Reading the New Testament in the Original Greek | Dr. Philip Towner

The Examined Faith — Dr. Philip Towner on Why Greek Still Matters

Most readers assume a good English Bible is enough. Dr. Philip Towner thinks something quietly disappears in every translation, and that learning biblical Greek — slowly, a page at a time — is how you get it back.

In this episode of The Examined Faith, Tuppy Morrissey speaks with biblical scholar Dr. Philip Towner, a New Testament specialist, Episcopal priest, and professor of translation studies at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome. Together they explore why reading the Greek New Testament in koine Greek changes biblical exegesis, why "disorientation" is good for the soul, and how a summer of reading a page a day reshaped his whole approach to hermeneutics.

In this episode:

Why reading Greek isn't a "silver bullet," but slows you down enough to actually see the text — the real first step in learning biblical Greek
The healthy disorientation of close reading, and the day John 1 suddenly opened onto the Jacob story in Genesis
The singular-to-plural "you" that quietly pulls the reader into the gospel, and why a footnote can't do that
Rhetoric the English drops: the threefold "but" of 1 Corinthians 6 and the relentless repetition of parakaleō in 2 Corinthians 1 — biblical Greek grammar that carries meaning translation flattens
Titus 2:13 and Romans 3:22: living ambiguities in the Greek that hermeneutics and tradition, not grammar alone, usually settle
Eusebeia, epiphaneia, parousia: borrowed imperial vocabulary and the church's quiet act of engagement with Rome
Preaching from the Greek without ever quoting it, and translation as keeping the Word alive
David Bentley Hart's foreignizing New Testament, and advice for anyone who wants to start (or restart) Greek: no gain without pain

This podcast is part of Faithwave. https://www.faithwave.app/

Chapters

0:00 Title and introduction: meet Dr. Philip Towner
0:29 Why learn Greek when we have good English Bibles?
5:35 How Phil fell in love with Greek: a page a day
13:07 Healthy disorientation: close reading the text
16:09 John 1, Jacob's ladder, and the "you" that includes you
23:39 Why the Pastoral Epistles?
29:56 Romans, ambiguity, and what the Greek leaves open
35:31 Titus 2:13 and the Greek genitive
40:22 Eusebeia, epiphaneia, parousia: engaging Greco-Roman culture
50:37 David Bentley Hart's foreignizing New Testament
55:26 Advice for learning (or restarting) Greek: no gain without pain
61:06 Closing and Faithwave

#scripture #biblicalgreek #koinegreek #bibletranslation #newtestament #biblicalexegesis #christianfaith

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Examined Faith. I'm your host, Tuppy Morrissey, and joining me today is the Reverend Dr. Philip Towner. Phil is a biblical scholar specializing in New Testament studies and biblical translation. He's currently a professor at the Pontificalana University in Rome, excuse me. He teaches translation studies. He is also an Episcopal priest. Phil, thank you very much for joining me today.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

I'm happy to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

So, Phil, today we're going to be discussing biblical translation in particular and trying to look at a few biblical texts. But with so many excellent English translations available today, why should a pastor, teacher, or lay listener invest time in learning Greek? What's the practical purpose of that?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Well, first of all, I'd I'd want to sort of demythologize the Greek text in a way. I don't think it's a silver bullet. I don't think uh it's the only place where we find the truth of the faith or anything like that. But to to address your question, uh I would start with the question maybe, um, why are there so many English translations today? Um and we might say a Greek reader is is in a position to ask what all this translation is about and what it's been about for 2,000 years. Um in practical terms, uh learning any foreign language uh slows you down when you go to the foreign language text. Uh I would think in in our church world, we would want to be slowed down and have a new way of accessing uh the scriptures, which allow us to see texts we're very familiar with in English in different ways from different angles. Uh I asked several colleagues, um, uh, because behind our our discussion, of course, is a part of a book that I helped to write. Um, I I started that research, why uh why learn the Greek, your your first question here, um, what are the benefits? And and I I it was funny, I didn't get very many insightful answers. But the one the one that I that uh a friend of mine and uh a New Testament scholar said is the one thing that came back to her again and again was it slows you down when you read the Greek text, even if you're a fluent Greek reader. Uh if you're used to the English text, getting into it through another text uh opens up windows onto all kinds of things. And of course, that's also true uh if we simply engage in comparing the different English translations. Why did this one go left when this one went right and so forth? So I would say to be able to read the Greek text of the New Testament, to have we call it reading knowledge, where you have facility with it and so forth, um allows you new uh vantage points, um, makes you read more slowly, and and that but things begin to appear, uh, connections between this text and other texts and so forth. Um and it is it puts you into a situation of defamiliarization or disorientation. And uh while those are negative terms, they're they're uh good activities or good results when it comes to learning. Uh you you want to to surprise your students, take them into, you know, in into and along a path they think they understand well, and then and then show them all that's there they've never seen before. That's what the Greek text will allow. And it is also something that relying on Bible software alone to access the Greek text does not necessarily give you. Uh there's nothing to replace uh actual, you know, individual reading and understanding of uh of the ancient text.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

And how did you first get into that reading and understanding of of the ancient Greek?

