And sometimes you get a little bit of that sense with, with the biblical languages, where it's like when I read this in English, you know, I have some questions. It doesn't all make sense for me, but if only I could read it in Greek, then, like, all my questions would be answered and all the problems would go away. And if you come to it that way, then you're less likely to to use the original languages and to use the tools that you have 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 word with 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 magic wand approach to biblical languages that, you know, want to kind of, maybe discourage. Andrew Lamicela, Welcome to the Anabaptist perspectives podcast. So you have spent a lot of time studying biblical languages.
You've taught at different places and colleges and so forth on biblical languages. And I got to admit, I really don't know anything about the Greek New Testament or Hebrew manuscripts or anything like that. And I feel like I have a lot to learn. I feel like there's there's some importance here about knowing where the Bible we have today comes from. So also, actually, I just heard you were over 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 opportunity that opened up, pretty unexpectedly. Yeah. To teach, basically like first year Greek, for an eight week term at a really small, kind of evangelical, but American, kind of English based, seminary in the Netherlands, just right outside of Amsterdam or an international school. It's a lot of students from, 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 scholars have translated the Bible. We have an English Bible. Why does studying biblical languages even matter? You know what? How is this relevant to us today? And I think that's the big piece that I would I would like to, understand more. why does it even matter to study biblical languages. Like why did you put all this time and effort into learning this?
Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. I think maybe a a good kind of place to start, is just to, to acknowledge that, you know, we all speak English. We have great Bible translations in English. But the way that Scripture comes to us is 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 maybe the extra effort to get as close as we can, to Scripture and as close as we can to the 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 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 sense for 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. Kind of like, upgrading your toolbelt, maybe. Let's say something like that. Yeah. And so you spent obviously a lot of time right doing this.
Can you tell me a little bit about that journey. Like how many years have 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 hear a little bit of that story as well. 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 exactly sure how she how she did this, but she, she actually found, a textbook that's very widely used in seminaries and Bible colleges.
And so we we got this textbook, me and my brother and, yeah, we just kind of started working through it, just on our own. We just take the next chapter and do the exercises. And so that was, Wow. So you were just, like, self-teaching yourself Greek Yeah. I mean, there were there were lectures that came with it, but. Yeah. Yeah. And I think just one of us on our own, it probably wouldn't have worked, but we had each other to 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 college and then a bit in seminary as well.
And then I also had, the opportunity to spend a lot of time with, with a couple friends of mine that had studied Greek in using more of a, like, communicative method where you actually like, you tell stories and you actually interact in the language, so you don't just learn the language by 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 walk and it's all in Greek. And you kind of like, unpack it and you gradually, like, build in complexity. 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 connect maybe the grammar that I had studied and some of the more kind of technical and abstract, elements of it with like a living language approach and kind of bring these two together.
So, yeah, it's, it's been a it's been a great journey. And it's honestly, I was, I would say, very privileged both in how I 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, maybe what sounds kind of like a basic question. Probably should be asked what even is the Greek New Testament like? We just I think we all kind of know.
Okay. Yeah. The the Bible, it wasn't written in English, so it was something. What's the Greek New Testament? Honestly, what are what are the manuscripts that make it up? What are some common misconceptions surrounding that as well? Or. Yeah, just some some context there. I feel like we could go a little deeper into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a great question. Maybe, maybe, like, the kind of obvious place to start.
And I think people generally know this is that, of course, we don't have the original, manuscripts that the apostle Paul or Matthew or Luke would have originally written. So, you know, Luke writes his gospel wherever 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 copies and copies of copies of copies.
So there's there's all of these kind of copies that are out there, and some of them are, have been found in Egypt and some in, you know, kind of various places throughout the ancient world. It turns out we have a total of around 5800. I think it is manuscripts of the New Testament. Now, of course, those are those 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. And then, of course, some are full. They'll have the whole New Testament and then some are, you know, very, very partial. So, one of the very oldest is called P 52. So papyrus 52, 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 manuscripts but they come in very different shapes and sizes.
I think that's an important piece because it's pretty easy to be like oh the Greek New Testaments like this, this book. Yeah. And it was all nice and compiled and ready to go for the translators. That's not really the case then, I suppose. right. So there's kind of that, that intermediate step between we've got all these manuscripts in different shapes and sizes.
