It's pretty crazy to have five posts a week from five different writing projects with a different one almost every day of the week. So I thought I might do a two week cycle instead -- three days on one project, three days on the next, Sunday for Bible. Then complete the cycle the next week. That way the posts have more continuity rather than jerking readers in a different direction every day.
With that in mind, here is a continuation of yesterday's project, previously my Monday project -- a hermeneutical autobiography. Earlier posts at the bottom.
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1. I started off college as a chemistry major. I said I was going to be a doctor or a surgeon. I don't know if it was ever real to me. I don't think my mother necessarily thought it would happen. Probably a good thing. I probably would have left a scalpel in someone.
Near the end of my first semester at Central Wesleyan College, I felt like God was calling me into ministry. My mother wasn't surprised. My father advised I continue another semester as a chem major and then if I felt the same way, change my major then.
It's funny. I have doubted almost everything in my life at one point or another -- especially during the years from 1977-1987. But I didn't have any doubt that God wanted me to go to Central, and I never doubted that God was calling me into ministry. Strange things.
2. I dove into biblical Greek the fall of 1985. I would take enough Greek at Central to be a Greek Bible major alongside having general Bible and Religion majors as well. I enjoyed Greek. I had taken 2.5 years of Latin in high school, so it wasn't completely foreign to me. I knew about cases and changing endings on words.
Knowing what I know now, I was not great at it, although I got As. Even with a Greek Bible major, I had to study my rear end off to pass the Greek competency entrance exam at Asbury. But I did pass it, and I guess not many did. David Thompson's study book was very helpful. I would only get really good at Greek when I became a Teaching Fellow and had to teach it. Along with philosophy, biblical languages have probably been my areas of greatest teaching giftedness.
I remember my brother-in-law having me try to read the Christmas story in Greek after my first semester. Of course, I couldn't. Not only is Luke some of the hardest Greek in the Bible, but you can't really do much with Greek after only one semester with it taught the traditional way. I would explore a different teaching approach later where you might have a better chance, but on vocabulary alone I was doomed in 1985.
I had Herb Dongell for my first year. He was very much the rote memorization type of teacher. He even had us learn all the accent rules. I remember trying to tutor a dyslexic ministry major on the accent rules the next year. We just busted out laughing at one point because of how silly some of the rules sound. "If the second to last syllable is long and the last syllable is short, if the second to last syllable is accented, it will take a circumflex."
3. If you asked me why a pastor should learn the biblical languages, there is of course the matter of always having to rely on someone else's word for it if you don't know them. There is frankly a lot of shlock out there coming from pulpits in the name of Greek and Hebrew. There's a lot of crazy stuff out there. Biblical languages are treated like magic tricks.
Most American pastors don't have the aptitude to learn them. This is why I never advocated that they be required in my circles. It ends up being a waste of time. Keith Drury and Russ Gunsalus had data ready to talk me out of requiring it at Wesley Seminary but I never had a thought of requiring it. When you forget 95% of what you didn't learn the week after finals, it's a bad use of time.
I pioneered Greek for Ministry and Hebrew for Ministry courses at Wesley Seminary. The goal was to teach use of the tools and the categories-meaning of the languages rather than expecting full memorization. I think there is much more hope for teaching the significance of Greek and Hebrew than having people memorize everything. In the years since, I have hammered YouTube with Greek and Hebrew videos. I even have a couple Hebrew courses on Udemy.
But most American pastors simply won't be able to do it -- or more likely, will learn just enough to get it wrong. When I became a teaching fellow in biblical languages at Asbury in 1990, my predecessor had a sign on his desk that said, "Just remember. People are stupid." I thought that was awful. By the way, I am stupid in so many ways. But, 35 years later, I get what he was saying about seminary students and Greek. Most people just can't do it on any level of proficiency, not in the amount of time we give to it.
This is a parable, I suspect, for truly understanding the Bible in depth. (Keith Drury would kill me for saying this -- at least he would have at one point.) Most simply aren't going to. The purist says, "But they should, especially pastors!" The realist and pragmatist says, "Everyone has a different giftedness. Some people can climb mountains. Other people enjoy looking at them."
If I could go back to theological education 60 years ago and change the way Greek and Hebrew were taught, I've wondered if they might still be required. I would teach the significance of the categories of the language, much like a book I wrote last year. The free tools available make it so much easier now to learn the important things -- even more than when I wrote those Greek and Hebrew for ministry courses ten years ago.
4. The greatest value I experienced from these languages is the way they helped me enter the biblical worlds on a whole new level. When you are reading the Bible in English, it's like you are watching the biblical world on TV. You're not really there. It's really hard to get out of your culture and assumptions and get into the biblical worlds. The languages are a baptism by fire into their worlds.
Most Christians will never really enter that world on a deep level, including most pastors. It's like the person that eats at McDonalds when they're traveling Europe. They're joking about you in French behind your back, but you're oblivious because you don't speak the language. The taxi driver is charging you three times as much as normal but you don't know it.
Learning the biblical languages was the first step in beginning to read the Bible on its own terms rather than my terms. This was especially the case with Hebrew, which I didn't really start learning in depth until seminary...
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1. The Memory Verse Approach
2.1 Adventures in Interpretation
2.2 Adventures in Jewelry
3.1 Beginnings of Context
3.2 Adventures in Hair
3.3 What was 1 Corinthians 11 really about?
4.1 Keeping the Sabbath
4.2 The Sabbath as Conviction
4.3 The New Testament and Old Testament Law
5. An Easter Morning in Galatians
6.1 Adventures in the King James Version
6.2 Beyond the King James Version
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