It's Greek to Me: Why knowing the languages of the Bible helps understanding it

The Bible was written in ancient languages long before we got it in English. English like we know it wasn't even around until about 500 years ago, but the Bible is over 2000 years old. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. A lot of people work hard to understand what the Bible really said, because it is hard to translate from one language to another. You know this if you speak Spanish or French or any other language than English too. What makes it even harder with the Bible is that Hebrew and Greek are so old that we can't just ask someone what they meant. I had to learn about Hebrew and Greek to become a pastor. I am not an expert, but I know enough to know what is important. In this episode, I tell you about the history of the Bible and how it came into English. Then I tell you why it is still important to know something about these ancient languages. We continue to learn so much more and our English bibles are still changing. It is always interesting and exciting. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hello, and welcome to the Real Bible Rob Teamcast. And today I'm going to change gears a little bit. Instead of telling you one story about the Bible, I'm going to tell you about the whole Bible and where it comes from. It's a fascinating story because the Bible was written in these ancient languages that are over 2,000 years old, um, Greek and Hebrew. Now there is some another third language called Aramaic there, but almost everything was written in Hebrew and Greek. And um it's a language, these are languages that were gone a long time ago. But um the it's really interesting because you when you learn these languages, which pastors like me have to learn uh something about these languages, and I'll tell you a little bit about how I did that, and but mostly I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what it means to take those, take the Bible that was written in those languages 2,000 and more years ago, turning them into English, and a little bit of why, how that happened, how hard that is, and then probably the most exciting part of um biblical translation and translating from those ancient languages into English is it tells us a lot about us. It tells us about how our language changes. And um, one of the things that people don't know is that the Bible that you have in your hand changes all the time. That every few years a new edition comes out. You might ask, well, why are they do we have all these different kinds of Bibles? It's because every few years a new edition comes out because our language changes. Um, so the things that you know, you just listen to your parents or your grandparents and they use different words than you use, right? Um, and they speak differently than you do. Well, that whole language changes over time. But the other reason is that we just learn a lot more. We know so much more about the Bible, its history, um, and the cultures that the Bible was written in today than we did 50 years ago. Uh, you know, when your grandparents were uh um around, they were uh the the Bible they heard about, the Bible they read when they were young, um is is different than the Bible you have today. And you might think, well, I can just use my grandparents' Bible. You can, and that's fine. But really, if you want to know more, it's really a good idea to get a new Bible, to get a Bible that was just published recently, because it will contain the new language, it'll contain uh something that's much more uh familiar to you. And on top of that, it will um be a lot more accurate to the script, to the manuscripts of the ancient one, just because we've learned a lot more. So um let's go into that a little bit. Um, I'll talk a little bit about how where this comes from. Uh, English as we know it is really only about 500 years old. Before that, um, you know, there's the English has been around in different ways for a lot longer ago. But, you know, before Shakespeare, you know, or before the King James Bible, um, in about 500 years ago, four and five hundred years ago, we really couldn't uh understand um what they were saying then. Even when you hear Shakespeare or really old writings, they just sound a little bit difficult. You have to you have to work really hard to understand them. Um but uh but that so that's that's where we are. So in order for us to understand something written in English, it has to be a lot more recent than that, usually. Um but the Bible was written over 2,000 years ago. The Hebrew part of the Bible, which we call the Old Testament, so this is Genesis and Exodus and so forth, all the way up to um Malachi. That was written um for the most part, that was written about 2,500 years ago. There's some uh and it was written over a long period of time, over many hundreds of years. Um, and uh so that's that part, it's a little bit older. And then the New Testament was written between about 50 A.D. and 150 AD. So that is uh about a little less than 2000 years ago, about nine, about what about 1900 years ago or so. But you can just see the difference, right? Is that um if our language changed so much in 500 years that we can barely understand what they used to say, you can just imagine what it would be like for 2,000, 2500, or even close to 3,000 years ago. So that's a real uh difficult thing. Well, for a long time, uh, and it took a long time for us to get these manuscripts, and they're written down on, you know, papyrus or you know, really old ways, uh, old parchment, if you know what that