Greek to Me (and Now to My Son)
used by permission
If the phrase “go jump off a bridge” were a translation from the Greek text, here is the insight you’d get:
Someone who hasn’t studied Greek – “It’s just an expression”
1st year Greek student – “The best way to translate it is ‘Go and keeping jumping [present imperative] off a bridge’”
2nd year Greek student – “It helps us understand the phrase to know that the Greeks had several different types of bridges”
3rd year Greek student – “There is a textual varient in the Western tradition which indicates that the text might originally have said ‘go jump off a fridge’”
4th year Greek student – “It’s just an expression”
(Moral of the story: a little Greek is a dangerous thing. That’s not to say that the study of biblical languages isn’t helpful or important. But I cringe a lot when I hear some of the illustrative mileage people try to gain from knowing a tiny bit of Greek. It’s often interesting, though quite often wrong. Knowledge of biblical languages more often opens options than it settles with finality!)
I think I’ve heard the 2nd year version a thousand times!
The beloved Carroll Osburn was wonderful at keeping us all humble at Harding Grad. I learned to keep my mouth shut lest I be publicly shamed. I also remember Marcie Moore starting first year Greek at the beginning of the second semester, and I think she only missed one breathing mark the whole semester.
Secondary moral: a LOT of Greek is also a dangerous thing — but it’s the fun kind of dangerous. I encourage everyone to study the dangerous things of the Bible. ^_~
Hebrew is fun too!
I remember my first year Greek teacher telling us to “forget everything I taught you” at the end of the year unless we were going to take Greek 2 and beyond. He let us know that one year of Greek did not a Greek-geek make!
Had to laugh at your description of the various years of Greek. “Go and keep jumping . . . ” That’s good.
Everyone should be required to read Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation by Cotterell and Turner while studying Greek. That will clear up a lot of this silliness.
Having said that, perhaps the real problem is not our novice attempts at Greek grammar, syntax, and vocab, but our insatiable desire to pay homage to the God of ‘certainty’ and our prideful search for the answers we already know to the questions we (not the text) ‘carefully’ asked.
JP