..the 300s #005α..

Having affirmed that it is a good and beautiful thing that the sacred text of the church is accessible to [almost] all people in their own languages, I want to begin to explore [in less than 300 words, right] the importance of biblical literacy in the languages of its composition. [I will not address here the biblical illiteracy (by this I mean ignorance) of the English text, because that is a dead horse. The bottom line of that discussion is that Western Christians are largely ignorant of what is written in the Bible, because they do not read it or only choose to read selective parts. This is a problem (and a generalization). The end.]

***By biblical literacy in its original languages I mean the ability to read, write, and comprehend Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek.

The Bible was written by human beings. As with all writers, they were trying to communicate something to those who would hear what they had written. In the case of the Hebrew Bible, the writers were trying to communicate something about God, their people and how the two interacted throughout Israel’s history, from the time “when God began to create” (Genesis 1.1) until the time of the Persian Empire (538 BCE). In the case of the New Testament, the writers were trying to communicate something of their experience/belief about Jesus of Nazareth (the Gospels), the experience/belief of the earliest followers of Jesus (Acts), the theology behind and execution of this new way of living (the Epistles) and encouragement/hope in difficult times (Revelation and other places in the Epistles).

The writers chose words and put them together in the order they did so as to communicate their message effectively to those who would hear it. The hearer did not sit around doing word studies, trying to figure out all of the little nuances of the words and which one was the correct one in a specific context (I think I just fell asleep a little bit writing that). Because it was written in their native languages, they knew how and why a word was being used as it was. I have written previously my thoughts on reading in Biblical Hebrew, so now I venture into Koine Greek [see part β].