is, animal skins essentially, and have over the many hundreds of years been rewritten and rewritten so that we have we have uh copies today of Hebrew and Greek manuscripts um today that we can pull from. Now, there are some differences between the different manuscripts because some of the manuscripts we have are um like for Hebrew are a little over 2,000 years old. Um, and then we um you may have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls. We've got some really old ones, but most of them are only just a little over a thousand, maybe one thousand five hundred years old. And the same thing is true with Greek. We we don't have any of the Greek ones right around Jesus, but we have um some of the writings uh um and manuscripts that are not that much later, maybe a hundred years or two hundred years. So these are copies of the originals, right? And um, you know, so we have them uh almost 2,000 years ago, but most of the ones that we have today that are very complete that we can do things with are uh about a thousand years old. But you see, you can see they go way, way back, right? So, but once you say, okay, I have these things in Greek and I have them in Hebrew, then how do I get them into English? Well, starting about um a little over 500 years ago, about 500 years ago, people started writing, taking these old ones and turning them into English. And the most famous of these is just a little over 400 years ago, and that's called the King James Bible. But there were Bibles before King James uh in English, and that uh, but the most famous one is just the one that's King James, and it's a little hard to read for us to read too, right? Um, and then uh and but that was the one English Bible that most people used for hundreds of years, and then about um a little over a hundred years ago in the early in the early 1900s, that's when people started going, you know, we need a new version, we need a uh we need something that's a little easier to read. So um, and like I said, not only did the language change in that 300 years, a long time, but also on top of that, um we got many more, we found many more manuscripts, you know, usually like in clay jars somewhere in Israel and other places. And uh so we have something to compare to. Um, but the other thing is that people just learned a lot more. Uh, you know, people studied a lot more, so they could have a better idea what the Bible really says. So that's uh uh, you know, so today, um for the last uh, you know, since about 1950 or so. So that might be like when your grandparents were born, you know, around then. Um around that time, that's when we really started to get new modern versions of the Bible that were really useful. There were some earlier ones, but that was when we got really useful ones. And there are many versions, and you've heard of them maybe. You've heard of the NIV Bible or the uh um NRSV Bible or the ESV Bible. There are all these different names for these Bibles. Um, but the thing that's what happens to all of these is that even today, every few years, like I said, every few years a new version comes out because the language changes. So it's super important to understand that. Sometimes people will say things like, uh, you know, the Bible never changes, it's just the word of God and it's just the way it is. Well, um, we could maybe say, well, maybe God's uh message doesn't change, but the Bible itself changes a lot, and the Bible itself is really messy, there's a lot of things that go into it. So a lot of people work really hard to understand what the Bible actually says because they want to be right, you know, they want to get it right, right? And I understand that, and I kind of agree with it. Sometimes when they do that, though, they will be more concerned about getting it right without understanding it. Have you ever seen that? Where somebody's just super important for them to be right about something, but they miss the whole point. That happens a lot in when it comes to the Bible and it comes to churches. You have a lot of people who try really hard to um to just make sure that they have exactly the right Bible, but they completely miss the point. But this is one of the ways in which getting it right and getting it into the language that you and I use every day is really important because then we have something that we can work with, right? It's a lot easier for us to work with a Bible that was published in you know, 2015, 2020, 2025, you know, just in this time, than a Bible that was published in 1950 or 1970 or nine, you know, the back then. It it it the Bibles we have today are just a lot better. So why is that? Why is that the case? Well, um, if you know another language other than English, um you already have kind of an idea. So if you've ever, if you like in school, or if you're learning Spanish or you're learning French or some other language, or maybe you grew up with a different language, maybe in in your your parents or your uh your grandparents or whatever speak a different language or came from a different country, um, and in maybe in your house, maybe you speak uh another another language from other some other country. Maybe it's Spanish, maybe it's uh um you know a Korean, maybe it's uh Somali or you know, some other language. There's so many thousands of languages around the world. If you are like that, or if you know somebody like that who speaks another language, they already understand a big part of the problem. And that is it's really hard to get an exact meaning, an exact translation from one language to another. The words that we use in