May 8, 2025 • 39 mins
The English Bible is a translation of manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. How did we get the manuscripts that Bible translations use? Why do we see differences between different translations of the Bible, and should this concern us? Andrew Lamicela pulls from his experience as a teacher of biblical Greek to explore why biblical languages matter to us today.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
And sometimes you get a little bit of thatsense with, with the biblical languages,
where it's like when I read this inEnglish, you know, I have some questions.
It doesn't all make sense for me, butif only I could read it in Greek, then,
like, all my questions would be answeredand all the problems would go away.
And if you come to it that way,then you're
less likely to
to use the original languagesand to use the tools that you have
(00:22):
in a responsible way.
And then more likely to end up,you know, kind of importing meanings
that aren't there, or
like trying to load up one Greek wordwith like a whole bunch of meaning that
that one word can't really carry,if you know what I mean.
So it's the kind of the kind of magicwand approach to biblical languages
that, you know, want to kind of,maybe discourage.
(00:48):
Andrew Lamicela, Welcometo the Anabaptist perspectives podcast.
So you have spent a lot of timestudying biblical languages.
You've taught at different placesand colleges
and so forth on biblical languages.
And I got to admit, I really don't knowanything about the Greek New Testament
or Hebrew manuscriptsor anything like that.
And I feel like I have a lot to learn.
I feel like there'sthere's some importance here about knowing
(01:11):
where the Bible we have today comes from.
So also, actually, I just heard you wereover in the Netherlands teaching is that.
Tell me a bit about that.
Like you just got back,I think. Yeah, I got back.
Just just a few weeks ago now.
Yeah.
It was, it was an opportunitythat opened up, pretty unexpectedly.
Yeah.
To teach,basically like first year Greek,
for an eight week term at a really small, kind of evangelical,
(01:34):
but American, kind of English based,seminary in the Netherlands,
just right outside of Amsterdamor an international school.
It's a lot of studentsfrom, Africa and Asia, places like that.
So That's that's really neat. So.
Well, okay.
So I think that the general piece I'm
most curious about is lots of scholarshave translated the Bible.
(01:56):
We have an English Bible.
Why does studying biblical languageseven matter?
You know what?How is this relevant to us today?
And I think that's the big piecethat I would I would like to,
understand more.
why does it even matter to studybiblical languages.
Like why did you put all this timeand effort into learning this?
Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question.
(02:16):
I think maybe aa good kind of place to start,
is just to, to acknowledge that,you know, we all speak English.
We have great Bible translationsin English.
But the way that Scripture comes to usis not in not in English, but it's,
it's it's in Greek and Hebrew.
And so if we want to be maybe really,
serious and have,yeah, I don't know, put in
(02:37):
maybe the extra effort to get as closeas we can, to Scripture
and as close as we can tothe original, documents,
studying, the languages that it was written in.
It gets us.
It gets us that little bit closer.
It's like getting closer to the action.
Maybe in a way,there's nuances you can pick up.
There's differences in translation,that can you can
(02:57):
you can start to understand, like,why does the ESV say this?
But the King James said this,and the NIV says something even different.
And you can,if you studied the languages,
you can start to have, more of a sensefor why those differences are there.
So, yeah, it's a, it's a
way of, of maybe taking your,your kind of Bible knowledge
and your, your, your study tools,so to speak, to the next level.
(03:18):
Kind of like, upgrading your toolbelt,maybe.
Let's say something like that. Yeah.
And so you spent obviously a lot of timeright doing this.
Can you tell me a little bit about thatjourney.
Like how many yearshave been been in this, this.
I don't know what you would call it.Field sector.
Yeah. Journey.
Yeah.
It'd be, it'd be interesting just to heara little bit of that story as well.
(03:39):
yeah, I mean, I was, I was very,very privileged, very fortunate to have a
a pretty solid head start,I guess I'd say with, with studying Greek.
So I was homeschooled and,
yeah, when I was maybe high school,but I think even a few years
before high school,
my parents felt that, like,hey, it would be really useful for me
and my brother to,to start studying NT Greek.
So my mom, I'm not exactlysure how she how she did this, but she,
(04:02):
she actually found, a textbook
that's very widely used in seminariesand Bible colleges.
And so we we got this textbook,me and my brother and,
yeah, we just kind of startedworking through it, just on our own.
We just take the next chapterand do the exercises.
And so that was, Wow.
So you were just, like,self-teaching yourself Greek Yeah.
I mean, there were there were lecturesthat came with it, but. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think just one of us on our own,it probably wouldn't have worked,
(04:24):
but we had each otherto kind of bounce things off of.
So yeah. So that was where it started.
I did take some classes then, with the fairly typical,
you might say, kind of grammar
and translation approach, through collegeand then a bit in seminary as well.
And then
I also had, the opportunityto spend a lot of time with,
with a couple friends of minethat had studied Greek in using more of a,
(04:47):
like, communicativemethod where you actually like,
you tell storiesand you actually interact in the language,
so you don't just learn the languageby kind of reading a textbook
and then like doing a translation,but you actually learn it by, you know,
using props and using toys and like,telling stories and like, hey,
these three lions went for a walkand it's all in Greek.
And you kind of like, unpack it and yougradually, like, build in complexity.
(05:11):
So I had the privilege to spend, some time with them pretty regularly.
Over, I don't know, a few years.
And I was able to.
Yeah, kind of connectmaybe the grammar that I had studied
and some of the more kind of technicaland abstract, elements of it
with like a living language approachand kind of bring these two together.
So, yeah, it's, it's been a it'sbeen a great journey.
(05:31):
And it's honestly, I was, I would say,
very privileged both in howI was able to get started early
and then in having these, these friends,there available at the right time.
Yeah.
so we're going to pivot a little bit here
and ask, maybewhat sounds kind of like a basic question.
Probably should be askedwhat even is the Greek New Testament like?
We just I think we all kind of know.
(05:52):
Okay. Yeah.
The the Bible, it wasn'twritten in English, so it was something.
What's the Greek New Testament?
Honestly, what arewhat are the manuscripts that make it up?
What are some common misconceptionssurrounding that as well? Or.
Yeah, just some some context there.
I feel like we could goa little deeper into that.
Yeah, yeah,yeah. No, it's a great question.
Maybe, maybe, like,the kind of obvious place to start.
(06:15):
And I think people generally knowthis is that,
of course, we don't have the original,manuscripts that the apostle
Paul or Matthewor Luke would have originally written.
So, you know, Luke writes his gospelwherever that original document went.
Well, it's lost. We don't have it anymore.
What we have, of course, are copies
and lots and lots of copiesand copies of copies of copies.
So there's
there's all of these kind of copiesthat are out there, and some of them are,
(06:38):
have been found in Egyptand some in, you know,
kind of various placesthroughout the ancient world.
It turns out we have a total of around5800.
I think it ismanuscripts of the New Testament.
Now, of course, those arethose are not all all the same. Right.
So, some of them are pretty late.
They come from maybe,
you know, the year 1100 or something,and then they're not worth as much.
Some are quite early,from the early centuries.
(07:00):
And then, of course, some are full.
They'll have the whole New Testamentand then some are,
you know, very, very partial.
So, one of the very oldest is calledP 52.
So papyrus52, and it's this tiny little fragment
and it's about the size of a credit card,Oh okay.
So really really small.
Okay.
got, we've got all these manuscriptsbut they come in very
different shapes and sizes.
(07:22):
I think that's an important piecebecause it's pretty easy
to be like oh the Greek New Testamentslike this, this book.
Yeah.
And it was all nice and compiledand ready to go for the translators.
That's not really the casethen, I suppose.
right.
So there's kind of that,
that intermediate stepbetween we've got all these manuscripts
in different shapes and sizes.
And then how do we actually get tolike a kind of solid Greek text
(07:42):
where when we go to translating itto English, you know,
we kind of know what we're working off.
So kind of in between there is this wholeprocess called textual criticism.
Criticism. You know, itkind of sounds like a bad word.
It sounds like we're criticizing the text.
But what it really means is kind of liketextual analysis, basically.
So there's kind of a whole,a whole like set of scholars,
this whole kind of subdiscipline,you might say, within biblical studies,
(08:04):
called textual criticism.
So basically what they do is they'll say,okay, here's all these manuscripts.
We have pretty good ideas of when, eachmanuscript was, was written approximately.
So like this one's from the third century.So that's really old.
This one's from the 10th century.
So that's not worth as much.
Also where the manuscript was discovered,so the kind of
historical origin plays a role.
(08:24):
So basically there'sthis kind of whole field,
where they'll look at all the manuscriptsand then kind of compile,
a sort of best guess, let's say,
on onwhat the original text would have been.
So it's kind of a process of,
of putting all of those togetherand doing your best to, to reconstruct.
It's like a, a process of reconstructionand what the original text
(08:46):
would have been. Of course,there's always some controversy in there.
And like, you know, exactlyhow should the wording be in some cases?
But the, the, the overall the overallpicture is, is really, really strong.
Like if you put, if you look at allthose manuscripts kind of side to side,
just like beside each other,they, they agree
like very, very much of the time.
(09:06):
So we can,we can have quite a lot of confidence
that even though we don't have,you know, for example,
Luke's original Gospel of Luke, we have so many good copies of it
that we can we can know withinjust a very, very small, margin of error
what he wrote.
Yeah, with only a few placesof kind of disagreement.
That's kind of phenomenal actually,because if you're thinking about
(09:28):
all these people in all thesedifferent places, writing copies of Luke,
like you're saying, not all
these manuscripts are found in one place,of course,
because the early church is spreadingall around the Roman Empire, say,
and then we can pull all these all theseyears later and they actually match up.