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Well, I uh I was uh just into my undergraduate work, getting interested in in biblical studies and biblical theology. There was uh Greek offered in the curriculum. I was encouraged to take it and I gave it a try. I had some background in languages already in middle school and high school, so there was something that kind of was like a magnet anyway. Um, and the fact this was an ancient language uh drew me even more. Um so first year is the elementary aspects of of the of the language, but it was during the during the interim in the summer, between terms, where I knew I was going into now the more advanced stage, that I decided to uh spend some time each day um uh as I was working and so forth, but spent spend time each day now beginning to actually read, read the text of the New Testament. And I had a reader's lexicon in one hand, and I had my my um Greek text in the other, and you know, moved slowly through. I think I started with First Thessalonians, okay, and I tried to do a page a day. Uh and in the beginning it was like pulling teeth. I mean, I I knew I knew the tenses, I knew how nouns work, the declensions and all that stuff because I'd done first year Greek. But I hadn't done sort of sort of sequential reading. And the texts that we had been given were all sort of made-up texts, just like you find when you study classical Greek and Latin. Um and and to actually be working through First Thessalonians. I remember the first few days, I get to the end of the time I would spend with it, and I couldn't remember the beginning, you know. Uh, but gradually, as vocabulary builds and and and a sense of comfort with the grammar and syntax, you you you pick up some speed, but you also find the way to take the time, you know. You you can stop and pause and have a look and and and and and follow the text where it leads. So I started in college, I continued on, I got hooked, went on into graduate and postgraduate work, and have never really uh looked behind since.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Great. And what are you doing now for for the church's mission in terms of your translation studies?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Okay, uh at the um Urbaniana University in Rome, it's a pontifical university. The background to this, of course, is Vatican II. Now I'm not Catholic, I am uh uh an American Episcopalian. They call me an Anglican, that's fine. Um but the the program we've developed for that Catholic university is is intentionally um ecumenical, that's the term they use. And and and they're glad that uh the workshop I teach, I bring in uh professors from all kinds of backgrounds. Uh still, it is a part of their mission, which is a myssiological mission to the world, to the Catholic world. And it starts with Vatican II when they let Latin go. And now the question is going to be uh how will we uh mount this huge project uh of translating the liturgies into national languages and local languages? Um at that point, so where where are we? We're in the late 60s. Uh the United Bible Society comes alongside, and they craft an agreement with the Vatican to partner in translation training. In some local areas, it's worked quite well, but it never really got up ahead of steam in the Catholic Church to the point where it was a sort of um a global a global push. Um and they were relying in those local situations on the United Bible society specialist to provide the training. I was invited around about 2013 to work with a couple of friends and help them build a translation curriculum within a Catholic grad school context. And this is what we've been doing. It starts, it's right now we've reached the diploma level, which means it's it's an additional uh area of study you can tack on to your uh licentiate or your master's uh program. Um we teach translation as uh we treach but we we we address Bible translation as a species of translation in the larger world of translation studies, um, which is a a discipline that grew up after World War II, mainly in Europe, but then it spread to the world, which views translation as a cultural activity. It is a very natural activity. There's a long history of it. Um and it is uh profitable to study translation as we do um social development, as we do cultural studies and all the rest. We took that approach, have taken it, and built a curriculum at the Urbaniana University. Uh and um our workshops allow us a kind of practicum. Uh I provide theory in the autumn courses, and in the February workshop, they begin working on biblical texts themselves. Now, uh the goal is to so that they will reach the point um where when they go back home to their diocese, and all all of these students are are sent to Rome by their bishops, and most now are African and Asian, uh, what do we call that? Um the you know, Southern Hemisphere. And and um they're going back to situations where translation is a real live issue. You know, they're not going back to America where who cares about translation? We've got 15 to choose from right here. So, but um the our goal is to give them a view of it not as not understanding the biblical text, Greek or Hebrew, as some kind of Holy Ghost language, but as understanding it as a language among all languages. And uh the difference here is that our our original documents are in those ancient languages. Um, but when we teach how to do translation, it involves everything from audience study to one thing that is completely revelatory to the students is they are asked to analyze their own mother tongues, which we never do. We don't do it because we assume it. Uh we have one professor who teaches them how to evaluate their uh languages and their cultures for the musical possibilities uh that uh may um be uh put to use in translation uh and in translation of the liturgy and the Bible. So that's what we're doing. It's it's now a diploma. We're beginning to get some traction. The ideal, I think, would be ultimately to have uh translation of liturgy and bible in the university be a degree in an in and of itself, and we're getting there.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Great. I think I would enjoy that diploma. It sounds fascinating. Um, let's think a bit about the rewards that you can get from studying the biblical Greek. You mentioned this healthy disorientation that you discuss in your book uh with Catherine McDowell back from 2021. Could you give us maybe a couple of concrete examples of this story disorientation uh that we can benefit from?