English don't match up exactly with the words in in French or Spanish or Korean or Japanese or whatever or Chinese. They it's very hard to get that. Now we can um look at those and we can ask people. So we can ask people who are um in these different languages. We can say, did we get it right? Um is is this translation a good translation? Um we also have help because we have um you know programs we have in Google and others uh translation programs that do a really good job and they can help us understand uh whether that translation is good. When you do what makes it even as hard as it is, but what makes it so much harder for the Bible is that there is no one around that speaks the Hebrew that they were using more than 2,000 years ago. There is even though there are people who speak Hebrew today, it's a different Hebrew, it's different. It's because it's a modern Hebrew. And the same thing happens with Greek. In Greece, uh they speak Greek, and you know, they use the same letters, they they have a lot of the same sounds and everything as the uh the Greek that's used in the Bible. The difference is though, is that over 2,000 years that Greek has changed. So there's no there there's no expert that you can go to and say, well, what did um what did Jesus mean when he used this Greek word in the in the New Testament? What did Paul mean when he used that Greek word? Um, so you have to do a lot of study to kind of figure out what those are. Now, like I said, I had to learn some uh Greek and Hebrew uh in order so that I could become a pastor in and um and I'm no expert. Um that that takes a lifetime of study instead of for me, it was just a year, a couple years of study. But um, for a lifetime of study, you could become an expert in these ancient languages as best as we know. So there are people who spend their whole lives doing this, and um, they do become real experts in it, but it's not perfect. And uh, but the one thing I did learn in even the amount I learned was what's important. Um, I know enough that I can understand, you know, verbs and nouns and adjectives and and know that uh in the Bible, when I see a sentence that's read uh one way in one version and another way in another version, that um I can say, well, they made different choices about how to translate it. And it's not that one is uh right and the other one is wrong. No, but there are ones that are better or not or or worse. So, like I said, some of the newer translations, my favorite translation uh for doing like um uh you know, for for doing real analysis would be the NRSV, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. That's the study Bible that most scholars use. Uh yeah, but also an easier to read version that I really like is called the CEB, the Common English Bible. Now, there are other good translations other than these, but I just think those are the best. So I like, and most of the things that I read to you when I read you a Bible thing on this podcast comes from the CEB, because it's just easier to understand. Um, but because I have some training in this and I know some things, I understand why they chose to write it a certain way in this NRSV, and they and they chose to write it another way in this CEB. They're close, but they're not exact. Or um older versions like the NASB is very common, or the ESV Bible, or the NIV Bible, all of these different kinds of Bibles, and um, so that's what's really important. And you go, well, so why do people still learn Hebrew and Greek today? Well, they do it for just this reason, because the the English language changes, so there's different ways for us to take these words that we learn and convert them into English, and that's where these new versions come from. But even if you're like me, I don't translate things for and write them down, but I have to talk about the Bible when I'm preaching or I'm talking to you on a podcast or uh in or when I'm on social media, and I want to be right, I want to be right enough. And um the so it's important for me to study it with this that way. So, what do you do? You know, uh do you need to know um Greek and Hebrew in order to be able to read the Bible? Well, the answer is no, um, you don't. Um, and chances most people don't learn much, but sometimes when you're listening to pastors when they're preaching, or people, you'll some occasionally uh they'll come up and they'll say, Well, this word is really important in this Bible verse, or this word is that word is really important, and they'll explain why. And it's really great, good to listen to that. Now, there are other ways you can learn too. There are ways online you can use. There's something called the uh concordance or strong's concordance, is one of them. There's the blue letter Bible. There are, you just go on to Google and you just say, What is this verse? You know, what is uh Romans uh 215 in Greek? And it will pop up, and you'll you'll see Romans 215 in Greek, and you'll be able to see each word, and you'll be able to say, Oh, well, that word means this, and that word's, and you can go as deep as you want. Um, sometimes there's other kinds of Bibles, it's called inner interlinear Bibles that has like the Greek or the Hebrew words there, and then they'll have um English words that go with them, and that can be really helpful too. You have to be careful though, because sometimes people believe that because they have that and they know how to use those, that they read Greek or they read Hebrew. And it's not exactly that way because there's much more than just the meaning of the words. You have to know how do the sentences