Yeah, that's kind of wild, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So I think that's
one of the challengeswhen people hear, oh, it's
(09:51):
especially when you like thingslike textual criticism, for example,
or having to compile all this and well,what if we got something wrong and like,
all this stuff, what you're saying is,oh no, no, no, no, we have like
a very high degree of confidencethat this is accurate.
This was transmitted correctly.
Yeah. Do you want to doyou want to say any more of that?
Because I feel like that might beone of one of the big misconceptions
(10:12):
when it comes to Bible manuscriptsor the Greek New Testament.
I don't know if.
Yeah, if you have any moreyou want to add there.
yeah yeah I mean there's,there's definitely, you know, places
a lot of them are pretty small,but there's definitely places
where we don't know for sure, you know,what the wording was in a particular case.
But yeah,when it comes to the big picture, yeah.
The, the agreement between the manuscriptsis, is,
(10:35):
somethingwe can put a lot of confidence in.
Yeah, yeah,I think I think there is, like you said,
maybe a bit of a misconception around thesome of the time,
especially where you havethe kind of scenario where,
some of the older Bible translations,like maybe, you know, the King James
new King James that we're very familiarwith and, and they're great translations.
The King James is a beautiful translation.
It's so well done.
(10:56):
You know, given the kind of historicalsetting it was, it was done in,
but if you compare thatwith some of the more modern versions
like the ESV and the NIV and others,sometimes, you know,
you'll see a verse or a sentencethat appears in the King James
and then it doesn't appearin, say, the NIV or the ESV.
And sometimes it you know,people are maybe, somewhat mistaken
(11:18):
in thinking that the modern translationshave kind of removed the verse.
And sometimes you hear this kind of like,
oh, they're taking verses out of the Biblekind of thing.
Yeah.
But what's what's going on there? Right.
You know,everyone has the story of Thomas Jefferson
kind of chopping sections out of his Biblethat that's not what's going on.
Right?
So so Thomas Jefferson's not on thetranslation committee for the NIV, right.
(11:38):
But what what is going onis that there's, you know,
some manuscriptswould have had that sentence.
And when the King James translators
did their work,fewer manuscripts had been discovered.
And so they were workingwith a narrower set of manuscripts.
And so they, they went with what they hadand their manuscripts had that sentence.
Now, you know, fast forwardinto the 20th and 21st centuries,
(12:00):
you know, the translators of the NIV,just, for example,
have a much broader pool of manuscriptsand, you know, that translation committee,
they'll look at all of those and they'rehonest and educated opinion would be that
that sentence probably didn't,you know, appear in the original text.
So it's not a matter of,you know, cutting things out.
It's a matter of doing the best
(12:21):
we can, to reconstructwhat that original text would have been.
Yeah.
So, so when we're thinkingabout biblical languages
and Bible manuscripts, all this stuff,
why I'm tryingto think how to phrase this, but basically
convince me why I should care aboutbiblical languages, so to speak, I guess.
Right.
Like if, if you had to give a pitch ofwhy should people care?
(12:46):
I yeah, I'd love to hear that.
Whether that's Greek or Hebrew or,you know,
any any of the biblical language,I guess, Aramaic as well.
There's some portions of Bible in Aramaic.
Yeah. Why? Why should I care? Yes. yeah.
I mean, I guess the short answer iswe should care, at least to some degree.
About the biblical languages.
If we care about the Bible.
Right.This is this is God's message to us.
(13:07):
And these are the languagesit was written in.
So I'm I'm always quick.
I try to be quick to point out that,you know, studying biblical languages
is really worth it.
There's a lot to be gained, but it's notsomething that everyone has to do.
Right?
So I don't at all think, and I wouldn'twant people to get the idea
that,you know, in order to be a good Christian
or even in order to be a good,I don't know, pastor or Bible teacher,
(13:30):
that you have to, like,put in all of the effort to actually kind
of learn the language,to, you know, get in all the vocabulary
and all the grammarand kind of go the whole distance.
But I do
think that in whatever capacity,whether it's just for personal study,
for teaching,
whatever it is, having a sense ofmaybe how to use the languages in a way
(13:50):
that's responsible,is is important, I would say.
Yeah.
And it doesn't it doesn't have to belike a kind of big centerpiece.
It doesn't have to be the kind of thing.
And sometimes I think it's better,actually, if, you know, Greek words
and stuff don't actually form a big partof of your you're kind of teaching.
I get a little nervous,and I hear people like the Greek and say,
(14:10):
well, okay, maybe,maybe if we back off a little bit.
Yeah.
It's like you get this sensethat there's this aurora or this.
Ooh, there.
You know, the Greek,it says this, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah. I can imagine that might bea little frustrating to you.
Do you want to dive into that a bit more?
Because I feel like that.
That's one maybe we should,you know, poke on that a bit.
It is a little bit.
(14:31):
Yeah.
Yeah yeah I mean
I think we were talking about thisjust before, but I think sometimes,
there's a little bit of a dangerfor people who, you know, see that
there's value in the original languagesand who have a sense rightly,
that there's something to be gainedby going back to the original language.
But sometimes there's, I think, a dangerof, of kind of trying to use it like a,
(14:52):
like a magic wand, kind of,
you know, so if you, you know,you read the fairy tales
and it's like, oh,they're out in the middle of the desert,
they've run out of food.
But, you know, you just waveyour magic wand and all of a sudden, like,
a whole banquet appears, you know,it's like, oh, we got this amazing.
And sometimes you get a little bit of thatsense with, with the biblical languages,
where it's like when I read this inEnglish, you know, I have some questions.
(15:13):
It doesn't all make sense for me, butif only I could read it in Greek, then,
like, all my questions would be answeredand all the problems would go away.
And if you come to it that way,then you're you're maybe less likely to
to use the original languagesand to use the tools that you have
in a responsible way.
And then more likely to end up,you know, kind of importing meanings
(15:35):
that aren't there, or
like trying to load up one Greek wordwith like a whole bunch of meaning that
that one word can't really carry,if you know what I mean.
So it's the kind of the kind of magicwand approach to biblical languages
that, you know, want to kind of,maybe discourage or.
What would you sayis, is a better approach
then to, to the biblical languages?
(15:55):
Because I feel
that,
yeah, I've definitely seen itwhere, you know, someone has a sermon or.
Yeah, exactly.
And they say, oh, well,the Greek word actually means this.
And then you can extractall these sermon points from it.
It's like, well, you know, that might be a bit much, right?
But it's very easy to do.
What would you say is a better mindsetto have as we approach the text
(16:17):
in its original?
Yeah. yeah.
I mean, a lot of the time,I think, I think looking for and expecting
to find maybe different nuancesand kind of, small,
I don't know, small things that,maybe can't be captured in translation.
And those kind of.
Yeah, maybe it's not going to justcompletely revolutionize
your understanding of the passage,
but it's kind of like shadein some extra detail,
(16:39):
or it's kind of like color how you see oneword, like in a slightly different way.
And, you know, there are some wordsand this is where, you know,
you can't expect to find thiswith every Greek word.
But there are there are some wordswhere you know, the range of meaning
that one Greek word has just doesn't lineup very well with any one English word.
(16:59):
And so, you know, the translators,they they've got to pick an English word
because you can't putin a whole dictionary entry. Right.
So you pick one word.
But, but sometimes, being able to lookthat word up and kind of see the full
range of meaning actually gives youa better sense of, of what the, the verses
is trying to communicate.
That's not always the case.
You know, sometimes like,
you know, people will say like,oh, like I'm reading this verse and like
(17:21):
there's this word impossible, but like,what is impossible really mean in Greek?
It's like, well,
you know, I hate to say it,but it just means impossible, you know?
But but there are those and
maybe I'll give you kind of an exampleon the other side.
So, so in John one, maybe verse five,John says that,
the light shines in the darkness,and the darkness has not.
(17:42):
And I've, I forget nowwhat some of the English says.
Yeah, we probably should figure outwhat the English translation say.
The light shines in the darkness,and the darkness has not overcome it.
That.
Yeah that's ESV.
Okay. Do you want to in different.
Yeah.
I don't know maybeSo this would be the King James for John.
John, chapter one, verse five.
And the light shines in the darkness,and the darkness comprehended it not.
(18:05):
yeah.
So, so this word you know,the range of meaning is kind of broad.
And so it has often the ideaof like to seize or to like, attain.
Sometimes it's to kind of, to grasp,sometimes even like intellectually
like to, to get it.
And so sometimesand I think this is especially a thing
that the Gospel of John,that John himself was kind of fond of,
(18:26):
he maybe use a word that had a broadrange of meaning, kind of intentionally.
And so you get different translationsfor that word.
Maybe it's the darknesshasn't really fully understood the light,
or maybe the darkness hasn't been ableto, like,
kind of takehold of the light in some way.
And maybe, maybe then overcome isis a good translation.
The light shines in the darknessand the darkness has never overcome it.
(18:49):
So so there are some of those caseswhere seeing seeing
the range of meaning of the wordcan can help Because it's not like
you pull out your Greek New Testament.
Okay.
You find this Greek wordand then you open up
your English dictionary and it's this wordand you know this equals this.
That's not really how language works.
And I think it's kind of easy to just
(19:09):
I don't know, just kind of assumethat's the way it is.
Right. And it's not really.
So maybe a, a word to keep inmind would be like nuance, perhaps
nuances of meaning.
Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
That's good.
Anything else you want to add on. On that.
Like Why we should careabout biblical languages.
Yeah.