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Yeah. Um, I I think I've already said this, but um the the first thing that happens when you when you learn the ancient language, about the time you hit your second year of it and you're actually reading biblical texts, is you begin to engage in what in in the literary world came to be called close reading. You know, you you you you can't avoid it. You're still struggling with uh uh grammar and syntax, and and uh and you've got a lexicon very close. Uh so simply by looking at a text you know well, one of Paul's texts, you know, in English, and now being forced to sort of let that go as far as you can and look at it as it plays out in Greek, uh, is a very disorienting and defamiliarizing process, you know. Uh you you you get to the end of the text and you wonder, is this the same thing that I read, you know, in my new uh in my NIV or new revised standard version? Um so the very fact that it is different causes you to kind of stop and stop more often. And uh I will say right now, uh in our world today, uh the the uh the struggle against all the technology designed to speed up access of information is uh working against this, you know. Um you know, I talk about close reading and reading slowly, and and you know, I'm my students' eyes, they glass over, they they they they they think, wait a minute, you know, I access the text on my phone. Uh I read it when I'm in the subway, the tube, you know, and and and I think, yes, you do. But you're reading a translation, and a translation is a particularly skewed rendering of the text. Now, um, I'll give an example if I can from John chapter one, and you'll have to imagine this. I'm not going to show it on the screen or anything, but there at the end of the chapter, we have that story of uh Nathaniel encountering Jesus. And um I don't know. I mean, I had read this and probably taught it many times, but it was only 10 years ago or so, where I just, for some reason, I don't know why, I was reading it slowly, and and I had been studying intertextuality, that is, the way the way texts speak to one another, you know, the way a text has embedded in it other bits of text or other bits of story. And all of a sudden I'm seeing in this language that, because I'm not fresh to Greek anymore, because I'm seeing language in it that I have recently read in the Jacob saga in Genesis, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew, which we call the Septuagint. Uh, there's a long story there, and I won't get into that. But the Septuagint grants us access to the first translation of the Hebrew text, probably for Jews living away from the land who are forgetting their Hebrew, uh speaking the lingua franca of the day. Well, because I've read that, uh, and now I'm reading slowly through John, and I'm beginning to see all the sort of bright shining spots that are like little mirrors pointing back to the Genesis story in Greek. And then, of course, you come to the end of John chapter one and the reference to um uh the Jacob's ladder, and and you know, angels uh ascending and descending and all of that. But but in place of the ladder, now we have in John, at the end of John, we have Jesus Christ. And uh then all of a sudden, at the very end, um Jesus or whoever wrote the story uh switches from the singular pronoun you to the plural pronoun you. And because again, of my background, I'm asking now what would an audience do with that switch? And for me, what it did was included me. Now, uh there are several good translations which will use a footnote to indicate that change has taken place. But to to encounter that change from a singular to a plural through a footnote is one thing. It's very impersonal, especially in English. We don't make any distinction. But to encounter it as you're reading the text yourself, all you know, all of a sudden I went, what is this? Well, it might have been, as some scholars say, the author here is using an ancient, another tradition he knows of and just didn't quite modify it well enough. But then I noticed that when you get to the end of the gospel, you have that shift from the singular to the plural again, where the intention is is to bring in outside readers into the story. Personally, when I encountered it in John 1, I felt as if I was part of the audience. And my argument will be uh there are elements like this in the original language that don't carry across in translation, which I have access to because of great Greek reading ability, Greek reading knowledge. So uh disorientation and then being drawn close, proximity, uh both of them happened at once. And it caused me to think of that text in connection with a very ancient story, the story of Jacob, the story of Jacob who is who is um going to be renamed Israel, and and all of that, and uh the promises and all the rest. Okay, it's in the book, but um uh those are some illustrations. There are many others. Foreign languages yeah, foreign languages disorient us, just that simple.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

That was really helpful, and you pointed out that English is more limited perhaps than other languages in this context. You know, I studied uh French and German at university, so there you have you know to and vous, or sure du ear the for German, um, which we lack. I I liked in your book you said um unless we say y'all, um, but I think that's a little bit uh unfamiliar for English uh listeners in America, a bit more common. Um and what you said about you plural made me think of your section on uh the oral nature of these texts, that they perhaps were read aloud or even performed publicly, that people would be reading the New Testament texts to their audience. Yeah. Can you demonstrate how hearing the actual sounds of the Greek could alter our uh our experience, our interpretive experience that we we lack in English?