go together. Um, you have to understand how the verbs, you know, because like we look at verbs and we hear about future verbs or past verbs or or present verbs. You know, I will do something, I did something, um, I'm doing something, right? But there are also other parts of those that are a little bit different. So you need to know more about that too. And that's where that training really comes in in handy and becomes very helpful. Now, one thing I will tell you is that uh most people um who really study this stuff uh that I know, if they stay with it and they learn a little bit more about it, are just fascinated. They just they just find it the most interesting thing possible. And I have some friends like that who became real who have become real experts uh in these languages. And um, so is it necessary for you to know them? No, it's not. Um, you have you have good English Bibles uh in front of you, and it's always a good idea to, if you're something you don't understand, to compare different Bibles. You can, like I said, you can go on uh one of my favorite things is to go on Bible Gateway. Uh Bible Gateway uh has different kinds of all different kinds of versions, and you you can compare them, and it's kind of cool, and you learn a lot about that. But the one thing you need to know is that you need to be um open minded and a Little bit humble. You have to be able to say, I well, no, but I don't really understand this. That's okay. Um, I have more to learn, right? But you also have to realize that sometimes people who think they're real experts aren't. And they need to do that. So always beware of people who say, Well, it's absolutely this or it's absolutely that. Um, that's usually people say that because they don't really know. Uh, they don't know enough. Um, because one of the things that I've learned, uh, I read Hebrew every week. I have a friend who I read Hebrew with, and it is the hardest thing in the world. I can read it fine, you know, I can say say it out loud, fine. But then turning that, those Hebrew words into English and understanding them deeply in English is just the hardest thing there is. It um it's a little, I find it it's a little easier to do in Greek because Greek's closer to English than Hebrew, but even that, there are so there's so much behind it. And that's what that gives you. So if you know a little bit like like I do, then you start appreciating the fact that those Bible translators are like really smart and they work hard and they had to study really hard to know what they're doing. And also that we don't know a lot of the things that people pretend sometimes to know. That um things aren't absolute, you have to study more and know a little deeper, and you always have to have in your back of your mind, well, is this exactly right or not? And and that's that's what makes it endlessly interesting, too. So as long as you do that, and I you probably mostly do say that, well, I don't know exactly what that means, but this is what I think it means, and this is what other people think it means. And maybe um you learn a Hebrew word or a Greek word to go with things, or maybe you have a pastor or a teacher that can help you with that, and it's just super interesting to do. So that's the way I want you to kind of think about this. It's not something you have to do, but if it's something you're interested in, you can always learn more. There's so many ways to learn more, and I encourage that. Um, one thing I have learned that's super important is that um we have used a um a particular Greek word or concept in the Bible for hundreds of years, and we just think that you can't change it. And um, people will argue a lot about that. And then you, when you look at the words more closely, like in a dictionary or whatever, you begin to see, oh, there are maybe other ways in which that word is used. And then you got, but you have to be careful too, not to just take the words and put them together randomly. You have to realize that these were real people that wrote these, you know. The apostle Paul was a real man who wrote this out in a language he understood really well, you know, that he spoke. And um, so you have to try to understand maybe a little bit about how he put it put it together. You can't just do that randomly, you have to have deeper understanding. So, what does that do? That says, Oh my gosh, I I I just don't know. And sometimes I I just have to say, you know what? I need to read uh a really good article. I need to read a book that really tells me about that. Um, you know, the if I'm really interested in the book of Philippians, for example, um, maybe I get a book that's just about Philippians. And there are a lot out there, and you get but make sure you get it from a good scholar, you know, somebody who really knows what they're talking about, and they'll tell you about that. So it's it's a collaborative effort. You you can it's something you don't need to nuke do completely by yourself because nobody does. Nobody does this all by themselves. So with that, I just hope you are as excited about about this as I am. Um, I just find it endlessly interesting, and you can be interested in it for a whole lifetime. So uh so with that, I thank you so much for listening and uh take take the time to um, you know, if some you find something confusing or it doesn't fit, that's okay. You can set it aside and look at something else. But this is where the biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew, can really, really help you understand it better. So I with that I say thank you and God bless you.