I mean, there's, you know, in additionto seeing those maybe nuances
of meaning and being ableto to get a better sense of where
(19:32):
kind of one Greek word or phrase doesn'tneatly correspond to one English phrase.
There's also some times where there'sa certain kind of theological debate,
that will sometimes hinge on a particularword or particular Greek wording.
And that's the kind of thingthat probably not everyone
is going to be like thinking aboutor putting lots of effort into.
But it's the kind of thingwhere, it's useful for a church or,
(19:56):
you know, a communitymaybe to have some people who are familiar
enough with the original languages to beable to kind of get into that debate,
if you will.
So there's this there's this kind of bigscholarly debate about,
faith in Christor the faithfulness of Christ.
Galatians in Romansis this Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
It's maybe, perhaps not so well-knownjust among kind of,
(20:19):
you know, you sort of average,you know, everyday Christian.
But thereare, there are some of those places
maybe,maybe another example would also be,
you know, you,you hear the kind of knock on your door
and it's the, it'sthe friendly Jehovah's Witnesses,
and they'll, they'll,they'll try to tell you, hey, you know, in
John one where it says, the word is with God and the word was God.
(20:40):
Actually, that Greek word, God.
It doesn't have the definite articlebefore it.
And so it should be translated.
The word was, a God, yes.
You've maybe heard this. Yes.Oh, I've totally heard this.
Go aheadand just just dive into that case.
Let's use that as a case.
So what's going on there?
Like, do they have any grounds, like,where does this come from?
That they say that?Yeah I mean the short answer is no,
(21:04):
Well, there goes that.
If you’re a Jehovah's Witnessand you're watching
this, too badI guess, or like that's just yeah, yeah.
If you're watching this I mean, sorry,but, you know, this is, this is,
I don't know, a chance toto maybe rethink an important passage.
So, so there's a bit of truth to it,right?
So, you know, the definite articledoesn't appear in that verse.
So if it did, we would.
(21:24):
Well, it would,the sentence wouldn't really make sense,
but you would translatethe word was the god or something.
But that wouldn't make sense.
But we have this kind of idea of like,oh, definite,
you know, and so if, if the word appearsthen it’s definite and then indefinite.
And so if the article doesn't appear then,then we want to say it's indefinite.
But that's,it turns out a bit too simplistic.
So somewhere in between definite
(21:46):
and indefinite,there's this idea of being qualitative,
and so maybe, maybe a good examplecomes from actually first John.
So the same author, but where he says
that, God is love, God is love.
And so I don't knowhow would we think about the word love?
It's not definite.It's not God is the love.
It's also not indefinite.
It's not God is a love.
(22:07):
Like that doesn't really make any sense,but it's qualitative.
In other words, what is God like?
What's the quality that that God has?
And in this particular statement,God is love.
That's what God is like.
And then the very same thing isof course in John one.
So the word was with God.
And what was the word like?The word was God.
Yeah. So it's right.
You can end up getting into a really kindof theologically bad place if,
(22:30):
you know, you try to jump in with like,oh, it's got to be either
definite or indefinite,you don't have enough kind of,
maybe backgroundon how those things work, maybe.
Also the broader point is,
not every not every Christian needsto know the whole
the full grammatical kind of argumentfor what's going on in that verse.
But it is usefulif there are a few people around,
(22:52):
if there's someone in your church
that you can go to and say, hey,you know, the J.W.
said this,can you help me understand this?
And that's the kind of situation where,you know, having some sort of access
to biblical languageresources can actually be really helpful.
that's actually kind of a big dealbecause, because I mean, without this
seems like it'd be pretty easyto manipulate
(23:13):
the text and come up with some,some kind of weird ideas.
I mean, JWs is a good example.
Where.
Yeah, they have their own translation,which I, which I have a, I have a copy of.
It's kind of interestingto leaf through, like.
Wow. That's okay.
That's a, you know, that's different,you know. Yeah.
And but it's kind of easyto, to manipulate the text
if you are tryingto pull a certain angle or something.
(23:34):
So I, I really see what you're sayingthere.
If you have some peoplethat actually know a little bit about it,
you can't get pulled off.
Yeah. You know, with that. Yeah.
That's interesting because it actuallyand this is maybe Bunny Trail, but,
there's a friend of minein an Anabaptist church,
and they had someone who's comeand started joining their church,
and, this person started teachingsome of this very stuff.
(23:57):
Like what Jesus wasn't,wasn't actually God because they had
they I don't know where they got it,but they found probably some resources
on the internet or whatever.
And it's like, oh, well,you know, Jesus, what now?
You know, maybe this Trinity thingisn't really real.
And like, as they started going downthat fast track of heresy very quickly,
I started being pretty vocal about it,you know, in a, in a church environment.
And it's like suddenly you, you do kind ofwant to have some knowledge of
(24:22):
how to combat that, because it's not just,a slight misinterpretation here.
And now we're getting we're gettingoutside of the orthodox, you know, belief,
you know, outside of OrthodoxChristianity.
So, with that being the case, right.
Maybe, you know, I can imagine some peoplelistening to this saying, yeah, okay,
I kind of like to look intosome biblical languages, you know,
where can I learn and learn more?
So, obviouslythis is a massive field of study,
(24:45):
but where is a place someone could startif they're interested in this?
yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
Maybe I can kind of break it up intointo kind of two questions.
So, if people want to learn like actually
really, really learn Greek or Hebrew,it's a worthwhile investment.
And I can, I can maybe point
you toward a kind of a couple of resourcesto, to maybe get started.
But it is it is a big investment.
(25:07):
And, you know, sometimesmaybe some of the,
the payoff, so to speak, it comesit comes a bit later on.
So you kind ofhave to put in a bunch of grunt work,
to kind of get like past that initial,you know, hump, let's say,
and then once you, once you like, havehave gotten to, maybe a further point,
that's when you start being ableto kind of see those nuances and know
(25:27):
how to like, usewhat you've learned responsibly.
So, so maybe I can kind of give you
a couple of resources,but maybe for most people,
it's almost more helpful to thinkkind of on the other side, I'll probably
never, like, put in, you know, investall the time to, to get the whole way.
But What are some resourcesthat can maybe,
be helpful in using the biblical languagesresponsibly?
(25:49):
For, for someonewho's not going to kind of master them
so there's a great resource out there.
It's free.
It's super easy to useand it's called the Net Bible.
So net it stands for New Englishtranslation I believe.
But what this translation iskind of known for is their notes.
So the net notes.
So basically it's it'san English Bible translation.
It's, you know, it reads pretty similarto maybe the NIV or the ESV.
(26:12):
But there's a lot of places,where when they came to that sort
of difficult translation decision, like,you know, how do we get this into English?
We've got to either pick this word orthis word, and we can't capture all of it.
They basically write a little footnoteexplaining,
sometimes that that kind of decision, or other times
if there's like a wordthat maybe the meaning is disputed
(26:33):
and they'll, they'll explainin a note saying,
some scholars think that this word meansthis.
Other scholars would take itmore on, on this track.
And so, you know, here'swhat we think and here's why.
And they also have noteson, on textual criticism as well.
So if there's one of those caseswhere, you know, some translations
will include a sentence or a word,other translations leave it out,
(26:53):
they'll actually give you like a,you know, a kind of one paragraph,
a little summary of like, Codex,Sinaticus, Vaticanus, and
P 46 include this particular word.
But these manuscripts over here don't.
And so by looking at allthese manuscripts,
we think that the best decisionis to include it or to not include it.
So that's why we translated it this way.
So it's, it'sthis free kind of wealth of information,
(27:16):
that you can, you can accesswithout necessarily having to,
you know, put in all the workto, to master the language.
Net notes. that's,that's really interesting.
I, I've never heard of that before.
That could be a very valuable resourcefor digging more into, you know, the,
maybe the, some of the biblical languagesor that manuscripts of things,
but also just for general Bible studyI would think.
Right. Yeah. yeah.
(27:37):
And for seeing like,why do translations differ?
It's basically kind of a little windowinto the translators thought process.
that's, that's really cool.I've never heard of that before.
yeah, it's a good resource.
So, I mean, I think, I think if you wantto, if you want to go, the whole way
and try to, to get to a more advancedlevel, there's,
I mean, there's, there's different thingsyou can do.
There is, of course,the whole grammar translation method.
So you can, you know,go to your kind of local Bible college
(27:59):
or seminary or somethingand kind of sign up for a Greek class.
You'll probably get a textbookand you might get some kind of workbook,
and you'll probably spend a lot of timestudying,
grammar and,like, here's how this tense works
and here's what cases are all about,and here's
what the nominativeand the dative do and all this.
And then you'll spenda lot of time translating.
And that can be useful.
A lot of people have,have been able to kind of work
(28:21):
through that waytoward, toward a pretty high level.
So that's that's not bad.
There's also there's also and wewe talked about this a bit earlier, but,
the whole communicative kind of sideof things where you tell stories and you.
Yeah. Yeah.
But that takes it fromjust being like a, a dead language
that I'm reading on the page to.
You're actually speakingand engaging with it.
(28:42):
Yeah. That seems significant.
It is. Yeah, it is.
I mean, it's it's definitely,you know, helped me
a ton, in, in kind ofgetting the language, you know,
internalized, we sometimes say, or kind ofgetting it deep, deep into your mind.
And itit really, really makes a difference.
Then when you go to actually read it,
you don't right away think, okay,how do I translate this word?
(29:03):
And what is this?
But eventually it starts to feel likeyou can just kind of read
it and understand it and you're like,oh yeah, that's what Jesus was saying.
