Is it possible for a regular Joe like me to learn how to read the Bible in the original Hebrew? I’ve got a job. I’m raising a family. I have a few hobbies. Life is pretty busy. So, should I attempt to learn Hebrew well enough to pick up the Bible and read it in the original?
The answer is no.
I’m with Ortega Y Gasset in thinking that translation is impossible. We can only aspire to approximate the original. And even with languages that I speak and understand very well I am exceedingly prone to misunderstanding and miscommunication. How much more so with a dead language with a very sketchy corpus. How does one go about “learning” Ancient Hebrew to the point where they can say, “Yes, I pick up the OT and just start reading.” I’m simply saying that there is a limit to the amount of detail that a human mind can manage. Glossing a text does not in the end get us very far. It’s the point at which we can begin making comparisons with how this vocabulary is used in other places, how it varies (morphology, constituent order, etc), and so forth. That’s why I advocate beginning from an electronic interlinear and digging, making comparisons and freeing yourself from the tedium of parsing.
The joy I experience in speaking a second language is not attainable in Koine. Everybody who ever spoke Koine is dead. Back in the days of The Spectator, cultured ladies and gentleman actually made conversation in Latin, Greek and even threw in a bit of Hebrew. But those days are gone. I have never met a Greek scholar who could string together four sentences in Greek. Their only skills are in written comprehension. No written production. And no spoken anything.
So there’s a good reason why no one is learning Biblical Greek and Hebrew. And with all due respect to John Dobson and Menahem Mansoor, their didactic methods only get you over the first hurdle.
Going to Jerusalem is the way to do it. My cousin Cameron is doing that. I hope he meets a lovely girl. That will get him speaking the langauge!
But for us poor folks stuck at home raising a family and interested in digging into Hebrew I think an interlinear and some good commentaries is the most productive solution.
And what about my Hebrew? I decided at the end of this year to wait another ten years before dipping into Hebrew. Heck, I’m going to live forever, so what’s another decade? Plus, I have a lot of questions about Greek that I still have to answer.
Note: This started as a comment on John Hobbins’ blog and grew so long that I decided to stick it on my blog.
I’m with Ortega Y Gasset in thinking that translation is impossible. We can only aspire to approximate the original. And even with languages that I speak and understand very well I am exceedingly prone to misunderstanding and miscommunication. How much more so with a dead language with a very sketchy corpus.
Whose translation of the corpus of Ortega Y Gassett (1883-1955) convinced you of that?
And when the Koine corpus includes these words (καὶ Ἰησοῦς προέκοπτεν ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ καὶ ἡλικίᾳ καὶ χάριτι παρὰ θεῷ καὶ ἀνθρώποις), then do you conclude that Luke the writer-translator (in his gospel, chapter 2:52) assumed that Ἰησοῦς using living Aramaic had a better shot at tackling the then-dead Hebrew corpus than someone like Ortega did? Granted, Ἰησοῦς lived a bit in Jerusalem and wasn’t just “stuck at home raising a family”; but that was before they invented blogging and the Internet (which you seem to have picked up rather well). I still want to know who your teachers are (even though you teach yourself well).
The Spectator is alive and well, notorious, and even available online. This magazine was founded in 1828. But perhaps you were referring to Addison and Steele’s predecessor briefly published in 1711-12.
I can read OYG quite well although I’m sure I miss a lot of his allusions since he seemed to be quite enamored with the French. Come on, JK, you spoiled it by giving the reference. That’s one I can actually read without an interlinear! You’re my teacher, Mr. Gayle. Although in your class I’m one of the sullen dummies sitting in the back.
Peter, yes, I am referring to the original Addison and Steele version. They were very funny in a literary nerdy way… kind of like us.
One of the sadder things in the Evangelical world is the neglect of classical Greek. The corpus available for NT Greek is limited (though it seems long when you are translating it) but there is a huge amount of literature available in classical Greek. True, the two are far from identical, but they are close enough for serious cross-fertilisation. Not only that, but the large volume of literature available in Classical Greek does make communicative language learning a possibility.
My secondary school Greek and Latin teacher could quite cheerfully string together far more than four sentences of Greek (or Latin for that matter) and this was not in the 1700s (honest) and my suspicion is that any half decent undergraduate student of classics today would be able to do the same. The fact that Biblical scholars can’t says something but I’m not sure what. (Interestingly, a friend who is studying theology at a University – which means secular here – has to study classical Greek alongside Koine, I’ve not heard of this happening in religious institutions.)
On a different note: “They were very funny in a literary nerdy way… kind of like us.” I’ve noticed the literary and nerdy bits, when do you start being funny?
I had a professor who thought he spoke Koine, but then we found out he was dead too. At least, we couldn’t tell he was alive by the way he taught.
Dang, Cameron, that made me laugh out loud.
Randall Buth thinks he speaks Koine, and ancient Hebrew, and he is by no means dead! His Biblical Ulpan courses, from what I have heard, are based on real conversation in biblical languages.
of course we can’t “know Greek” of Hebrew but we can learn to read it and understand it – by reading it over and over just like with the English – but if you want to be good at Greek then limit your reading of the English.
that’s “or Hebrew”
[...] You can read the relevant posts by John Hobbins (and everywhere else on his blog), Mark Hoffman, David Ker (also here), and my own previous comments. As I’ve been turning all the arguments over in my [...]
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