Friends,

Here is Common Christianity column #816 (7-5-22), “Greek, You Say?” A learned friend said “Greek?” and I said “No.” I’ve learned to cut more corners than Pythagoras. See the column below, or at our blog CommonChristianity, or on social media.

Also, wife Pam led our E91 traditional service yesterday with a nice nod to the Fourth of July.  There’s a video link to the service at the bottom of the column. Happy Fourth! Blessings, Bob

Spirituality Column #816

July 5, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Greek, You Say?

By Bob Walters

“How is it that each of us hears them in our native language?” – Acts 2:8

I took it as a compliment recently when Bible study friend Jeff Dodge at church who also happens to be a college philosophy professor suggested that I learn Greek.

Jeff knows of my writing and the “amanuensis” (secretarial, editing) work I did for 14 years formatting the class notes for retired, multi-lingual Egyptian Bible translator and Cambridge divinity lecturer Dr. George Bebawi’s weekly studies at our church.

I assumed no corrective or criticism, only that Jeff thought I’d enjoy the intellectual “deep dive” of the language of the New Testament.  I immediately said, “No.” 

Since the ancient Greeks were all about reason, let me put it this way: I reasoned that I already know just enough Greek to get into trouble, have plenty of tricks and resources up my sleeve to make sense of Bible Greek when necessary, and don’t feel the need to stuff my nearly-70-year-old head with things I can just as easily look up.

Besides, never in my (long ago) academic life having had any particular facility for foreign language, neither did I now see a reason to add an assuredly mediocre (in my case) enterprise to my kitbag of competencies. Long ago in a public relations career I discovered it’s not what you know that counts, it’s what you know how to look up. 

And here, simply, is how you look up Greek from the New Testament.

Go to Google and search a verse, like this: John 1:1 in Greek.

That’s all there is to it.  It’s how I survived George.  Welcome to the quicksand.

A Google search like this of any New Testament verse usually brings up the solid interlinear Bible website, “BibleHub.com,” citing that particular verse in Greek.

Click that entry and the next thing you’ll see is a screen with the entire verse word by word on a grid in transliterated Greek (English letters), actual Greek words, English words, and the grammatical, coded rainbow of Greek parts of speech, person, tense, mood, voice, case, number, gender, and comparison. Click back and forth; it’ll keep you busy for hours. One can navigate, investigate, and cross-reference endlessly.

For good measure, the well-known Strong’s Concordance is also in there for click bait links to every other New Testament citation using that particular word and other forms of it (often dozens in Greek) along with an exhaustive listing of definitions. 

Professional theologians and philosophers may well rely on more sophisticated academic resources, but for us garden-variety, Bible studying Christians, this seems to do just fine.  Accurate Greek linguistic context opens up much scriptural understanding.

Though written in Greek, I would think everyone knows that very little verbiage in the New Testament was spoken in Greek or Hebrew, but rather in Aramaic, the dominant, common semitic street language of the time.  Still, for example, I’d be curious to know in what language Roman Pontius Pilate asked Hebrew Jesus “What is truth?”

The simple answer to that one is, “The Truth is Jesus Christ, and you’re looking at Him.”  But Jesus didn’t answer, and His silence was profound in any language.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), attending his 1972 Kokomo (Ind.) H.S. 50^th reunion this weekend, learned the Greek alphabet in Miss Handley’s senior World Lit class; she had it on cards above the chalkboard like the cursive cards in third grade. Walters should have listened more in class, but can still recite the Greek alphabet like a beast.

Here’s that link to the July 3 E91 traditional service: E91Church.com/Traditional, click on July 3, 2022 service. Includes a great piano piece by Wayne before Rick’s sermon.