And it it kind of flows.
It kind of. Yeah.
So there's let's see.
One resourcethat people might look at is,
it's called the Biblical Language Center,
which is a guycalled Randall Booth who kind of,
let's say pioneered.
I think it's probably fair.
(29:25):
A kind of revival of of studyingancient Greek with communicative methods.
So, with the Biblical Language Center, they have some, some pretty good,
pretty solid, online resourceswhere there's like some, like, animations
and some,
some kind of self-guided, like, lessonsthat, that take you through a story.
It's all kind of based on,
a young boy who's like,he goes to school and you kind of like,
(29:47):
learn all this vocabularyand all this grammar as you kind of watch
the boy go through his kind of daily life,sort of thing.
So that's, that'sprobably a useful place to start.
He also does, they,they do some, like, in-person,
more like intensive style, like, herecome for, for this whole period of time
and like,you know, get immersed in ancient Greek.
So that's, that's maybe a place to start.
(30:08):
Biblical language center.
There's also another kind of,site online called bib lingo.
It's bib lingo.
Bib lingo.org. I haven't used it myself.
But they, they're looking to do somethingvery similar kind of create,
communicative immersive environmentlike through through an online
(30:28):
online platform.
There's always, you know, if,if someone wants to, to travel to,
to the Middle East and if, you know,conditions allow, there's a place called
the Polis Institute, where they alsodo, very, very communicative.
I haven't been there,but some of my friends that I,
that I would have studied withhad had gone there and,
you know,you hear stories of kind of everyone
speaking Greek at lunch time and,you know, all this kind of thing.
(30:51):
So that's there's cool stuff out there.Yeah.
Because I think, like,
read,you know, reading the Greek New Testament
or something or biblical languages,
you don't think of them as somethingthat's spoken.
And that's just kind of,I don't know, like,
I think I silly preconception,but like, this this is what people spoke
at the time, like, I mean, this isthis is the language that was used.
And it's just kind of easy to think of usas this dead, dry, dusty thing.
(31:14):
I don't know,it feels like there's a mindset, mindset
shift there,doing what you're talking about there.
That's kind of neat.
yeah.
It also has the advantageof being a lot more enjoyable
which you know, it's it's kind of ait sounds maybe like, like a sort of,
you know, side benefit,
but it actually is the case that, like,if you can enjoy studying Greek,
you're actually a lot more likelyto do more of it and actually get farther
(31:36):
with it.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And like, you know, at the end of the daykind of grammar and translation,
like, you know, some of us are ableto enjoy that kind of thing somewhat.
But, you know,it does get kind of old after a while.
And if you can actually like,find that you're having fun
and like, oh, this is a great storyand that's how you're learning it,
then you're you're probably a lot,you know, likely to get get pretty far.
(31:58):
So yeah.
So so you can speak biblical.
Biblical Greek. A bit. Yeah. Yeah.
That's wild.
Yeah.
That's wild.
depends on, you know,what sort of field or topic. Right.
If it's Bible words, I'mpretty familiar with them.
If it's like, you know,I don't know how to how to frame a wall
or something like that, you know, I don'tI don't know those words,
(32:19):
you know, or, or I don't know.
Yeah.
Can you and againmaybe this is diverting a little bit, but
how close are we to the languagethat Jesus
and the apostles, would it bewhat spoke or written in yeah.
I mean, sometimes.
So, so Greek as a languagehas an extremely long history.
Right.
So we can kind of trace backand I haven't studied a lot of this,
(32:41):
but the people who, who are scholars onthis, can trace back to,
well, before the time of Jesus, hundredsand even thousands of years before Jesus.
Like what Greek was like back then, right?
Because languages kind of always evolve.They're always changing.
So there's really old forms of Greek,like there's Homer,
there's even stuff before Homer.
Then you come to around the time of Jesus.
And we usually call thiskuni Greek or Koine.
(33:04):
And so this was the kind of,the, the version of Greek
that became the sort of, worldwide
or let's say, the kind of known world,
it was the the language of widercommunication, the language that people
would have mostly spoken likethe Roman Empire we’re saying essentially.
Yeah.
And and of course, Alexanderthe Great would have, would have spread it
(33:25):
in all of his conquestsa few hundred years before Jesus.
And then it so it was,you know, Greek kind of spoken in Greece.
But as Alexander spread itand as it became
more of an international language,it simplified in some ways
some of the kind of extra complexityof it, like got flattened out a little bit
just because, you know, the moreit spreads, the more it kind of evens out.
So we call this Kuna Greek, Koinemeans common.
(33:46):
So it was kind of like common language.
Then, of course, you know,that's the time of Jesus.
But Greek has been spokencontinuously all that time.
And so fast forwardto, to modern, modern times.
And we have modern Greek.
So it's, it's the same language
for all those thousands of years,but it's just evolved, quite a bit.
So, so we really like the manuscriptswe have for what is the New Testament
(34:07):
now is almost like a historical snapshotof the language of the time.
It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And actually, it,it turns out that, for, for some time,
a lot of scholars actually thought thatthe language of the New Testament was like
a specific version of Greek that was,like, only used for the New Testament.
And they sometimes thought of it as likeHoly Spirit Greek.
Because, yeah, it'skind of hard to imagine that now.
(34:30):
Like, how could anyone think that? Right?
But whoa. Was okay. Yeah.
I never heard that one ever.
you know, King James only ism kind of,you know,
put back onto onto the New Testamentmanuscripts themselves. Yeah.
But of course, at that time, there was a lot less like manuscripts
and texts just available or known,that were written from that time period.
(34:50):
So, yeah, there was this kind of sensethat like, oh, well, this is, you know,
it's not exactly the kind of Greekthat we call classical Greek.
So from like maybe 400 years beforewith like all the kind of,
famous playwrights and, philosopherslike Aristotle and Plato.
It's not that.
So it must be something different.It must be kind of Holy Spirit.
But then, lots of papyri were discovered.
So basically these, basically kind of pieces of paper,
(35:14):
in, in Egyptand kind of the surrounding areas,
that were written in like the very,very same form of Greek,
like the same kindof historical stage of the language.
And so then over time,people started to realize like, yeah,
this is not anything special.
It's just
this was just the languagethat everyone was speaking back then,
you know, there's like shopping listsand just random, like pieces of paper
that now we have that.
(35:35):
It's like, okay,this is what Greek was like at that time.
And that's kind of wild that, like,
there's somethinginteresting there, you know, to where
God'sWord was in a common language of the time.
You know, the common trade languageof really the biggest empire in the world,
I suppose,or one of the biggest empires in the world
that's got to have beena contributing factor
(35:56):
to the growth of early Christianity,you know, for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, because everybody could read itor have it read to them, you know.
yeah I mean several
you know if, if hypothetically Jesushad come several hundred years before,
it would probably not have been as easy,to get
of course, there's alwaysmaybe some kind of international language,
but it wouldn't have been as easy toto get the message out to such a wide
(36:18):
group of people in a languagethat, you know, pretty much everyone knew.
Yeah.
Well this, this is fascinating.
I feel like I'm learning a lot here.
Like we're kind of taking the whirlwindtour through, you know, biblical languages
and manuscripts and early,you know, early writings and things.
But I actually like,
it seems like,
you know, this is actually kindof important context to know because we're
(36:41):
talking about God's word here, you know,and like how it got to us today.
And I think that's an important storyto oversimplify or misunderstand
or have all these biases and prejudicesand things, you know, around how.
Well,I think it's this way and, I think so.
Yeah. This is,this kind of is pretty great.
So as we kind of look at the wholepackage of what all we've covered,
(37:02):
the kind of tie it all together.
Yeah.
Is there anything you'd like toto conclude with?
Or maybe a piece of adviceor encouragement you like to give
to listeners on this topic,or just anything in general?
Really? Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so maybe, maybe one piece of advicethat I think can probably be be useful
for everybody, is just to, to make useof different English translations.
(37:23):
Right.
So, so whichever English translationyou think of as maybe your kind
of primary one, maybe it's the ESV or you,you like the King James, whatever it is.
You know that that can be great.
And we have a lot of great Englishtranslation.
So, so read that translation, memorize it.
It's great.
But, you know, now and then,especially if you're thinking
through a passage,you maybe get a little stuck on something.
(37:43):
And like,I wonder exactly what this means.
Grab another translation. You know,
pull up the, the NIV, look at the new KingJames, look at the net Bible.
And sometimes,what you have is, a word or phrase
that doesn't directly correspondto any one thing in English.
And by kind of looking at a few differentEnglish manuscripts, you can get a
(38:04):
better picture of what what the original,the original meaning would have been.
So I think, I think comparing, just, youknow, crack open a few different English
Bibles, put them right beside each other,and that's, that's like a, a great way
of getting kind of one step past,just what you would otherwise have.
Yeah. That's that's really good. Yeah.
And that's, that's, that's very simpleand something anybody can do.
(38:24):
Could it be immediately actionableto their own study of Scripture.
Wow. Well, Andrew, this isthis has been great.
This is, we don't typically go into,you know, Bible manuscripts
in biblical languagesand, you know, you know, early
church history and things like that.
But, I think this is important and, and,I learned a lot.
So thanks for being willing tocome on the podcast, this evening
(38:47):
and for everything you shared tonight.Yeah, yeah.
Thank you for having me. It'sbeen really good to be here. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this episodewith Andrew Lamicela.
Learning Greekcan greatly inform our study of Scripture,
but there are many other tools and methodsfor engaging with the biblical text.
We did an episode on this and you can findit linked in the description down below.