And then how do we actually get to like a kind of solid Greek text where when we go to translating it to English, you know, we kind of know what we're working off. So kind of in between there is this whole process called textual criticism. Criticism. You know, it kind of sounds like a bad word. It sounds like we're criticizing the text. But what it really means is kind of like textual 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, 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, each manuscript 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. So basically there's this kind of whole field, where they'll look at all the manuscripts and then kind of compile, a sort of best guess, let's say, on on what the original text would have been. So it's kind of a process of, of putting all of those together and doing your best to, to reconstruct. It's like a, a process of reconstruction and what the original text
would have been. Of course, there's always some controversy in there. And like, you know, exactly how should the wording be in some cases? But the, the, the overall the overall picture is, is really, really strong. Like if you put, if you look at all those manuscripts kind of side to side, just like beside each other, they, they agree like very, very much of the time.
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 within just a very, very small, margin of error what he wrote. Yeah, with only a few places of kind of disagreement.
That's kind of phenomenal actually, because if you're thinking about all these people in all these different 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 spreading all around the Roman Empire, say, and then we can pull all these all these years later and they actually match up. Yeah, that's kind of wild, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's one of the challenges when people hear, oh, it's especially when you like things like 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 confidence that this is accurate. This was transmitted correctly. Yeah. Do you want to do you want to say any more of that?
Because I feel like that might be one of one of the big misconceptions when it comes to Bible manuscripts or the Greek New Testament. I don't know if. Yeah, if you have any more you 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 manuscripts is, is, something we 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 the some of the time, especially where you have the kind of scenario where, some of the older Bible translations, like maybe, you know, the King James new King James that we're very familiar with and, and they're great translations. The King James is a beautiful translation. It's so well done.
You know, given the kind of historical setting it was, it was done in, but if you compare that with some of the more modern versions like the ESV and the NIV and others, sometimes, you know, you'll see a verse or a sentence that appears in the King James and then it doesn't appear in, say, the NIV or the ESV. And sometimes it you know, people are maybe, somewhat mistaken in thinking that the modern translations have kind of removed the verse.
And sometimes you hear this kind of like, oh, they're taking verses out of the Bible kind 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 Bible that that's not what's going on. Right? So so Thomas Jefferson's not on the translation committee for the NIV, right. But what what is going on is that there's, you know, some manuscripts would have had that sentence.
And when the King James translators did their work, fewer manuscripts had been discovered. And so they were working with a narrower set of manuscripts. And so they, they went with what they had and their manuscripts had that sentence.
Now, you know, fast forward into the 20th and 21st centuries, you know, the translators of the NIV, just, for example, have a much broader pool of manuscripts and, you know, that translation committee, they'll look at all of those and they're honest 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 we can, to reconstruct what that original text would have been. Yeah. So, so when we're thinking about biblical languages and Bible manuscripts, all this stuff, why I'm trying to think how to phrase this, but basically convince me why I should care about biblical languages, so to speak, I guess. Right. Like if, if you had to give a pitch of why should people care? 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 is we 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. And these are the languages it 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 not something that everyone has to do. Right?
So I don't at all think, and I wouldn't want 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, 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 grammar and 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 of maybe how to use the languages in a way that's responsible, is is important, I would say. Yeah. And it doesn't it doesn't have to be like 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 part of of your you're kind of teaching.
I get a little nervous, and I hear people like the Greek and say, well, okay, maybe, maybe if we back off a little bit. Yeah. It's like you get this sense that there's this aurora or this. Ooh, there. You know, the Greek, it says this, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine that might be a 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.
Yeah. Yeah yeah I mean I think we were talking about this just before, but I think sometimes, there's a little bit of a danger for people who, you know, see that there's value in the original languages and who have a sense rightly, that there's something to be gained by going back to the original language.
But sometimes there's, I think, a danger of, of kind of trying to use it like a, 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 wave your 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 that sense with, with the biblical languages, where it's like when I read this in English, you know, I have some questions. It doesn't all make sense for me, but if only I could read it in Greek, then, like, all my questions would be answered and 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 languages and to use the tools that you have 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 word with 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 magic wand approach to biblical languages that, you know, want to kind of, maybe discourage or. What would you say is, is a better approach then to, to the biblical languages?
