Did you ever stop to think that the Book of books was not written hi English? No, God saw fit to have all the Old Testament written in Hebrew, except a very few chapters, which were written in Biblical Aramaic, which is a Semitic language closely related to the Hebrew. And the New Testament was written, not in classical Greek, but in that form of Greek which had come to be the lingua franca all over the civilized world in the time of Christ.
We are all glad that we have a number of very good English versions of the Bible. Of course, the religious views of the translators have sometimes influenced in the translation, as when they make Jesus say to the repentant thief on the cross: "Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Luke 23:43. There are other cases arising from similar causes which are not so easy for the one reading only English to correct as this one. But all the standard English translations of the Bible are wonderfully good as translations. In fact, there is no other English translation from any foreign language to be compared in accuracy and care to the various commonly used English versions of the Bible.
But for one who intends as a minister of the gospel to give his life to the exposition of the Bible, it is hard to understand why he should be satisfied to go on with no knowledge of the Bible in the original languages in which, in God's providence, His supreme revelation has been given.
Does it take a great deal of time and effort to learn these languages? Yes, but the time and effort are well spent. There are foreign Adventist workers who have taken the trouble to learn the English language so as to be able to read the instructions and admonitions God has given to this people through the Spirit of prophecy in the language in which these counsels were given. Is it not as important for us to learn Greek and Hebrew, so as to be able to read the books of the Bible in the languages in which they were given?
The need of the Adventist minister to learn the Biblical languages becomes clearer when one understands that there is no such thing as an exact correspondence of words in one language with words in another language. We say that we have the truth; but many times a minister, if he knows only the English, will quite unintentionally misrepresent the true meaning of a text, being misled by the fact that English words sometimes have more than one meaning, and the minister picks out that meaning which does not correspond with the original. The other day an unusually careful minister took the trouble to check, with the aid of a friend who knew the Greek, most of the texts he planned to use, so his main argument would be without a flaw. But he stressed the word "now" in Hebrews 10:38, making it mean "at the present time." The Greek word here translated "now" is clë, and never means "at the present time."
The Greek is an inflected language, so that relationships of words are easier to discover than in English. For example, there is a text that I have often heard wrongly read. I refer to 2 Thessalonians 1:7, where the word "rest" is read as a verb. Now the Greek text shows that "rest" is here a noun in the accusative (objective) ease. To get the true meaning, one must go back to the previous verse, where "tribulation" is in the accusative case, object of the infinitive "to recompense." God gives "tribulation" to some, and "rest" to others.
The English reading of the text in Philippians 2:5 is all right if one is not misled, as one minister was, to think that God wants us to give up our own mind so as to take Christ's mind. That is not what the Greek says. In the Greek text there is no noun "mind" at all; there is a verb meaning "to think." Literally, the text reads: "Think in yourself * that which was in Christ Jesus." What was in Him? Humility, love, and service. God does not ask us in this scripture to give up our mind, but with the mind that God has given us we are to think His thoughts after Him.
Sometimes one English word is used by the translator to translate two different Greek words so that many fine shades of meaning are lost, as when we find "was" in John 1:1 and "was" again verse 7. In the first case we have nv, the "was" of continued past time; and in the second case we have eyeveto, which means "was" in the sense of "came into existence." On the other hand, sometimes the reverse is true. Only a reader of the Greek text would know that the word translated "Lord" in Luke 19:34 is the singular of the word that is in the plural in the previous verse, where it is translated "owners."
The Greek verb has two past tenses, one referring to a single past act and the other to a repeated or continued past act. This often gives a shade of meaning and sometimes even an important theological difference. For example, "was" of John 1:1 is a continued past, while "came" of verse 7 is the past of a single act. There are two kinds of belief: that of a single act when we accept Christ as Saviour, and that of a continued past as we have trusted Him day by day since. In John 3:16 the "loved" is of the single past act and therefore refers to the one act of divine love shown in the gift of His Son, not to the continued love shown us each day of our past lives.
Because in the New Testament we have the life of Christ and the epistles of Paul, whose writings are so necessary to the study of Christian doctrines, the study of the Greek is especially important to the minister. But we, as Adventists, believe that a good understanding of the Old Testament is equally important to one who would have a full comprehension of the complete revelation given us by God in the Bible. Therefore, let us study the Hebrew.
What has been said about the inadequacy of any version fully to express the original, applies as well when that original is Hebrew as when it is Greek. Of course the illustrations would have to be different, even though the principle of the case remains the same. As extended illustrations would make this article too long, we will limit our discussion to two. How interesting it becomes to an Adventist to find that in Exodus 5:5 the word translated "rest" is a Hebrew verb with the same root as appears in the noun "Sabbath." Therefore, Pharaoh really complained that Moses made the people "Sabbatize," or "keep the Sabbath."
Again, Genesis 4:3 takes on a new appearance to the one who reads it in the original Hebrew, and discovers that the expression "in the process of time" might just as well be translated "at the end of days." One thinks immediately of the day that comes at the end of each period of seven days, and one sees an indication of a special offering made one Sabbath, probably at the gate of Eden to which Adam and Eve may have returned each Sabbath to worship God, and where Adam offered the sacrifice as priest for his family until his sons were old enough to offer their own sacrifices.
In the Hebrew, as in the Greek, the minister comes directly to that which the holy men of old wrote down and in the very words they wrote. Personally, this always gives me a thrill. Suppose it does take effort to understand what God has said to man in the very words in which it was given. The effort is well repaid. The Spirit of prophecy urges us to give not so much time to what men say about nature, but more time to the study of nature itself. Does not the same principle apply to the study of God's word? And remember that the Bible in the original is the final authority, not some version, no matter how well done.
Let each Adventist minister, as far as possible, qualify himself to go directly to that original, whenever necessary on any special point. It is still better if he can get so familiar with the Biblical languages as to read long connected passages understandingly, and get all the satisfaction of that direct contact. It is a poor missionary who, going to a foreign country, would willingly rest content to depend forever on an interpreter. What about the minister who refuses to exert himself to learn either the Greek or the Hebrew?
Angwin, Calif.
* This. translation is from the Westcott and Hort text.