We also have a monthly email newsletterwhich you can subscribe
(39:09):
to on our websiteat Anabaptistperspectives.org.
Thanks again for listeningand we'll see you in the next episode.
And sometimes you get a little bit of thatsense with, with the biblical languages,
where it's like when I read this inEnglish, you know, I have some questions.
It doesn't all make sense for me, butif only I could read it in Greek, then,
like, all my questions would be answeredand all the problems would go away.
And if you come to it that way,then you're
less likely to
to use the original languagesand to use the tools that you have
(00:22):
in a responsible way.
And then more likely to end up,you know, kind of importing meanings
that aren't there, or
like trying to load up one Greek wordwith like a whole bunch of meaning that
that one word can't really carry,if you know what I mean.
So it's the kind of the kind of magicwand approach to biblical languages
that, you know, want to kind of,maybe discourage.
(00:48):
Andrew Lamicela, Welcometo the Anabaptist perspectives podcast.
So you have spent a lot of timestudying biblical languages.
You've taught at different placesand colleges
and so forth on biblical languages.
And I got to admit, I really don't knowanything about the Greek New Testament
or Hebrew manuscriptsor anything like that.
And I feel like I have a lot to learn.
I feel like there'sthere's some importance here about knowing
(01:11):
where the Bible we have today comes from.
So also, actually, I just heard you wereover in the Netherlands teaching is that.
Tell me a bit about that.
Like you just got back,I think. Yeah, I got back.
Just just a few weeks ago now.
Yeah.
It was, it was an opportunitythat opened up, pretty unexpectedly.
Yeah.
To teach,basically like first year Greek,
for an eight week term at a really small, kind of evangelical,
(01:34):
but American, kind of English based,seminary in the Netherlands,
just right outside of Amsterdamor an international school.
It's a lot of studentsfrom, Africa and Asia, places like that.
So That's that's really neat. So.
Well, okay.
So I think that the general piece I'm
most curious about is lots of scholarshave translated the Bible.
(01:56):
We have an English Bible.
Why does studying biblical languageseven matter?
You know what?How is this relevant to us today?
And I think that's the big piecethat I would I would like to,
understand more.
why does it even matter to studybiblical languages.
Like why did you put all this timeand effort into learning this?
Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question.
(02:16):
I think maybe aa good kind of place to start,
is just to, to acknowledge that,you know, we all speak English.
We have great Bible translationsin English.
But the way that Scripture comes to usis not in not in English, but it's,
it's it's in Greek and Hebrew.
And so if we want to be maybe really,
serious and have,yeah, I don't know, put in
(02:37):
maybe the extra effort to get as closeas we can, to Scripture
and as close as we can tothe original, documents,
studying, the languages that it was written in.
It gets us.
It gets us that little bit closer.
It's like getting closer to the action.
Maybe in a way,there's nuances you can pick up.
There's differences in translation,that can you can
(02:57):
you can start to understand, like,why does the ESV say this?
But the King James said this,and the NIV says something even different.
And you can,if you studied the languages,
you can start to have, more of a sensefor why those differences are there.
So, yeah, it's a, it's a
way of, of maybe taking your,your kind of Bible knowledge
and your, your, your study tools,so to speak, to the next level.
(03:18):
Kind of like, upgrading your toolbelt,maybe.
Let's say something like that. Yeah.
And so you spent obviously a lot of timeright doing this.
Can you tell me a little bit about thatjourney.
Like how many yearshave been been in this, this.
I don't know what you would call it.Field sector.
Yeah. Journey.
Yeah.
It'd be, it'd be interesting just to heara little bit of that story as well.
(03:39):
yeah, I mean, I was, I was very,very privileged, very fortunate to have a
a pretty solid head start,I guess I'd say with, with studying Greek.
So I was homeschooled and,
yeah, when I was maybe high school,but I think even a few years
before high school,
my parents felt that, like,hey, it would be really useful for me
and my brother to,to start studying NT Greek.
So my mom, I'm not exactlysure how she how she did this, but she,
(04:02):
she actually found, a textbook
that's very widely used in seminariesand Bible colleges.
And so we we got this textbook,me and my brother and,
yeah, we just kind of startedworking through it, just on our own.
We just take the next chapterand do the exercises.
And so that was, Wow.
So you were just, like,self-teaching yourself Greek Yeah.
I mean, there were there were lecturesthat came with it, but. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think just one of us on our own,it probably wouldn't have worked,
(04:24):
but we had each otherto kind of bounce things off of.
So yeah. So that was where it started.
I did take some classes then, with the fairly typical,
you might say, kind of grammar
and translation approach, through collegeand then a bit in seminary as well.
And then
I also had, the opportunityto spend a lot of time with,
with a couple friends of minethat had studied Greek in using more of a,
(04:47):
like, communicativemethod where you actually like,
you tell storiesand you actually interact in the language,
so you don't just learn the languageby kind of reading a textbook
and then like doing a translation,but you actually learn it by, you know,
using props and using toys and like,telling stories and like, hey,
these three lions went for a walkand it's all in Greek.
And you kind of like, unpack it and yougradually, like, build in complexity.
(05:11):
So I had the privilege to spend, some time with them pretty regularly.
Over, I don't know, a few years.
And I was able to.
Yeah, kind of connectmaybe the grammar that I had studied
and some of the more kind of technicaland abstract, elements of it
with like a living language approachand kind of bring these two together.
So, yeah, it's, it's been a it'sbeen a great journey.
(05:31):
And it's honestly, I was, I would say,
very privileged both in howI was able to get started early
and then in having these, these friends,there available at the right time.
Yeah.
so we're going to pivot a little bit here
and ask, maybewhat sounds kind of like a basic question.
Probably should be askedwhat even is the Greek New Testament like?
We just I think we all kind of know.
(05:52):
Okay. Yeah.
The the Bible, it wasn'twritten in English, so it was something.
What's the Greek New Testament?
Honestly, what arewhat are the manuscripts that make it up?
What are some common misconceptionssurrounding that as well? Or.
Yeah, just some some context there.
I feel like we could goa little deeper into that.
Yeah, yeah,yeah. No, it's a great question.
Maybe, maybe, like,the kind of obvious place to start.
(06:15):
And I think people generally knowthis is that,
of course, we don't have the original,manuscripts that the apostle
Paul or Matthewor Luke would have originally written.
So, you know, Luke writes his gospelwherever that original document went.
Well, it's lost. We don't have it anymore.
What we have, of course, are copies
and lots and lots of copiesand copies of copies of copies.
So there's
there's all of these kind of copiesthat are out there, and some of them are,
(06:38):
have been found in Egyptand some in, you know,
kind of various placesthroughout the ancient world.
It turns out we have a total of around5800.
I think it ismanuscripts of the New Testament.
Now, of course, those arethose are not all all the same. Right.
So, some of them are pretty late.
They come from maybe,
you know, the year 1100 or something,and then they're not worth as much.
Some are quite early,from the early centuries.
(07:00):
And then, of course, some are full.
They'll have the whole New Testamentand then some are,
you know, very, very partial.
So, one of the very oldest is calledP 52.
So papyrus52, and it's this tiny little fragment
and it's about the size of a credit card,Oh okay.
So really really small.
Okay.
got, we've got all these manuscriptsbut they come in very
different shapes and sizes.
(07:22):
I think that's an important piecebecause it's pretty easy
to be like oh the Greek New Testamentslike this, this book.
Yeah.
And it was all nice and compiledand ready to go for the translators.
That's not really the casethen, I suppose.
right.
So there's kind of that,
that intermediate stepbetween we've got all these manuscripts
in different shapes and sizes.
And then how do we actually get tolike a kind of solid Greek text
(07:42):
where when we go to translating itto English, you know,
we kind of know what we're working off.
So kind of in between there is this wholeprocess called textual criticism.
Criticism. You know, itkind of sounds like a bad word.
It sounds like we're criticizing the text.
But what it really means is kind of liketextual analysis, basically.
So there's kind of a whole,a whole like set of scholars,
this whole kind of subdiscipline,you might say, within biblical studies,
(08:04):
called textual criticism.
So basically what they do is they'll say,okay, here's all these manuscripts.
We have pretty good ideas of when, eachmanuscript was, was written approximately.
So like this one's from the third century.So that's really old.
This one's from the 10th century.
So that's not worth as much.
Also where the manuscript was discovered,so the kind of
historical origin plays a role.
(08:24):
So basically there'sthis kind of whole field,
where they'll look at all the manuscriptsand then kind of compile,
a sort of best guess, let's say,
on onwhat the original text would have been.
So it's kind of a process of,
of putting all of those togetherand doing your best to, to reconstruct.
It's like a, a process of reconstructionand what the original text
(08:46):
would have been. Of course,there's always some controversy in there.
And like, you know, exactlyhow should the wording be in some cases?
But the, the, the overall the overallpicture is, is really, really strong.
Like if you put, if you look at allthose manuscripts kind of side to side,
just like beside each other,they, they agree
like very, very much of the time.
(09:06):
So we can,we can have quite a lot of confidence
that even though we don't have,you know, for example,
Luke's original Gospel of Luke, we have so many good copies of it
that we can we can know withinjust a very, very small, margin of error
what he wrote.
Yeah, with only a few placesof kind of disagreement.
That's kind of phenomenal actually,because if you're thinking about
(09:28):
all these people in all thesedifferent places, writing copies of Luke,
like you're saying, not all
these manuscripts are found in one place,of course,
because the early church is spreadingall around the Roman Empire, say,
and then we can pull all these all theseyears later and they actually match up.