Because I feel that, yeah, I've definitely seen it where, you know, someone has a sermon or. Yeah, exactly. And they say, oh, well, the Greek word actually means this. And then you can extract all 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 mindset to have as we approach the text in its original? Yeah. yeah.
I mean, a lot of the time, I think, I think looking for and expecting to find maybe different nuances and 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 just completely revolutionize your understanding of the passage, but it's kind of like shade in some extra detail, or it's kind of like color how you see one word, like in a slightly different way.
And, you know, there are some words and this is where, you know, you can't expect to find this with every Greek word. But there are there are some words where you know, the range of meaning that one Greek word has just doesn't line up very well with any one English word. And so, you know, the translators, they they've got to pick an English word because you can't put in a whole dictionary entry. Right. So you pick one word.
But, but sometimes, being able to look that word up and kind of see the full range of meaning actually gives you a 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 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 example on 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. And I've, I forget now what some of the English says. Yeah, we probably should figure out what 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 maybe So 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. yeah. So, so this word you know, the range of meaning is kind of broad. And so it has often the idea of 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 sometimes and I think this is especially a thing that the Gospel of John, that John himself was kind of fond of, he maybe use a word that had a broad range of meaning, kind of intentionally. And so you get different translations for that word. Maybe it's the darkness hasn't really fully understood the light, or maybe the darkness hasn't been able to, like, kind of take hold of the light in some way. And maybe, maybe then overcome is is a good translation.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it. So so there are some of those cases where seeing seeing the range of meaning of the word can can help Because it's not like you pull out your Greek New Testament. Okay. You find this Greek word and then you open up your English dictionary and it's this word and you know this equals this. That's not really how language works. And I think it's kind of easy to just I don't know, just kind of assume that's the way it is.
Right. And it's not really. So maybe a, a word to keep in mind 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 care about biblical languages. Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, in addition to seeing those maybe nuances of meaning and being able to to get a better sense of where kind of one Greek word or phrase doesn't neatly correspond to one English phrase.
There's also some times where there's a certain kind of theological debate, that will sometimes hinge on a particular word or particular Greek wording. And that's the kind of thing that probably not everyone is going to be like thinking about or putting lots of effort into. But it's the kind of thing where, it's useful for a church or, you know, a community maybe to have some people who are familiar enough with the original languages to be able to kind of get into that debate, if you will.
So there's this there's this kind of big scholarly debate about, faith in Christ or the faithfulness of Christ. Galatians in Romans is this Oh, interesting. Yeah. It's maybe, perhaps not so well-known just among kind of, you know, you sort of average, you know, everyday Christian.
But there are, 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's the 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. Actually, that Greek word, God. It doesn't have the definite article before 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 ahead and 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, Well, there goes that. If you’re a Jehovah's Witness and you're watching this, too bad I 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 to to maybe rethink an important passage. So, so there's a bit of truth to it, right? So, you know, the definite article doesn't appear in that verse. So if it did, we would. Well, it would, the sentence wouldn't really make sense, but you would translate the 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 appears then 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 and indefinite, there's this idea of being qualitative, and so maybe, maybe a good example comes from actually first John. So the same author, but where he says that, God is love, God is love.
And so I don't know how 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. 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 is of 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 kind of theologically bad place if, 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 background on how those things work, maybe. Also the broader point is, not every not every Christian needs to know the whole the full grammatical kind of argument for what's going on in that verse.
But it is useful if there are a few people around, 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 language resources can actually be really helpful. that's actually kind of a big deal because, because I mean, without this seems like it'd be pretty easy to manipulate 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 interesting to leaf through, like. Wow. That's okay. That's a, you know, that's different, you know. Yeah. And but it's kind of easy to, to manipulate the text if you are trying to pull a certain angle or something. So I, I really see what you're saying there. If you have some people that actually know a little bit about it, you can't get pulled off.