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Well, yeah, but I will do this via English uh instead of pr instead of pronouncing Greek, because thank you. I I think our task here is not to defamiliarize, but to bring people in. So thank you, yeah. So so um the way I illustrated this was to look at um rhetorical techniques that uh are there in the Greek, which often get lost in English translation or maybe maybe other translations as well, but let's stick with English. Um and they are they are not carried over very often because uh to do so requires breaking the rules of common uh or acceptable English these days. So the first example I would give comes from 1 Corinthians 6, where we have Paul caught up in a very messy kind of uh conversation. Well, the conversation is carried out through several letters, but where things are not going so well in co in Corinth. And and um he reaches the point where in chapter six, and I'll read this, I think, kind of uh I think I use the NRSV to establish a baseline.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

I'll follow along.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Um 1 Corinthians 6, and I think it's what is it, 9 and 10.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Okay, yeah, I've got it.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Um I'll pick it up right here where he says, Do not be deceived, fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers. None of these will inherit the kingdom of God. All right. Now, again, this is coming right on the heels of his discussion about, you know, absurd things going on in the church, which are, in his, in his view, immoral. They are worldly practices. And then he comes up, and here's the example, still with the NRSV here, and this is what some of you used to be. So obviously he's trying to pull the rug out from under him here. He's trying to catch them. Um, this is what some of you used to be. And the translation says, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. Now, a close reading of the Greek text reveals something interesting here that gets dropped off in most translations, and that is that original. but but you were wash is actually carried through three times um and and and it is the strong negative uh sorry the strong um adversative uh a la meaning but in the strongest sense a contradiction but you were wash a la but you were sanctified a la but you were justified Allah so this is a rhetorical device it's called uh I uh I I think uh by Quintilian anaphora which means repetition repetition for effect now this is not something that is terribly dramatic and is it isn't going to break anyone's rules of grammar here to use it three times and you can imagine how uh how someone a uh a rhetor a um a speaker could use that you know but you were you were washed but you were sanctified but you were justified that gets dropped off um again probably sensitivity to uh repetition do not repeat we're taught this when we learn to write sentences and paragraphs and do our compositions but this was a part of Greek rhetorical thinking the next example I would give and and the question always is okay if you discover a pattern what's the meaning of it well that can be debated in this it's simply a matter of rhetorical uh impact the audience would get it um if we go to the the the pastoral epistles first timothy chapter one starting with verse 10 I believe um or is it eleven probably verse eleven you you you um in accordance with the gospel no that's right um very quickly in that text you find a repetition of the were of the Greek um uh uh word group for faith uh the noun would be pistis the verb is pistao the verb to have trust is pistao and so forth but in Greek you find it used uh it's what is it five or six or seven times there that's not accidental that's that's the writer uh doing something artistic he's using that text to text to make something he's not just reporting he's wanting to to um make an impact on his readers and and there's a case where the Greek gives you access to this uh to this theme of faith to this visual and and aural um that is sound uh theme that's being developed if you go to chapter two verses one through six actually all the way through eight you have another kind of theme that starts with verse one and it is the it is in the concept of all pass and you have that word group repeated multiple times in those texts all all all all and this is where uh okay just discerning this is one thing coming up with the meaning is something else but I think he is obviously starting from the first few verses trying to underscore the universal application of the gospel here and so all all all all and yet in the translations you'll typically find um the tendency to again find other ways to say it because repetition makes people go to sleep well in in in in Greek rhetorical uh in the practice of rhetorics in this Greek world uh repetition had another function altogether um finally in chapter two sorry chapter one of second corinthians i didn't include this in the book I don't think let's flip back verses three through seven Paul is in the middle of a kind of apologia he's on he's in trouble there he's trying to convince the church he loves them they you know and they depend on him and all the rest in that span of verses essentially a paragraph the word um paracale which a verb means to comfort uh our reference to the um our reference to the Holy Spirit as comforter comes from that um but ten times boom boom boom boom uh there is a noun form of it participial form and verbal forms again and again and again and you simply can't come away in reading the Greek and think there's not something going on. But typically translations will leave a couple out they'll combine verses they'll they'll kind of economize if you like um and in the process again I I get why you do that when when the canons of the English language are what they are among publishers and so forth in in North America. But when it comes to understanding the rhetorical impact of the text um and in this case also the intertextual connection back to Isaiah 40 and the last part of Isaiah which uses Parakaleo very thematically you have Paul making the claim my view that he he and his ministry to the Gentiles is the if you like the machine God has chosen to deliver his gospel to the whole world this is where a theme one word a word group repeated 10 times is is designed to have a very specific impact and to direct the reader in a particular uh sort of background uh direction all right which is second Isaiah so so those are some examples the Greek text gives immediate access to these even if we don't know what to do with them uh translations typically cannot bring this across this is the stuff that gets lost in translation super I feel like I'm having a a Greek lesson is fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

