Why Actively Use the Biblical Languages? (Part 1)

Students in Classical Christian schools and home-school students often study Latin for at least one year. I have spoken with many over the years about their experience of learning Latin in their youth — students I have taught in the past, friends, and others. Statements like "it was awful," "I remember nothing," "learning it was so hard," and "I hate paradigms" were very common. This last statement, "I hate paradigms," was perhaps the main reason for the past pain of these Latin learners.

If students today spoke to Luther and Calvin, what would they see? Among those who received an education in Europe during the time of the Reformation, they would likely walk into classrooms and hear students speaking Latin, listening to Latin, and reading and writing Latin. That is why John Calvin, Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton wrote many (if not all) of their books in Latin. They had been trained to learn Latin in order to use it, not just to translate it.

Why do I bring this point up? It is to contradict a prevalent idea that it is "unnatural" to learn how to speak a language that is "dead." If some of our best Reformation theologians and Enlightenment-era scientists learned this way, perhaps we can learn some lessons from the way these geniuses learned this ancient language.

So why are students less competent in Latin today than they were back then? There may be many answers to this. One is obvious: Luther and Calvin would have begun learning Latin young and were made to continue for many years. However, it would not be true to say that all methods of language learning are created equal. As Christians, we know that God has given us skill and ability to become more efficient and effective in the disciplines of life. Very few (if any) farmers with a hundred acres of cropland today prefer the hoe and elbow-grease method over the John Deere tractor. I do not know a single author who handwrote a book with pen and ink; they prefer the very efficient, modern child of the Gutenberg press. I say all of this to encourage us to recognize that there may well be more efficient and less efficient ways to learn the biblical languages.

For those who desire to learn the biblical languages, then, it is good to find out which methods are most productive for the goal. Our goal as biblical language learners is to learn the biblical languages! So let me degrade to simple math for a moment. In a class where the teacher uses Greek as a spoken language and the students respond in Greek, the class might consist of 70% Greek and 30% English. The alternative is using English as the main language to teach Greek: translating all the Greek words into English and learning all the grammar rules in English. I studied Greek and Hebrew in many classes like this when I began. Not more than 10% of the class was actually conducted in Greek or Hebrew — more conservative estimates would say 5%. Therefore, if the goal is to learn Greek and Hebrew in class, using them as spoken languages is the most productive use of the time.

One thing I must clarify: I do not promote abandoning English in a Greek or Hebrew class. Sometimes there are very difficult grammatical points or ideas that must be clarified in English, especially when a student is clearly struggling to grasp a concept or word. Our goal is to help the students, not leave them confused. English is a great language of instruction and is often necessary, even for those who desire to learn Greek and Hebrew as living languages.

There are numerous benefits to learning to listen to and speak the biblical languages. Perhaps one of the most significant is the ability to understand audio Bibles in Greek and Hebrew. Speaking and listening go hand in hand: when you start listening and speaking, you begin comprehending a language. If you only have English glosses for vocabulary in your head, it will be nearly impossible to understand anything in an original-language audio Bible. But after learning Greek and Hebrew as spoken languages, you can drive to the grocery store, work in the backyard, or enjoy the morning commute while listening to a Greek or Hebrew audio Bible. This helps students keep learning the language outside the classroom and the study.