| Seven Reasons for Learning Biblical Greek David A. Handy, Ph.D. January 22, 2009 There are many good reasons for taking the time and trouble to learn ancient biblical Greek. Here are seven of the ways you can benefit from investing the considerable time and effort it requires. These are seven of the chief ways that knowing New Testament Greek will help you to understand the Bible with a depth and precision that is otherwise impossible. Word Use Matters 1. First, there are no exact lexical equivalents. Although we have inherited many English words from Greek, often by way of Latin (which makes learning Greek vocabulary a lot easier than learning Hebrew vocabulary), the fact is that there is never an exact correspondence between words in different languages. The range of contexts in which similar words are used can vary significantly between Greek and English, and their cultural connotations or verbal associations can also be strikingly different. Thus, though the meanings of many English words overlap with their Greek equivalents, they never mean exactly the same thing. Sometimes this can make a big difference. For instance, to pick a famous example, there are three Greek words that are all generally translated in our English versions of the NT by our word “love.” And in John 21:15-17, two of them are used in a very striking way that is glossed over in our English versions: Twice Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” (αγαπάς, using the verb agapao), but Peter replies, “Yes, Lord, you know I love you” (φιλώ, using the verb phileo). The third time, the Master rephrases it, “Peter, do you love me??” (using phileo), and the disciple is cut to the heart, even more than before. Now both Greek verbs are appropriately rendered by our English word “love,” but their associations and connotations are quite different. Basically, agapao is used (especially in John) for God’s unconditional, infinite kind of love, whereas phileo is used for the ordinary (though still precious) love between friends or siblings. Of course, English translators and publishers could add a footnote at the bottom of the page in a case like this, or perhaps put a note in the margins to the side, calling attention to the fact that different Greek words underlie the use of “love” here in John 21. But the problem is that if you were to add a footnote for every time something like this comes up, soon the page would be COVERED with so many notes it would be very distracting and tedious. In other words, there’s just no substitute for knowing Greek if you want to catch important nuances like that. 2. Unfortunately, word plays almost never come through well in another language. A classic, well known example is the Lord’s humorous remark when he bestows the nickname “Peter” on Simon in Matthew 16: 18. “You are Rocky (Πέτρος, Petros), and on this rock (πέτρα, petra) I will build my church.” Now in this case, many of our English Bibles do feature a footnote calling attention to the pun, but most of the word plays present in the Greek text inevitably just get overlooked (again, there are simply too many to footnote them all). Grammatical Matters Most of us Americans (since we only know one language well) are much less aware of the importance of grammar than we are of vocabulary. A lot of old, popular resources for Bible study concentrate on word studies, but the often significant differences between Greek and English at the grammatical level are really at least as important as the lexical differences, even though they are often more subtle and thus easily missed. There are MANY examples of such hidden differences between Greek and English grammar. Here are a few of the major and most common ones. 3. In Greek, there are two ways to express a negative command. One grammatical form involves the negative particle ου/ou (“not”) and an imperative in the “present” or continuative tense. The other grammatical way of expressing a prohibition involves the particle μη/mey and a verbal form known as the “aorist subjunctive” (for which there is no English grammatical equivalent). Now the key thing to know is that the Greek verbal system doesn’t highlight the TIME when actions occur (as English does) so much as it emphasizes the KIND of actions they are (i.e., Greek verbs focus on whether events are seen as a single action, or a continuous action, or an often repeated action etc.). This has far-reaching implications for interpreting the Greek New Testament. With prohibitions, the second Greek grammatical construction I mentioned above is the generic one that simply means “Don’t do that.” But the crucial thing to notice is that the other kind of prohibition (the particle ou plus the “present” imperative) carries a very important connotation that is almost never captured in English, for it means not just “don’t do” something; it clearly implies, “STOP” doing that thing. That is, grammatically, it calls for a continuing action to be stopped. There are lots of examples of these sorts of prohibitions in Paul’s letters, in the ethical second half of them. For example, Romans 12:2 actually implies, “STOP being conformed to the world…,” That’s a vital difference, although it’s almost never rendered that way in English Bibles. 4. Another fine point of Greek grammar that is often lost in translation is that Greek has more than one way of asking questions. And one interrogative form clearly implies whether the person asking a yes or no kind of question expects the answer “Yes” or the answer “No.” For instance, in the famous Last Supper scene, after Jesus has prophesied that one of them will betray him, all the disciples in astonishment blurt out, as it’s usually rendered, “Is it I, Lord?” But a better translation would be, “It’s not I, is it, Lord?” (Matt. 26:22). For the disciples are expecting the Master to say, “No, it’s not you.” 5. Then there’s the whole matter of the complexity of the Greek verbal system and how it doesn’t focus on the time of actions the same way that English does. This is one of the hardest things for beginners in Greek to grasp, but it’s essential. In particular, there are two Greek tenses that are very different from anything in English, the “aorist” and