Um I assume paraceleo is what gives us the word the paraclete for the Holy Spirit exactly I I mentioned that and so he is the comforter some take that as an advocate but all of these kinds of meanings in English begin to uh meld together yes that is exactly right the the the paraclete is something which comes from probably also comes from Isaiah 40 ultimately uh and and it is a kind of linguistic winding path back to the source text uh in this case Isaiah which is mined by Paul which is mind by by John and John's church and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 29:21

Okay and we you've talked a bit about um the pastoral epistles and your work on those letters is well known what drew you to those letters in particular or was it just a sort of by chance that you had a paper on that in one of your degrees well it okay I'll I'll I'll be brief I I guess I would say chance I was directed uh it all happened in uh probably the October of 1981 when I met my professor in Aberdeen for the first time and I was you know searching around for a topic uh I started out with Romans 7 and he this is Professor Howard Marshall he's now passed on but he he kind of goes you know that's been worked on quite a lot you know you work on it for a while see if you come up with something but you know so I did and I came back and he said I'm not particularly convinced he said why don't you try the pastoral epistles well what I didn't know at the time is that he had just received a contract from TNT Clark at the time to author the um the the volume on the pastoral epistles for the international critical commentary so the the way he like a lot of professors worked was to get students working on this stuff because a stim it stimulated him so so he suggested it I went back and came up with some way of looking at the pastorals from the standpoint of theology and ethics and um he liked the idea it was basically uh an examination of what had come at the time to be German assumptions nothing wrong with German assumptions mind you but uh that's how we started so yeah in one respect it was accidental and then and then I stuck with it when I was invited to do some publishing wrote a commentary published my um dissertation and I never seemed to get back out of the pastoral epistles as most smart scholars do they they they they they brown do do something and then they quickly establish themselves but I had I had no real reason for doing that so I stuck with it and it therefore it it often becomes a uh a kind of laboratory for me when I'm thinking of examples like examples such as you're looking at of of of of Greek rhetorical structure or of of language use these kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

And I wanted to zoom in on Titus 213 because that's classic text for um some ambiguity in the Greek uh with the genitive constructions so for those who don't know the genitive is a is a case that we have in in Greek and in in Latin too. So I'll read the the ESV is what I have but it goes waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. So Phil could you unpack why this verse is a little bit um controversial there are two quite conflicting interpretations as far as I've understood it.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Well all right let's start with you though you just read the ESV. How do you read it? What does it mean? What do you how do you read the punctuation and so forth?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yeah so when I first read this verse I definitely thought it was saying uh that Jesus is God as well as saviour. I then studied uh theology at Regent's Park Oxford and I had done Greek uh at school for for A level which we have in here in the UK so I'd done it until I was 18 and then suddenly I was told that it could just be that there's the great God the Father and then the Saviour Jesus Christ um but I I mean I still read it as the Paul saying Jesus is God because I mean part of the argument I as far as I understood is that Paul doesn't sort of explicitly call Jesus God elsewhere so clearly he can't do it here but I don't really buy that as a as a strong argument.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Okay. So um first of all um there the two alternatives that you gave I would say the second one where you take the text to read a reference to God the Father and to Jesus Christ the Savior or something like that I think has probably uh fallen off in in in the last twenty years anyway. And and and the study of grammar has suggested that that's not a very likely reading. Okay that's that's the King James reading by the way um and so the one you you you you prefer is is the one that is so close to the heart of all Bible believing um uh readers of the New Testament because we have here a a they think a clear statement uh undisputed statement of the deity of Christ okay all right now if you look at the actual text you don't have punctuation um and it could be saying something different and and and this is where I think we have an honest uh legitimate ambiguity and the way we solve ambiguities is typically to fall back on our traditions okay but um I I have said here that the text is potentially uh ambiguous the question is and now I'm removing the King James option all right the question is uh does it assert we are awaiting our blessed hope the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior equals Jesus Christ okay which is what you're saying and that's certainly that's certainly probably the majority view uh at least among evangelicals or does it announce that Jesus Christ is God that was taking it or does it say that the object of our hope is the appearance of the glory of God comma Jesus Christ that is that the eschaton the second coming will be an appearance of God's glory two different things. And it's not a small thing to say that of Jesus Christ and and it is not saying that Jesus is not full deity all right it is simply saying that this text is not using is not going in that direction it wants to talk about the manifestation of the glory of God which Jesus is fully etc etc now the business that uh one of the reasons I would hesitate is that Paul may, depending on Romans 9 and and how we read Philippians 2, Paul may have come very, very close to saying Jesus is God, but he seems to be rather diplomatic and kind of reserved when it comes to that now there's of course another question is is the writer of Titus actually Paul or some student of Paul? But my point is is strictly a a grammatical syntactical argument. Those who have argued against my view simply say well that glory of God and Jesus Christ at the end are too separated by too many words. But I think it's an authentic ambiguity I then made reference to Romans 3 uh where we have where we have the genitive used in relation to Christ um in in that case are I think it's is it 322 or 20 or something that's what you had written down yeah okay and what twenty two do you have that in the ESV?