Yeah, that's kind of wild, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So I think that's
one of the challengeswhen people hear, oh, it's
(09:51):
especially when you like thingslike textual criticism, for example,
or having to compile all this and well,what if we got something wrong and like,
all this stuff, what you're saying is,oh no, no, no, no, we have like
a very high degree of confidencethat this is accurate.
This was transmitted correctly.
Yeah. Do you want to doyou want to say any more of that?
Because I feel like that might beone of one of the big misconceptions
(10:12):
when it comes to Bible manuscriptsor the Greek New Testament.
I don't know if.
Yeah, if you have any moreyou want to add there.
yeah yeah I mean there's,there's definitely, you know, places
a lot of them are pretty small,but there's definitely places
where we don't know for sure, you know,what the wording was in a particular case.
But yeah,when it comes to the big picture, yeah.
The, the agreement between the manuscriptsis, is,
(10:35):
somethingwe can put a lot of confidence in.
Yeah, yeah,I think I think there is, like you said,
maybe a bit of a misconception around thesome of the time,
especially where you havethe kind of scenario where,
some of the older Bible translations,like maybe, you know, the King James
new King James that we're very familiarwith and, and they're great translations.
The King James is a beautiful translation.
It's so well done.
(10:56):
You know, given the kind of historicalsetting it was, it was done in,
but if you compare thatwith some of the more modern versions
like the ESV and the NIV and others,sometimes, you know,
you'll see a verse or a sentencethat appears in the King James
and then it doesn't appearin, say, the NIV or the ESV.
And sometimes it you know,people are maybe, somewhat mistaken
(11:18):
in thinking that the modern translationshave kind of removed the verse.
And sometimes you hear this kind of like,
oh, they're taking verses out of the Biblekind of thing.
Yeah.
But what's what's going on there? Right.
You know,everyone has the story of Thomas Jefferson
kind of chopping sections out of his Biblethat that's not what's going on.
Right?
So so Thomas Jefferson's not on thetranslation committee for the NIV, right.
(11:38):
But what what is going onis that there's, you know,
some manuscriptswould have had that sentence.
And when the King James translators
did their work,fewer manuscripts had been discovered.
And so they were workingwith a narrower set of manuscripts.
And so they, they went with what they hadand their manuscripts had that sentence.
Now, you know, fast forwardinto the 20th and 21st centuries,
(12:00):
you know, the translators of the NIV,just, for example,
have a much broader pool of manuscriptsand, you know, that translation committee,
they'll look at all of those and they'rehonest and educated opinion would be that
that sentence probably didn't,you know, appear in the original text.
So it's not a matter of,you know, cutting things out.
It's a matter of doing the best
(12:21):
we can, to reconstructwhat that original text would have been.
Yeah.
So, so when we're thinkingabout biblical languages
and Bible manuscripts, all this stuff,
why I'm tryingto think how to phrase this, but basically
convince me why I should care aboutbiblical languages, so to speak, I guess.
Right.
Like if, if you had to give a pitch ofwhy should people care?
(12:46):
I yeah, I'd love to hear that.
Whether that's Greek or Hebrew or,you know,
any any of the biblical language,I guess, Aramaic as well.
There's some portions of Bible in Aramaic.
Yeah. Why? Why should I care? Yes. yeah.
I mean, I guess the short answer iswe should care, at least to some degree.
About the biblical languages.
If we care about the Bible.
Right.This is this is God's message to us.
(13:07):
And these are the languagesit was written in.
So I'm I'm always quick.
I try to be quick to point out that,you know, studying biblical languages
is really worth it.
There's a lot to be gained, but it's notsomething that everyone has to do.
Right?
So I don't at all think, and I wouldn'twant people to get the idea
that,you know, in order to be a good Christian
or even in order to be a good,I don't know, pastor or Bible teacher,
(13:30):
that you have to, like,put in all of the effort to actually kind
of learn the language,to, you know, get in all the vocabulary
and all the grammarand kind of go the whole distance.
But I do
think that in whatever capacity,whether it's just for personal study,
for teaching,
whatever it is, having a sense ofmaybe how to use the languages in a way
(13:50):
that's responsible,is is important, I would say.
Yeah.
And it doesn't it doesn't have to belike a kind of big centerpiece.
It doesn't have to be the kind of thing.
And sometimes I think it's better,actually, if, you know, Greek words
and stuff don't actually form a big partof of your you're kind of teaching.
I get a little nervous,and I hear people like the Greek and say,
(14:10):
well, okay, maybe,maybe if we back off a little bit.
Yeah.
It's like you get this sensethat there's this aurora or this.
Ooh, there.
You know, the Greek,it says this, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah. I can imagine that might bea little frustrating to you.
Do you want to dive into that a bit more?
Because I feel like that.
That's one maybe we should,you know, poke on that a bit.
It is a little bit.
(14:31):
Yeah.
Yeah yeah I mean
I think we were talking about thisjust before, but I think sometimes,
there's a little bit of a dangerfor people who, you know, see that
there's value in the original languagesand who have a sense rightly,
that there's something to be gainedby going back to the original language.
But sometimes there's, I think, a dangerof, of kind of trying to use it like a,
(14:52):
like a magic wand, kind of,
you know, so if you, you know,you read the fairy tales
and it's like, oh,they're out in the middle of the desert,
they've run out of food.
But, you know, you just waveyour magic wand and all of a sudden, like,
a whole banquet appears, you know,it's like, oh, we got this amazing.
And sometimes you get a little bit of thatsense with, with the biblical languages,
where it's like when I read this inEnglish, you know, I have some questions.
(15:13):
It doesn't all make sense for me, butif only I could read it in Greek, then,
like, all my questions would be answeredand all the problems would go away.
And if you come to it that way,then you're you're maybe less likely to
to use the original languagesand to use the tools that you have
in a responsible way.
And then more likely to end up,you know, kind of importing meanings
(15:35):
that aren't there, or
like trying to load up one Greek wordwith like a whole bunch of meaning that
that one word can't really carry,if you know what I mean.
So it's the kind of the kind of magicwand approach to biblical languages
that, you know, want to kind of,maybe discourage or.
What would you sayis, is a better approach
then to, to the biblical languages?
(15:55):
Because I feel
that,
yeah, I've definitely seen itwhere, you know, someone has a sermon or.
Yeah, exactly.
And they say, oh, well,the Greek word actually means this.
And then you can extractall these sermon points from it.
It's like, well, you know, that might be a bit much, right?
But it's very easy to do.
What would you say is a better mindsetto have as we approach the text
(16:17):
in its original?
Yeah. yeah.
I mean, a lot of the time,I think, I think looking for and expecting
to find maybe different nuancesand kind of, small,
I don't know, small things that,maybe can't be captured in translation.
And those kind of.
Yeah, maybe it's not going to justcompletely revolutionize
your understanding of the passage,
but it's kind of like shadein some extra detail,
(16:39):
or it's kind of like color how you see oneword, like in a slightly different way.
And, you know, there are some wordsand this is where, you know,
you can't expect to find thiswith every Greek word.
But there are there are some wordswhere you know, the range of meaning
that one Greek word has just doesn't lineup very well with any one English word.
(16:59):
And so, you know, the translators,they they've got to pick an English word
because you can't putin a whole dictionary entry. Right.
So you pick one word.
But, but sometimes, being able to lookthat word up and kind of see the full
range of meaning actually gives youa better sense of, of what the, the verses
is trying to communicate.
That's not always the case.
You know, sometimes like,
you know, people will say like,oh, like I'm reading this verse and like
(17:21):
there's this word impossible, but like,what is impossible really mean in Greek?
It's like, well,
you know, I hate to say it,but it just means impossible, you know?
But but there are those and
maybe I'll give you kind of an exampleon the other side.
So, so in John one, maybe verse five,John says that,
the light shines in the darkness,and the darkness has not.
(17:42):
And I've, I forget nowwhat some of the English says.
Yeah, we probably should figure outwhat the English translation say.
The light shines in the darkness,and the darkness has not overcome it.
That.
Yeah that's ESV.
Okay. Do you want to in different.
Yeah.
I don't know maybeSo this would be the King James for John.
John, chapter one, verse five.
And the light shines in the darkness,and the darkness comprehended it not.
(18:05):
yeah.
So, so this word you know,the range of meaning is kind of broad.
And so it has often the ideaof like to seize or to like, attain.
Sometimes it's to kind of, to grasp,sometimes even like intellectually
like to, to get it.
And so sometimesand I think this is especially a thing
that the Gospel of John,that John himself was kind of fond of,
(18:26):
he maybe use a word that had a broadrange of meaning, kind of intentionally.
And so you get different translationsfor that word.
Maybe it's the darknesshasn't really fully understood the light,
or maybe the darkness hasn't been ableto, like,
kind of takehold of the light in some way.
And maybe, maybe then overcome isis a good translation.
The light shines in the darknessand the darkness has never overcome it.
(18:49):
So so there are some of those caseswhere seeing seeing
the range of meaning of the wordcan can help Because it's not like
you pull out your Greek New Testament.
Okay.
You find this Greek wordand then you open up
your English dictionary and it's this wordand you know this equals this.
That's not really how language works.
And I think it's kind of easy to just
(19:09):
I don't know, just kind of assumethat's the way it is.
Right. And it's not really.
So maybe a, a word to keep inmind would be like nuance, perhaps
nuances of meaning.
Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
That's good.
Anything else you want to add on. On that.
Like Why we should careabout biblical languages.
Yeah.
I mean, there's, you know, in additionto seeing those maybe nuances
of meaning and being ableto to get a better sense of where
(19:32):
kind of one Greek word or phrase doesn'tneatly correspond to one English phrase.
