Importance of Greek to the Minister

It is on these grounds that New Testament Greek is a required subject in all our senior colleges for men looking to the ministry, and this was formerly the attitude of all leading denominations, not excepting the Roman Cath­olic Church. In more recent years, however, this rule has not been maintained, and there are now schools of divinity of the very first rank that do not require their ministerial stu­dents to study either Greek or Hebrew. Not long ago, the highly classical school, Oxford, put Greek on an elective basis for the B.A. degree.

In the matter of this side-stepping of New Testament Greek, it is felt by some that the av­erage ministerial student gets such a scant knowledge in a two-year course in Greek that it just does not pay to spend time and effort in the study of Greek. Others feel that in our day subjects more closely related to the reli­gious life of the world should be substituted for Greek. Still others feel that there are some who get a smattering of Greek, and then by ill-advised display of their little Greek knowl­edge, create a bad odor among all who know them.

The main argument, however, against the study of New Testament Greek is that an abun­dance of "helps" are now accessible. These helps include superior translations, especially in the English language, of both the Old and New Testaments ; multiplied scholarly com­mentaries; works on geographical and archeo­logical findings of almost every description (papyri, inscriptions) bearing on the Bible, which have come to the surface in recent years; and histories of peoples contemporary with the growth of the Bible. With all such heretofore almost unknown "helps," why, then, is it im­portant for a young man looking to the ministry to study the original language of the New Tes­tament ? Is it not true, that with all these side lights, the real value of direct study of New Testament Greek is made all the more obvious ?

Within the last quarter century the Greek New Testament has really had a new birth, not so different from its rebirth in the days of the Reformation. Because of this new birth, there have been created new commentaries, new grammars, new lexicons, new works such as, "Light From the Ancient East," by Deissman, the revised "Greek Lexicon," by Liddell and Scott, "Vocabulary of the New Testament Based on the Papyri," by Moulton and Milli­gan, and other illuminating works. In view of these facts, is it not clear that so far from mak­ing a knowledge of the New Testament in Greek superfluous, its study is all-important for giving insight into that greatest of all written documents?

Not so long ago, some of the reli­gious magazines which relate to missionary ac­tivities told how a considerable group of Japa­nese leaders, scholars, and men of influence had set their heads to make a careful study of the Bible on the basis of the Hebrew and the Greek. Knowing that the Christian faith is bidding for the mind and the loyalty of the world, they concluded that in order to really know the Christian Bible, and the religion based on that Book, it would be only reasonable to go straight to the original documents themselves—not translations, but the very languages in which those documents were written. They would then have the original data, and so come to know the final word as to the real meaning of the Christian Bible. We must admit that was valid reasoning. The final appeal must be di­rectly to the original. In some form and to some degree this is the basis on which the Christian religion is weighed in these great ethnic religions. And our demand to be heard by the world is no exception.

And on still another count, we must never forget that we are living in an age of thorough and critical investigation in every field of study and thought. Of all earth's documents, the Old and New Testaments are today being subjected to perhaps the severest test in this line of investigation. The Holy Land, and lands adjacent to the Holy Land, are being lit­erally scoured for every scrap of evidence which relates to the authenticating facts of this unique and unparalleled book we call the Bible. Scholars of the highest rank are giving them­selves to a relentless search for all the data available. And it is most remarkable how so much light and information come to the surface almost daily. Consider the cartloads of unde­ciphered papyri in Europe still awaiting exami­nation, and do not forget the 29,000 clay tablets lent by the Persian government some few years ago to the University of Chicago, awaiting de­cipherment in the museum of that institution.

As to the supreme value of all such ancient writings, we have only to remember that in this hour of fire and sword, with all their de­struction, these documents, together with the priceless early Bible manuscripts and archives of state, lie buried deep in the bosom of the earth, hidden from the ravages of war that have already swept over Europe. How thank­ful we are that precious documents like the Vaticanus, Siniaticus, Alexandrinus, and oth­ers lie securely locked in the very heart of the earth !

But this fact takes on a deeper and more direct meaning to all of us when we reflect on the fact that chief among these buried documents is our Greek New Testament in its earliest form, and all study of the Greek New Testament has to do with these miraculously preserved documents. It is not contended here that the Christian faith depends on these docu­ments. Christianity is too deeply fixed in the life of Western civilization to lose out, even if the original writings should be lost. But even though Christianity stands erect in its own right, these unique documents yet serve a great purpose in the outward and onward sweep of the Christian gospel. What would we do in our work without these inspiring writings?

Passing on from all these general facts about the Greek New Testament, what, then, are the real advantages to a minister who gives himself to a study of the Greek New Testament ?

1. First, in point of authority the Greek New Testament stands as the original and authori­tative basis of our Christian religion in general and our denominational faith in particular. In the last analysis, every Christian truth we believe and contend for is grounded here. Even the Old Testament is fully authenticated by the New. For the One who said, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill," also said, "Ye have heard that it was said to [margin] them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; . . . but I say unto you." In the plan and wisdom of God, the marvelous revelation of the Old Testament must needs pass through, as it were, the infinite and divinely inspired mind of our Lord, and that of the apostle Paul with the others, in order to give to us a clear-cut understanding of the real message of the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. So we read the Hebrew Bible in the light of the Greek New Testament.

2. In the second place, an intelligent insight into the Greek New Testament affords a minister a measure of poise and assurance that he gets in no other way. And not only that, but he, by the same token, wins in a fuller measure, the confidence of those who listen to him. (All things being equal, I do not believe this state­ment can be successfully gainsaid.) He cannot forget that in the entire sweep of Christian his­tory, all the great issues of Christianity have had their settlement here; and of course the same is true of our own denomination. The Reformation of the sixteenth century is a con­spicuous demonstration of this fact.

3. In the third place, as our ministers in­creasingly come to live with their Greek New Testament, our work by that very fact will come to be rated higher among ourselves, and by those not of our faith. It cannot be other­wise, assuming that the spirituality of our min­istry is commensurate with a deeper insight into the real message of the New Testament_ And, necessarily, a ministry raised to a higher plane lifts the people onto a higher plane, for "like priest, like people." And the achieve­ment of this end we must count of supreme value.

4. Further, it is my judgment that instead of a reading of the Scriptures tending to be­come merely routine, with little freshness or no deeper insight into the life of the Bible, we can by this appeal to the original writings, find our way to the springs of greater truth. This is surely one experience that should character­ize us as bearers of the light we have for he world.

It would seem to me that we must be­lieve something like this regarding the origin of our Gospels: Following the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, there came to he what we call the oral gospel; that is, stories. accounts, narratives, and recollections, about the Lord Jesus. This state of things continued for two or three decades. The facts of Jesus' life, His doings, His teachings, and in partic­ular His death and resurrection—these things must have, figuratively speaking, filled the very air. These great things that clustered about the life of Jesus must have been on the tongues and in the hearts of those early believers. How much was in early circulation we do not know.

Luke's preface leads us to the conclusion that there must have been many supplemental narrations and accounts of Jesus. And that same preface gives us to understand that he felt that something should be done to set forth in an orderly way the important facts regard­ing the life, teachings. death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is not difficult to receive that because so many things were said concerning^. Jesus, it became necessary to have the out­standing facts about His life written down so that it could be known what Jesus really did say and do. Without doubt this is the explana­tion of the origin of the four Gospels as we now have them. Thus the picture of our Lord's earthly life was drawn for that age and all ages, not in the Aramaic, but in the Greek. That great divine personality was portrayed for all time in the writings of the four Gos­pels. Why? To safeguard the essential facts of that divine personality.