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Yeah I've just turned to it the righteousness of God through faith in dre in Jesus Christ for all who believe okay I remember studying this yeah all right so yes the the genitive could be taken here as faith in Christ or it could be the faith or faithfulness of Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

The two things give a different different different uh implications um again I say it's an authentic ambiguity uh and and these are places less for us to kind of bring the sword down and get and and and decide what the answer is uh more a place for us to uh enter in reflection.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

And what would the implications of each meaning be could you explain that? Why do people care?

SPEAKER_00 38:32

Well in the case in the case of um Romans 3 I I would say the longest tradition has been that what you know that that belief in Christ is is here uh belief in the whole package where this is faith in Jesus Christ whether it's individual and and at the heart level or belief in doctrines related to Jesus Christ that's probably the the standard approach to shift to the notion of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ is now to take a look at Jesus as the Messiah who has a mission which he must fully accomplish and his faithfulness allowed him to do that all the way to the cross. And uh it's it's a kind of just a different way of parsing the um the implications of right of justification there.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Yeah okay that's that's helpful. And I if I can just ask one more thing about the the pastoral epistles you say that they engage quite a bit with the cultural environment of ancient Greece places like um Ephesus or not ancient Greece the the Greco-Roman world um how does reading these letters in Greek open doorways as you put it into that first century world? Well okay um well if you read the three of them uh especially if you hold them to be Pauline or closely linked to the Pauline uh letters um you'll discover the use a thematic use surely of the word uh eusebia okay this is the word which means uh pious um refers to piety um and in first timothy chapter three verse sixteen it is famously translated religion um which which which if religion is understood in a uh sort of um organic and and holistic way I have no problem with but the the the point is it it occurs over and over again and uh to it and it is the word that is used I think um to refer to the Christian experience most broadly um uh through associations with the word in the pastoral letters you can see that it is it is trying to hold together both what I used to call the the vertical notion of our faith and belief in God with our horizontal um activities which is the outworking of that faith in love uh in Eusebeah we end up uh with faith and works together um but it also shows us that there is some kind of engagement going on with the culture around it because in both the Greek and the Latin the Latin would be pietas piety um it is a it is a dominant notion for understanding um how one lives in a respectable way in a city in a culture in in Roman culture in the in the imperial in um in in the old Greek city states and all the rest um and then if we study the um all the literature around the temple to Artemis in in Ephesus we we can see that the um the term eusubea piety becomes very important in that context one could argue and i i'm sure I have uh though it's partly an argument from silence that when these terms which are so um dominant in the secular world are taken taken into the vocabulary of the church that there is now on the one hand this may simply be natural and automatic you know much of language is not full of mystical magical uh power but eusebia all of a sudden takes this on and the question is why um well whether you like it or not if somebody publishes that they're they're they're offering a challenge to the world out there which uses Eusebia in another way or in relation to other gods or in relation to emperors these kinds of things now now we're we're saying that the the true mystery of it is found in in uh 1 Timothy 316 in the Christ event as the theologians like to say okay so it's a polemical use of a term that was uh common at the period at the time Polemical possibly but it is certainly one that's d dialogical can I put it that way yeah yeah that's helpful okay and I assume there'll be many uses of that I mean like uh kurios for for Lord you know was that not the term that was used for Caesar as well as then for Christ by Paul.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Right. Now another one uh very quickly is is the word epiphany epiphanea it occurs in 2 Thessalonians and then occurs in several contexts both in terms of the noun Uh in an adverbal adverbial form and verb form in the pastoral letters, in reference to both the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ. One can only think again, since this was a term that was very dominant in describing the religious structure of thought in the Greek and the Roman world. The term comes to be used of Caesar, Augustus Caesar. His whole Pax Romana is an epiphany of the grace of God, if you know what I mean. Okay. It can't be occurring accidentally here. It has roots in the intertestamental literature written in Greek. Again, is it polemical? I don't know. It's harder to say. But certainly the writer is offering up an alternative concept of epiphany that is to be understood in terms of Jesus Christ, as opposed to, maybe in addition to, uh claims in Greek and Roman culture of uh gods and their relationship with men and women, these kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, Anti Wright, you know, closer to home for me, writes quite a bit about some of those key words. Would parousia be another one like that? Presence?