Yeah. You know, with that. Yeah. That's interesting because it actually and this is maybe Bunny Trail, but, there's a friend of mine in an Anabaptist church, and they had someone who's come and started joining their church, and, this person started teaching some of this very stuff. 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 thing isn't really real. And like, as they started going down that 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 of want to have some knowledge of how to combat that, because it's not just, a slight misinterpretation here. And now we're getting we're getting outside of the orthodox, you know, belief, you know, outside of Orthodox Christianity.
So, with that being the case, right. Maybe, you know, I can imagine some people listening to this saying, yeah, okay, I kind of like to look into some biblical languages, you know, where can I learn and learn more? So, obviously this is a massive field of study, but where is a place someone could start if they're interested in this? yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Maybe I can kind of break it up into into 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 resources to, to maybe get started. But it is it is a big investment. And, you know, sometimes maybe some of the, the payoff, so to speak, it comes it comes a bit later on.
So you kind of have 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, have have gotten to, maybe a further point, that's when you start being able to kind of see those nuances and know how to like, use what 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 think kind of on the other side, I'll probably never, like, put in, you know, invest all the time to, to get the whole way. But What are some resources that can maybe, be helpful in using the biblical languages responsibly? For, for someone who's not going to kind of master them so there's a great resource out there. It's free. It's super easy to use and it's called the Net Bible.
So net it stands for New English translation I believe. But what this translation is kind of known for is their notes. So the net notes. So basically it's it's an English Bible translation. It's, you know, it reads pretty similar to maybe the NIV or the ESV. 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 or this word, and we can't capture all of it.
They basically write a little footnote explaining, sometimes that that kind of decision, or other times if there's like a word that maybe the meaning is disputed and they'll, they'll explain in a note saying, some scholars think that this word means this. Other scholars would take it more on, on this track. And so, you know, here's what we think and here's why. And they also have notes on, on textual criticism as well.
So if there's one of those cases where, you know, some translations will include a sentence or a word, other translations leave it out, 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 all these manuscripts, we think that the best decision is to include it or to not include it. So that's why we translated it this way.
So it's, it's this free kind of wealth of information, that you can, you can access without necessarily having to, you know, put in all the work to, 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 resource for digging more into, you know, the, maybe the, some of the biblical languages or that manuscripts of things, but also just for general Bible study I would think.
Right. Yeah. yeah. And for seeing like, why do translations differ? It's basically kind of a little window into 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 want to, if you want to go, the whole way and try to, to get to a more advanced level, there's, I mean, there's, there's different things you can do. There is, of course, the whole grammar translation method.
So you can, you know, go to your kind of local Bible college or seminary or something and kind of sign up for a Greek class. You'll probably get a textbook and you might get some kind of workbook, and you'll probably spend a lot of time studying, grammar and, like, here's how this tense works and here's what cases are all about, and here's what the nominative and the dative do and all this. And then you'll spend a lot of time translating. And that can be useful.
A lot of people have, have been able to kind of work through that way toward, toward a pretty high level. So that's that's not bad. There's also there's also and we we talked about this a bit earlier, but, the whole communicative kind of side of things where you tell stories and you. Yeah. Yeah. But that takes it from just being like a, a dead language that I'm reading on the page to. You're actually speaking and engaging with it. 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 of getting the language, you know, internalized, we sometimes say, or kind of getting it deep, deep into your mind. And it it 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? And what is this? But eventually it starts to feel like you 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 resource that people might look at is, it's called the Biblical Language Center, which is a guy called Randall Booth who kind of, let's say pioneered. I think it's probably fair. A kind of revival of of studying ancient Greek with communicative methods.
So, with the Biblical Language Center, they have some, some pretty good, pretty solid, online resources where there's like some, like, animations and some, some kind of self-guided, like, lessons that, 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, learn all this vocabulary and all this grammar as you kind of watch the boy go through his kind of daily life, sort of thing.
So that's, that's probably a useful place to start. He also does, they, they do some, like, in-person, more like intensive style, like, here come 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. 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 something very similar kind of create, communicative immersive environment like through through an online 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 also do, very, very communicative.
