Should Churches Teach Greek?

Hank at Think Wink proposes that churches should teach their members Greek in Sunday School:

However, what if the churches over the country began to teach a basic understand of Greek and Hebrew and could point people in the direction of some free resources that can help the readers get into the original language? This is possible but it requires first that each and every church have a person on hand with a working and teachable knowledge of the languages, which is hard….

Now the only question, how could you get everyone in the church together to learn the languages? My solution is Sunday School. Sunday School was originally a school that little children attended to learn to read, write, and to learn math. It has lost that emphasis over time to either its benefit or detriment—you decide. But this is a perfect place to offer that kind of basic knowledge for maybe the length of a school semester, from August to December or from February to May. That’s all it would take. It need not be an in depth study of the languages but just enough so that the people can look at the language and pick out what kinds of verbs there are, how words decline and parse. Then, the church could make a good concordance available to be purchased by the people or give links to websites that have free lexicons and concordances. I use www.studylight.org to help with my verbs because I learn those this spring.

Go comment at Hank’s post if you want to help him refine his ideas or, especially, if you know of a church that’s done something akin to what Hank suggests.

Bible software might help you learn Greek in a church context. Most Bible study software comes with tools to help you learn Greek. Logos Bible Software, for example, lets you create vocabulary lists and print flashcards. One of the most useful features is creating a vocabulary list from a given passage. They’ve also made available vocabulary lists for some of the more popular grammar books.

If you prefer to go the web route, Hank mentions one website. Zhubert.com is another useful site that has study tools built-in. (It does passage vocabulary lists and flashcards, for example.)

A big part of learning Greek (or any language) is staying motivated once your initial enthusiasm wears off. A formal class in church, as Hank suggests, might help sustain you. Just picking up the basics of the biblical languages enhances the usefulness of reference works like the ESV Reverse Interlinear New Testament, which comes with many versions of Logos. The Logos version lets you easily explore the Greek New Testament right from the Reverse Interlinear.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 12th, 2007 at 10:14 am and is filed under General. Both comments and pings are currently closed.