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Uh yes, I mean the parousia simply means to be present. Um and and and it comes to have in in for instance in Titus 2.13 and so forth, it come comes to have these sorts of meanings where um uh you know uh of a specific event of of appearance. Um I I think if you look at the language used in the Roman Emperor cult, you'll find uh evangelian, the word for good news and gospel. You will find uh, as I just said, you sub, you'll find um salvation, um and and other terms that are taken over and used to describe uh the gospel in in Paul's own letters, all right. Um is Paul being uh intentionally subversive? I think Tom Wright would say yes. Um I'm not so sure. I I've said I've said both in the past, but certainly it is a it is an act of engagement.

unknown 46:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

All right. And so it's like learning to read Greek. You you find a you enter a new situation um where um for reflection, and reflection has payoffs.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

And let's move to a bit of reflection, I think, on the nature of translation and its benefits sort of coming full circle now that we've looked to the biblical text. Um so you are an episcopal priest, as I said uh at the beginning of our discussion. How does that relate to your academic engagement with the Greek text? Would you be really focused on the Greek if you're delivering a sermon?

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Well, I yeah, my preparation is from the Greek text when I'm in the Episcopal tradition, Anglican tradition, the gospel reading is sort of sacrosanct, that's the core. Uh, some for some reason we keep preaching on the these texts over and over and over and over again. Um, what I try to do though is much the same as what I do and and what I think translation is meant to do, which is to um bring it alive again for a 21st century audience. Um I I I steer away from citation of Greek words and all of the rest, um, knowing how deadly that stuff is. Um, but I don't shy away from challenging people in the pew to open their Bibles at home and and and and compare and contrast this translation with the one I've just given them. All right. Um and my whole point is my my priestly duty when I think of it in terms of proclamation is to um keep the word alive and make it fresh. And translation is what helps do that, not simply in finding the best way to preserve in a very conservative way some ancient uh some ancient message in Greek, but rather to see how through through the development of languages and through the through the centuries, uh the church has engaged and reflected in different ways. Uh my view is that the different languages each have their own uh tools. Um they offer tools that other languages don't have. Um let's go back to the very beginning. Translation of the Hebrew text into Greek in the second and first centuries before Christ, in a sense, uh prepared the Greek language so that Christian theology could take hold of certain terms and develop, um, make sense of the resurrection, you know, which is essentially what the church is about. You know, this guy Jesus died on the cross. That's not such a big deal. When he raised from when he when he was raised from the dead, now you have a different story. And I think I think the the first Christians were were trying to come to terms with this. And the Greek language helped them to articulate certain concepts, even if they did so imperfectly, which I'm sure they did, um, that Hebrew or Aramaic alone would not. So nowadays, 21 21 centuries on or whatever, um, I think translation continues to be a creative process of taking the ancient text and story, engaging with modern times and modern uses of language to release the text, to let people hear it and engage with it and make meaning of it uh as we all do.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

I think that's a great advertisement for translation. Have you read um David Ben Mehart's translation of the Greek New Testament?

SPEAKER_00 50:40

I have.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

What do you think of that?

SPEAKER_00 50:43

Well, first of all, I I I love his his fight with Tom Wright. But anyway, quite apart from that, um his approach is is very much um what we call a um what's the word? Going back to Schleiermacher. Is a foreign foreignizing approach. He he wants to take the he wants to take his readers and through translation send them on a great trip back to the ancient text. And it has its it has its um it has its uses. In the process, of course, he wants to foreignize the text to defamiliarize as well, which I appreciate, and I've done the same. Um not all audiences want that. And translation that's engaged in as a mission and as a financial enterprise as far as the um uh publishers go, is is uh an activity, let's keep keep the mission side of it, which has to be in touch with the needs of the audience. Maybe, now in English, with so many translations, anything goes. You can translate to do whatever you wish. The publisher may not like it, but um it will still serve a purpose of some sort. But um what David Bentley Hart did was uh to, you know, what was it was to foreignise the text. He it was a very Schleiermachian move. And and um and it destabilizes the reader who is used to his NRSV or NIV or ESV, that kind of thing. So I I I like it a lot. I think he did uh you know uh a fantastic job with the task he set himself.

unknown 52:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

No, I think it's great too. I think it's well worth reading. It is unfamiliar and uncomfortable at times, and his notes are great on how he translates certain words. Yep. Um so I think off the back of our discussion today, I would like to get back into a bit of Greek. Like I said, I did it until I was 18, then I dipped back into it at Oxford, but not in a really deep way. What would you recommend for someone like me, or secondly, someone completely new to Greek, um, in terms of yeah, how to get going?

SPEAKER_00 53:04

Yeah, well, this is where I I reveal myself to be a dinosaur, you know.

SPEAKER_01 53:10

Uh pick up a lexicon.