I haven't been there, but some of my friends that I, that I would have studied with had 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. 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 something that'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 is this is the language that was used. And it's just kind of easy to think of us as this dead, dry, dusty thing. 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 advantage of being a lot more enjoyable which you know, it's it's kind of a it 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 likely to do more of it and actually get farther with it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And like, you know, at the end of the day kind of grammar and translation, like, you know, some of us are able to 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 story and that's how you're learning it, then you're you're probably a lot, you know, likely to get get pretty far. 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'm pretty 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't I don't know those words, you know, or, or I don't know. Yeah. Can you and again maybe this is diverting a little bit, but how close are we to the language that Jesus and the apostles, would it be what spoke or written in yeah. I mean, sometimes. So, so Greek as a language has an extremely long history. Right.
So we can kind of trace back and I haven't studied a lot of this, but the people who, who are scholars on this, can trace back to, well, before the time of Jesus, hundreds and 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 this kuni Greek or Koine. 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 wider communication, the language that people would have mostly spoken like the Roman Empire we’re saying essentially. Yeah. And and of course, Alexander the Great would have, would have spread it in all of his conquests a few hundred years before Jesus.
And then it so it was, you know, Greek kind of spoken in Greece. But as Alexander spread it and as it became more of an international language, it simplified in some ways some of the kind of extra complexity of it, like got flattened out a little bit just because, you know, the more it spreads, the more it kind of evens out. So we call this Kuna Greek, Koine means common. So it was kind of like common language. Then, of course, you know, that's the time of Jesus.
But Greek has been spoken continuously all that time. And so fast forward to, 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 manuscripts we have for what is the New Testament now is almost like a historical snapshot of 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 that the 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 like Holy Spirit Greek. Because, yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine that now. 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 Testament manuscripts 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. So, yeah, there was this kind of sense that like, oh, well, this is, you know, it's not exactly the kind of Greek that we call classical Greek. So from like maybe 400 years before with like all the kind of, famous playwrights and, philosophers like 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, in, in Egypt and kind of the surrounding areas, that were written in like the very, very same form of Greek, like the same kind of 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 language that everyone was speaking back then, you know, there's like shopping lists and just random, like pieces of paper that now we have that. It's like, okay, this is what Greek was like at that time. And that's kind of wild that, like, there's something interesting there, you know, to where God's Word was in a common language of the time.
You know, the common trade language of really the biggest empire in the world, I suppose, or one of the biggest empires in the world that's got to have been a contributing factor to the growth of early Christianity, you know, for sure. Yeah. I mean, because everybody could read it or have it read to them, you know.
yeah I mean several you know if, if hypothetically Jesus had come several hundred years before, it would probably not have been as easy, to get of course, there's always maybe some kind of international language, but it wouldn't have been as easy to to get the message out to such a wide group of people in a language that, 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 whirlwind tour 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 kind of important context to know because we're talking about God's word here, you know, and like how it got to us today. And I think that's an important story to oversimplify or misunderstand or have all these biases and prejudices and 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 whole package of what all we've covered, the kind of tie it all together. Yeah. Is there anything you'd like to to conclude with? Or maybe a piece of advice or 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 advice that I think can probably be be useful for everybody, is just to, to make use of different English translations. Right. So, so whichever English translation you 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 English translation. 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. And like, I wonder exactly what this means. Grab another translation. You know, pull up the, the NIV, look at the new King James, look at the net Bible. And sometimes, what you have is, a word or phrase that doesn't directly correspond to any one thing in English.
And by kind of looking at a few different English manuscripts, you can get a better picture of what what the original, the original meaning would have been. So I think, I think comparing, just, you know, 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 simple and something anybody can do.
Could it be immediately actionable to their own study of Scripture. Wow. Well, Andrew, this is this has been great. This is, we don't typically go into, you know, Bible manuscripts in biblical languages and, 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 to come on the podcast, this evening and for everything you shared tonight. Yeah, yeah.
Thank you for having me. It's been really good to be here. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode with Andrew Lamicela. Learning Greek can greatly inform our study of Scripture, but there are many other tools and methods for engaging with the biblical text. We did an episode on this and you can find it linked in the description down below. We also have a monthly email newsletter which you can subscribe to on our website at Anabaptistperspectives.org.
Thanks again for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.