There's also some times where there'sa certain kind of theological debate,
that will sometimes hinge on a particularword or particular Greek wording.
And that's the kind of thingthat probably not everyone
is going to be like thinking aboutor putting lots of effort into.
But it's the kind of thingwhere, it's useful for a church or,
(19:56):
you know, a communitymaybe to have some people who are familiar
enough with the original languages to beable to kind of get into that debate,
if you will.
So there's this there's this kind of bigscholarly debate about,
faith in Christor the faithfulness of Christ.
Galatians in Romansis this Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
It's maybe, perhaps not so well-knownjust among kind of,
(20:19):
you know, you sort of average,you know, everyday Christian.
But thereare, there are some of those places
maybe,maybe another example would also be,
you know, you,you hear the kind of knock on your door
and it's the, it'sthe friendly Jehovah's Witnesses,
and they'll, they'll,they'll try to tell you, hey, you know, in
John one where it says, the word is with God and the word was God.
(20:40):
Actually, that Greek word, God.
It doesn't have the definite articlebefore it.
And so it should be translated.
The word was, a God, yes.
You've maybe heard this. Yes.Oh, I've totally heard this.
Go aheadand just just dive into that case.
Let's use that as a case.
So what's going on there?
Like, do they have any grounds, like,where does this come from?
That they say that?Yeah I mean the short answer is no,
(21:04):
Well, there goes that.
If you’re a Jehovah's Witnessand you're watching
this, too badI guess, or like that's just yeah, yeah.
If you're watching this I mean, sorry,but, you know, this is, this is,
I don't know, a chance toto maybe rethink an important passage.
So, so there's a bit of truth to it,right?
So, you know, the definite articledoesn't appear in that verse.
So if it did, we would.
(21:24):
Well, it would,the sentence wouldn't really make sense,
but you would translatethe word was the god or something.
But that wouldn't make sense.
But we have this kind of idea of like,oh, definite,
you know, and so if, if the word appearsthen it’s definite and then indefinite.
And so if the article doesn't appear then,then we want to say it's indefinite.
But that's,it turns out a bit too simplistic.
So somewhere in between definite
(21:46):
and indefinite,there's this idea of being qualitative,
and so maybe, maybe a good examplecomes from actually first John.
So the same author, but where he says
that, God is love, God is love.
And so I don't knowhow would we think about the word love?
It's not definite.It's not God is the love.
It's also not indefinite.
It's not God is a love.
(22:07):
Like that doesn't really make any sense,but it's qualitative.
In other words, what is God like?
What's the quality that that God has?
And in this particular statement,God is love.
That's what God is like.
And then the very same thing isof course in John one.
So the word was with God.
And what was the word like?The word was God.
Yeah. So it's right.
You can end up getting into a really kindof theologically bad place if,
(22:30):
you know, you try to jump in with like,oh, it's got to be either
definite or indefinite,you don't have enough kind of,
maybe backgroundon how those things work, maybe.
Also the broader point is,
not every not every Christian needsto know the whole
the full grammatical kind of argumentfor what's going on in that verse.
But it is usefulif there are a few people around,
(22:52):
if there's someone in your church
that you can go to and say, hey,you know, the J.W.
said this,can you help me understand this?
And that's the kind of situation where,you know, having some sort of access
to biblical languageresources can actually be really helpful.
that's actually kind of a big dealbecause, because I mean, without this
seems like it'd be pretty easyto manipulate
(23:13):
the text and come up with some,some kind of weird ideas.
I mean, JWs is a good example.
Where.
Yeah, they have their own translation,which I, which I have a, I have a copy of.
It's kind of interestingto leaf through, like.
Wow. That's okay.
That's a, you know, that's different,you know. Yeah.
And but it's kind of easyto, to manipulate the text
if you are tryingto pull a certain angle or something.
(23:34):
So I, I really see what you're sayingthere.
If you have some peoplethat actually know a little bit about it,
you can't get pulled off.
Yeah. You know, with that. Yeah.
That's interesting because it actuallyand this is maybe Bunny Trail, but,
there's a friend of minein an Anabaptist church,
and they had someone who's comeand started joining their church,
and, this person started teachingsome of this very stuff.
(23:57):
Like what Jesus wasn't,wasn't actually God because they had
they I don't know where they got it,but they found probably some resources
on the internet or whatever.
And it's like, oh, well,you know, Jesus, what now?
You know, maybe this Trinity thingisn't really real.
And like, as they started going downthat fast track of heresy very quickly,
I started being pretty vocal about it,you know, in a, in a church environment.
And it's like suddenly you, you do kind ofwant to have some knowledge of
(24:22):
how to combat that, because it's not just,a slight misinterpretation here.
And now we're getting we're gettingoutside of the orthodox, you know, belief,
you know, outside of OrthodoxChristianity.
So, with that being the case, right.
Maybe, you know, I can imagine some peoplelistening to this saying, yeah, okay,
I kind of like to look intosome biblical languages, you know,
where can I learn and learn more?
So, obviouslythis is a massive field of study,
(24:45):
but where is a place someone could startif they're interested in this?
yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
Maybe I can kind of break it up intointo kind of two questions.
So, if people want to learn like actually
really, really learn Greek or Hebrew,it's a worthwhile investment.
And I can, I can maybe point
you toward a kind of a couple of resourcesto, to maybe get started.
But it is it is a big investment.
(25:07):
And, you know, sometimesmaybe some of the,
the payoff, so to speak, it comesit comes a bit later on.
So you kind ofhave to put in a bunch of grunt work,
to kind of get like past that initial,you know, hump, let's say,
and then once you, once you like, havehave gotten to, maybe a further point,
that's when you start being ableto kind of see those nuances and know
(25:27):
how to like, usewhat you've learned responsibly.
So, so maybe I can kind of give you
a couple of resources,but maybe for most people,
it's almost more helpful to thinkkind of on the other side, I'll probably
never, like, put in, you know, investall the time to, to get the whole way.
But What are some resourcesthat can maybe,
be helpful in using the biblical languagesresponsibly?
(25:49):
For, for someonewho's not going to kind of master them
so there's a great resource out there.
It's free.
It's super easy to useand it's called the Net Bible.
So net it stands for New Englishtranslation I believe.
But what this translation iskind of known for is their notes.
So the net notes.
So basically it's it'san English Bible translation.
It's, you know, it reads pretty similarto maybe the NIV or the ESV.
(26:12):
But there's a lot of places,where when they came to that sort
of difficult translation decision, like,you know, how do we get this into English?
We've got to either pick this word orthis word, and we can't capture all of it.
They basically write a little footnoteexplaining,
sometimes that that kind of decision, or other times
if there's like a wordthat maybe the meaning is disputed
(26:33):
and they'll, they'll explainin a note saying,
some scholars think that this word meansthis.
Other scholars would take itmore on, on this track.
And so, you know, here'swhat we think and here's why.
And they also have noteson, on textual criticism as well.
So if there's one of those caseswhere, you know, some translations
will include a sentence or a word,other translations leave it out,
(26:53):
they'll actually give you like a,you know, a kind of one paragraph,
a little summary of like, Codex,Sinaticus, Vaticanus, and
P 46 include this particular word.
But these manuscripts over here don't.
And so by looking at allthese manuscripts,
we think that the best decisionis to include it or to not include it.
So that's why we translated it this way.
So it's, it'sthis free kind of wealth of information,
(27:16):
that you can, you can accesswithout necessarily having to,
you know, put in all the workto, to master the language.
Net notes. that's,that's really interesting.
I, I've never heard of that before.
That could be a very valuable resourcefor digging more into, you know, the,
maybe the, some of the biblical languagesor that manuscripts of things,
but also just for general Bible studyI would think.
Right. Yeah. yeah.
(27:37):
And for seeing like,why do translations differ?
It's basically kind of a little windowinto the translators thought process.
that's, that's really cool.I've never heard of that before.
yeah, it's a good resource.
So, I mean, I think, I think if you wantto, if you want to go, the whole way
and try to, to get to a more advancedlevel, there's,
I mean, there's, there's different thingsyou can do.
There is, of course,the whole grammar translation method.
So you can, you know,go to your kind of local Bible college
(27:59):
or seminary or somethingand kind of sign up for a Greek class.
You'll probably get a textbookand you might get some kind of workbook,
and you'll probably spend a lot of timestudying,
grammar and,like, here's how this tense works
and here's what cases are all about,and here's
what the nominativeand the dative do and all this.
And then you'll spenda lot of time translating.
And that can be useful.
A lot of people have,have been able to kind of work
(28:21):
through that waytoward, toward a pretty high level.
So that's that's not bad.
There's also there's also and wewe talked about this a bit earlier, but,
the whole communicative kind of sideof things where you tell stories and you.
Yeah. Yeah.
But that takes it fromjust being like a, a dead language
that I'm reading on the page to.
You're actually speakingand engaging with it.
(28:42):
Yeah. That seems significant.
It is. Yeah, it is.
I mean, it's it's definitely,you know, helped me
a ton, in, in kind ofgetting the language, you know,
internalized, we sometimes say, or kind ofgetting it deep, deep into your mind.
And itit really, really makes a difference.
Then when you go to actually read it,
you don't right away think, okay,how do I translate this word?
(29:03):
And what is this?
But eventually it starts to feel likeyou can just kind of read
it and understand it and you're like,oh yeah, that's what Jesus was saying.
And it it kind of flows.
It kind of. Yeah.
So there's let's see.
One resourcethat people might look at is,
it's called the Biblical Language Center,
which is a guycalled Randall Booth who kind of,
let's say pioneered.