the “perfect” tenses. Both describe actions in the past, but with very different implications. The aorist is similar to our past tense but the focus is less on the action happening in the past than on the action being seen as a single event as opposed to an action that’s often repeated or continuous or incomplete. That’s strange enough, but the “perfect” tense of the verb combines elements that would take a whole sentence to express in English. For a Greek verb in the perfect tense describes a completed action in the past whose effects continue on into the present. There’s simply nothing like that in English. But that highly compact way of speaking in Greek carries very important implications that are very hard to carry over into English without getting ponderously long. For example, at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, the initial message that Jesus preached is summarized this way. “The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near. So repent, and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15). That’s about the best we can do in English, but it misses the fact that the Greek implies more: The time “has been (and is) fulfilled” and the kingdom of God not only “has come near” (both verbs are in the perfect tense), but that approach has created a situation that endures into the time of the speaker, i.e., the kingdom of God is still near and is a present reality that Jesus’ hearers must do something about. 6. Then, there’s the whole matter of the remarkable flexibility of Greek grammar when it comes to word order in sentences, which is much greater than we have in English. This is due to the fact that Greek nouns have case endings that indicate what syntactic role they play in the sentence (e.g., as the subject or object of the verb, or the object of a preposition etc.). This is typical of most European languages (e.g., German, French, Spanish etc.), but English has lost almost all its former case endings and now relies heavily on word order to make clear what is the subject of the verb and what is the direct object that receives the action. That is, in English, it makes a big difference if you say, “Tom hit Bill,” or “Bill hit Tom.” But in Greek, you could put either Tom or Bill first in the sentence, because the endings on the nouns show which one is the subject that does the action, and which is the direct object. And Greek writers love to play around with the word order in order to exploit that flexibility in order to add emphasis to what they want to stress. That is, they place the emphasized words either first or last in the sentence in order to make them more prominent, since their grammatical function is still clear, due to the endings on the noun. But unfortunately, it’s rarely possible to capture that subtle stress in English, due to our language’s grammatical constraints. 7. Finally, lest it seem that Greek is always more precise than English, let me provide a case of the opposite phenomenon, where Greek grammar is decidedly more ambiguous than English is. One of the biggest challenges in translating the Greek NT is the very large number of participles (think of action words that end in “-ing”), whose function is often ambiguous and debatable. That is, Greek writers often use a participle to express an idea where in English we’d use a whole clause to say the same thing. Unfortunately, adverbial participles in Greek can be used in a confusing variety of different ways, and only the context helps you determines its most likely intended use. That is, it’s often unclear whether the participle is modifying the action of the main verb by indicating further information about when it took place, or in what manner it did, or by what means, or to express the cause of the action described by the main verb, or its purpose, etc. For example, a woodenly literal, word-for-word translation of 2 Cor. 3:18 would leave the participle “seeing” (or “beholding”) in an ambiguous –ing form. “And all of us, with unveiled faces, SEEING the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into his image…” That could be interpreted in a temporal sense, “while we are seeing/looking at the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed…” Or the participle could reasonably be taken to express the means by which the main action occurs, i.e., “by gazing at the glory of the Lord, we are transformed.” Or it could plausibly be understood to express the cause of the main action: “because we are beholding the Lord’s glory, we are being transformed…” Now perhaps those various possibilities don’t seem to make all that much difference, but in other cases it can be crucial to interpreting the whole gist of the sentence. Knowing how ambiguous Greek participles can be will help you understand why different English translations, preachers, or commentators can interpret the same Greek sentence quite differently, and yet they will often have very good reasons for doing so. Conclusion Much more could be said along these lines. There are other benefits to learning ancient biblical Greek, but I hope these seven advantages are enough to whet your appetite to know more. Thanks to how many English words are derived from Greek roots, learning Greek vocabulary is relatively easy (i.e., compared with Hebrew or Russian or other more distant languages, but naturally it still takes a lot of work). But learning Greek grammar is considerably more difficult, and yet it also pays more rewards and dividends for those who persevere and succeed in mastering the basics. Learning an ancient language like Koine (everyday, conversational) Greek is challenging and very time consuming. Yes, it’s not easy and it takes enormous amounts of patience, discipline, and effort. In some ways it’s harder than learning to speak a modern language, because you can’t just go somewhere and immerse yourself in the language by hearing it being spoken all around you all day long. But I firmly believe it’s well worth it. Of all the things I learned in seminary, one of the things I’m most grateful for and still benefit from the most is my ability to read the New Testament in its original language. It is a source of endless, helpful insights. |