SPEAKER_00 53:12

Just just a an aside here, when I work with uh at the at the biblicum in Rome, these are Jesuit students, well prepared, getting ready for doctorates and all the rest. We're reading the pastoral letters in Greek. And I know in their in their elementary Greek they were taught how to parse verbs, how to do all this stuff mechanically. We never had computers back in the day. And yet when I sit and lecture to them and we're discussing, they have their computers open, and I know they've got a Bible, uh, Bible software open. Uh, you know, the the the cursor runs across a word and the all the detail, all the information pops up. Well, a great tool, um, but I would I would um I don't know all of the um uh Greek learning tools that are out there, and this is something you should explore. But too much dependence on all the work that a a Bible app or uh bit of software can do for you means you're not really going to learn the language. You're gonna become reliant on that little cursor going everywhere for you. And that's not how you learn a language, you know. Uh whether it's a modern language or an ancient language, you learn it by using it. Uh the way we use ancient languages is very limited. You know, we we learn them basically to read. I know some argue that Hebrew can be learned still to speak, and and probably that is a benefit, uh, but I don't think learning modern Greek is necessarily the clue to learning Koine Greek. So so I would say explore what's available through uh what do you call the internet and and Bible software, but especially choose an approach which forces you to do what I had to do in that term, that summer term between uh spring term and autumn term, which was to actually take the text and read it. Uh if you if you don't dare to read it and and put in the pain, it's like you know, it's like working out. Uh there's no no gain without pain. And uh and I don't know any any shortcut around around uh first year and the elements. Um the people who make best use, though, I'll say this, of all the powers of the biblical software are those who know the languages best, because they know the questions to ask.

unknown 55:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:53

Yeah, I think that's true of all kind of artificial intelligence tools. Yeah, the cleverer you are, the more knowledge you have, the better you can you can use them. Well, I I mean, I think I told you before our discussion on email that I teach um online, I teach Latin and French and English as a second language, and I think it shocks some of my students how you do just have to learn noun tables and verb tables. Exactly. So boring, but yes, but once you do this, you know, you'll give the building blocks, and then we can actually read something interesting. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

I mean, I I still have I still have the rhythms, you know, they're they're built into me from that first year of Greek, you know, uh you know, the the paradigms and so forth. I mean, I went over them until I could say in my sleep, and I probably did. Um makes a difference, so you feel comfortable. And by that summer term, when you're starting to read the text, the whole task of identifying the verb and and all the rest uh gradually becomes natural. It can't happen when you're relying on uh your cursor to do all the work.

SPEAKER_01 57:02

Yeah. Preach that, yeah. Um I think I'll ask one more question. We've been chatting for almost an hour. Um so if you could sit down, though, with one biblical author, I guess New Testament author, and read one passage together in Greek, who would you choose and what passage would you like to analyze together?

SPEAKER_00 57:21

Yeah. I I I gave some thought to that question as you you sent it to me ahead of time. And and uh I I'm just gonna go with the text that that hit me at a particular time. I always already was reading Greek for years by then. But it is uh, you know, Romans 8. Romans 8 is Paul's uh I I I hesitate to say this kind of thing, but it's a sort of his definitive statement about life in the spirit, you know. Um he he contrasts the life, which is described as mind set on the flesh with the mindset on the spirit. And and he goes through, and he's clearly reached a point in his argument through Romans where now he wants to put together the whole package, and it's uh don't do this, but do this kind of thing. So, in one respect, is very clear. But I have to say, and I've a good friend of mine who's a biblical scholar and a Pauline specialist, we talk about this every time I go to Rome. What did Paul mean when he took on Franeo and Franema, you know, the the word for mindset, setting the mind, making a determination. He he said what to do, but he didn't say how to do it. And and this is where for me, a text like Romans 8, which is not in the classic sense poetic, you know, in terms of meter, rhyme, at least for English or anything else, but it is poetic in the sense that it is an open text. It is a signifier to use Saussure and other others in the business. It is a signifier that is not closed. And and I I I guess I want to think the reason is because it is a place, it draws you in and causes you to reflect. And uh so the one I would sit with would be Paul saying, Okay, Paul, you said what to do. And in a way, you say how, this mindset on the spirit. But how do you do that? Is it a moment-by-moment, kind of conscious, you know, every 10 seconds you make a new decision, or is this in the background, is there the Pentecostal baptism in the spirit, a one-time thing, which which you know flips all your switches, all of the rest. So I find that you know, it's a fascinating text. I go to it over and over again, and still there there is something elusive about it, like good poetry, and I've not come to the end of it yet. So uh the language, language ability allows me into it in a way that translations uh don't. But it isn't that Greek is is uh, you know, as I said, it's not a silver bullet. In some ways, it takes you into text like these and raises more questions than you can answer. So that's that's the tech, that's the text, that's the question, and that's the biblical writer.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

Nice choice, great passage, and I think it's a good uh mystery to leave our listeners with today. Phil, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really enjoyed uh digging into a bit of Greek again. You definitely inspired me to take it back up. Um thank you for that. And if you as a listener have enjoyed this conversation, please like the video and consider subscribing to the Faithwave channel. So this podcast is part of the app Faithwave, where you can find lots of great theological resources. So please support us today. Good. Thank you again. Um wishing you all the best and yeah, God bless you, and I hope your ministry really flourishes this year.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

Thank you, Tappi. All the best. Cheers. Thanks. Bye.