I think it's probably fair.
(29:25):
A kind of revival of of studyingancient Greek with communicative methods.
So, with the Biblical Language Center, they have some, some pretty good,
pretty solid, online resourceswhere there's like some, like, animations
and some,
some kind of self-guided, like, lessonsthat, that take you through a story.
It's all kind of based on,
a young boy who's like,he goes to school and you kind of like,
(29:47):
learn all this vocabularyand all this grammar as you kind of watch
the boy go through his kind of daily life,sort of thing.
So that's, that'sprobably a useful place to start.
He also does, they,they do some, like, in-person,
more like intensive style, like, herecome for, for this whole period of time
and like,you know, get immersed in ancient Greek.
So that's, that's maybe a place to start.
(30:08):
Biblical language center.
There's also another kind of,site online called bib lingo.
It's bib lingo.
Bib lingo.org. I haven't used it myself.
But they, they're looking to do somethingvery similar kind of create,
communicative immersive environmentlike through through an online
(30:28):
online platform.
There's always, you know, if,if someone wants to, to travel to,
to the Middle East and if, you know,conditions allow, there's a place called
the Polis Institute, where they alsodo, very, very communicative.
I haven't been there,but some of my friends that I,
that I would have studied withhad had gone there and,
you know,you hear stories of kind of everyone
speaking Greek at lunch time and,you know, all this kind of thing.
(30:51):
So that's there's cool stuff out there.Yeah.
Because I think, like,
read,you know, reading the Greek New Testament
or something or biblical languages,
you don't think of them as somethingthat's spoken.
And that's just kind of,I don't know, like,
I think I silly preconception,but like, this this is what people spoke
at the time, like, I mean, this isthis is the language that was used.
And it's just kind of easy to think of usas this dead, dry, dusty thing.
(31:14):
I don't know,it feels like there's a mindset, mindset
shift there,doing what you're talking about there.
That's kind of neat.
yeah.
It also has the advantageof being a lot more enjoyable
which you know, it's it's kind of ait sounds maybe like, like a sort of,
you know, side benefit,
but it actually is the case that, like,if you can enjoy studying Greek,
you're actually a lot more likelyto do more of it and actually get farther
(31:36):
with it.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And like, you know, at the end of the daykind of grammar and translation,
like, you know, some of us are ableto enjoy that kind of thing somewhat.
But, you know,it does get kind of old after a while.
And if you can actually like,find that you're having fun
and like, oh, this is a great storyand that's how you're learning it,
then you're you're probably a lot,you know, likely to get get pretty far.
(31:58):
So yeah.
So so you can speak biblical.
Biblical Greek. A bit. Yeah. Yeah.
That's wild.
Yeah.
That's wild.
depends on, you know,what sort of field or topic. Right.
If it's Bible words, I'mpretty familiar with them.
If it's like, you know,I don't know how to how to frame a wall
or something like that, you know, I don'tI don't know those words,
(32:19):
you know, or, or I don't know.
Yeah.
Can you and againmaybe this is diverting a little bit, but
how close are we to the languagethat Jesus
and the apostles, would it bewhat spoke or written in yeah.
I mean, sometimes.
So, so Greek as a languagehas an extremely long history.
Right.
So we can kind of trace backand I haven't studied a lot of this,
(32:41):
but the people who, who are scholars onthis, can trace back to,
well, before the time of Jesus, hundredsand even thousands of years before Jesus.
Like what Greek was like back then, right?
Because languages kind of always evolve.They're always changing.
So there's really old forms of Greek,like there's Homer,
there's even stuff before Homer.
Then you come to around the time of Jesus.
And we usually call thiskuni Greek or Koine.
(33:04):
And so this was the kind of,the, the version of Greek
that became the sort of, worldwide
or let's say, the kind of known world,
it was the the language of widercommunication, the language that people
would have mostly spoken likethe Roman Empire we’re saying essentially.
Yeah.
And and of course, Alexanderthe Great would have, would have spread it
(33:25):
in all of his conquestsa few hundred years before Jesus.
And then it so it was,you know, Greek kind of spoken in Greece.
But as Alexander spread itand as it became
more of an international language,it simplified in some ways
some of the kind of extra complexityof it, like got flattened out a little bit
just because, you know, the moreit spreads, the more it kind of evens out.
So we call this Kuna Greek, Koinemeans common.
(33:46):
So it was kind of like common language.
Then, of course, you know,that's the time of Jesus.
But Greek has been spokencontinuously all that time.
And so fast forwardto, to modern, modern times.
And we have modern Greek.
So it's, it's the same language
for all those thousands of years,but it's just evolved, quite a bit.
So, so we really like the manuscriptswe have for what is the New Testament
(34:07):
now is almost like a historical snapshotof the language of the time.
It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And actually, it,it turns out that, for, for some time,
a lot of scholars actually thought thatthe language of the New Testament was like
a specific version of Greek that was,like, only used for the New Testament.
And they sometimes thought of it as likeHoly Spirit Greek.
Because, yeah, it'skind of hard to imagine that now.
(34:30):
Like, how could anyone think that? Right?
But whoa. Was okay. Yeah.
I never heard that one ever.
you know, King James only ism kind of,you know,
put back onto onto the New Testamentmanuscripts themselves. Yeah.
But of course, at that time, there was a lot less like manuscripts
and texts just available or known,that were written from that time period.
(34:50):
So, yeah, there was this kind of sensethat like, oh, well, this is, you know,
it's not exactly the kind of Greekthat we call classical Greek.
So from like maybe 400 years beforewith like all the kind of,
famous playwrights and, philosopherslike Aristotle and Plato.
It's not that.
So it must be something different.It must be kind of Holy Spirit.
But then, lots of papyri were discovered.
So basically these, basically kind of pieces of paper,
(35:14):
in, in Egyptand kind of the surrounding areas,
that were written in like the very,very same form of Greek,
like the same kindof historical stage of the language.
And so then over time,people started to realize like, yeah,
this is not anything special.
It's just
this was just the languagethat everyone was speaking back then,
you know, there's like shopping listsand just random, like pieces of paper
that now we have that.
(35:35):
It's like, okay,this is what Greek was like at that time.
And that's kind of wild that, like,
there's somethinginteresting there, you know, to where
God'sWord was in a common language of the time.
You know, the common trade languageof really the biggest empire in the world,
I suppose,or one of the biggest empires in the world
that's got to have beena contributing factor
(35:56):
to the growth of early Christianity,you know, for sure.
Yeah.
I mean, because everybody could read itor have it read to them, you know.
yeah I mean several
you know if, if hypothetically Jesushad come several hundred years before,
it would probably not have been as easy,to get
of course, there's alwaysmaybe some kind of international language,
but it wouldn't have been as easy toto get the message out to such a wide
(36:18):
group of people in a languagethat, you know, pretty much everyone knew.
Yeah.
Well this, this is fascinating.
I feel like I'm learning a lot here.
Like we're kind of taking the whirlwindtour through, you know, biblical languages
and manuscripts and early,you know, early writings and things.
But I actually like,
it seems like,
you know, this is actually kindof important context to know because we're
(36:41):
talking about God's word here, you know,and like how it got to us today.
And I think that's an important storyto oversimplify or misunderstand
or have all these biases and prejudicesand things, you know, around how.
Well,I think it's this way and, I think so.
Yeah. This is,this kind of is pretty great.
So as we kind of look at the wholepackage of what all we've covered,
(37:02):
the kind of tie it all together.
Yeah.
Is there anything you'd like toto conclude with?
Or maybe a piece of adviceor encouragement you like to give
to listeners on this topic,or just anything in general?
Really? Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so maybe, maybe one piece of advicethat I think can probably be be useful
for everybody, is just to, to make useof different English translations.
(37:23):
Right.
So, so whichever English translationyou think of as maybe your kind
of primary one, maybe it's the ESV or you,you like the King James, whatever it is.
You know that that can be great.
And we have a lot of great Englishtranslation.
So, so read that translation, memorize it.
It's great.
But, you know, now and then,especially if you're thinking
through a passage,you maybe get a little stuck on something.
(37:43):
And like,I wonder exactly what this means.
Grab another translation. You know,
pull up the, the NIV, look at the new KingJames, look at the net Bible.
And sometimes,what you have is, a word or phrase
that doesn't directly correspondto any one thing in English.
And by kind of looking at a few differentEnglish manuscripts, you can get a
(38:04):
better picture of what what the original,the original meaning would have been.
So I think, I think comparing, just, youknow, crack open a few different English
Bibles, put them right beside each other,and that's, that's like a, a great way
of getting kind of one step past,just what you would otherwise have.
Yeah. That's that's really good. Yeah.
And that's, that's, that's very simpleand something anybody can do.
(38:24):
Could it be immediately actionableto their own study of Scripture.
Wow. Well, Andrew, this isthis has been great.
This is, we don't typically go into,you know, Bible manuscripts
in biblical languagesand, you know, you know, early
church history and things like that.
But, I think this is important and, and,I learned a lot.
So thanks for being willing tocome on the podcast, this evening
(38:47):
and for everything you shared tonight.Yeah, yeah.
Thank you for having me. It'sbeen really good to be here. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to this episodewith Andrew Lamicela.
Learning Greekcan greatly inform our study of Scripture,
but there are many other tools and methodsfor engaging with the biblical text.
We did an episode on this and you can findit linked in the description down below.
We also have a monthly email newsletterwhich you can subscribe
(39:09):
to on our websiteat Anabaptistperspectives.org.
Thanks again for listeningand we'll see you in the next episode.
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