine Greek of the NT. Latin on the other hand splintered and the different descendants of Vulgar Latin still spoken lack the elegance of the original, which is effectively dead.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Greek is not a dead language, even if it has progressed beyond Koine Greek of the NT. Latin on the other hand splintered and the different descendants of Vulgar Latin still spoken lack the elegance of the original, which is effectively dead.

? There is no effective difference between koine Greek and vulgar Latin. To class something as a new language is merely arbitrary, but the Romance language are as much the descendants of vulgar Latin as modern Greek is of Koine. If you would say koine is still a 'living' language then so is Latin. Technically in linguistics both Latin and koine Greek are classed as extinct languages as they left living descendants; dead languages have no descendant languages.

Latin is not dead, it is effectively one of the most widespread spoken languages even if called by other names.

Greek also splintered. The only difference is that it effectively only survived in its homelands so most of its splinter variants became true dead languages. Latin though continued to flourish and in fact expand its range of native speakers.

I agree though that the classical Latin language is much more elegant than its descendants.

 

[Paul Yohannan]

? There is no effective difference between koine Greek and vulgar Latin. To class something as a new language is merely arbitrary, but the Romance language are as much the descendants of vulgar Latin as modern Greek is of Koine. If you would say koine is still a 'living' language then so is Latin. Technically in linguistics both Latin and koine Greek are classed as extinct languages as they left living descendants; dead languages have no descendant languages.

Latin is not dead, it is effectively one of the most widespread spoken languages even if called by other names.

Greek also splintered. The only difference is that it effectively only survived in its homelands so most of its splinter variants became true dead languages. Latin though continued to flourish and in fact expand its range of native speakers.

I agree though that the classical Latin language is much more elegant than its descendants.

I like the French and Romanian languages, but the irritation is the loss of the system of grammatical cases in favor of a preoposition-based system relying on artivles.

 

[Paidiske]

A highly inflected language is something I appreciate too. Sadly long gone from English!

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I like the French and Romanian languages, but the irritation is the loss of the system of grammatical cases in favor of a preoposition-based system relying on artivles.

Case distinctions already began to disappear in Principate times, so it was merely the way the language was evolving. I'd like to blame it on bastardisation with the Germanic languages, but I really can't.

I personally dislike French, it sounds too much like drunkards slurring to my ear.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

A highly inflected language is something I appreciate too. Sadly long gone from English!

I speak Afrikaans as my native tongue and I am always struck by how much old English sounds like it. Afrikaans though has also lost all the old Germanic inflections which makes sentences far more imprecise. The enforced grammatical simplification and latinification of English after the Norman conquest did it no favours though. A shame really.

 

[Paul Yohannan]

Dutch and English in general are closely related, but the closest language to English is West Frisian (Fries).

 

[Paidiske]

My parents speak Afrikaans but they didn't teach me enough to be fluent. They've talked about it enough, though, for me to know that it too has lost an older grammatical complexity.

This is something that has puzzled me for a long time. Why should languages become less complex? If that is the general trend due to human laziness or whatever, how did we develop such complex languages in the first place?

Not really on topic but something I wonder about.