1 00:00:00,458 --> 00:00:04,254 And sometimes you get a little bit of that sense with, with the biblical languages, 2 00:00:04,254 --> 00:00:08,133 where it's like when I read this in English, you know, I have some questions. 3 00:00:08,133 --> 00:00:11,761 It doesn't all make sense for me, but if only I could read it in Greek, then, 4 00:00:11,761 --> 00:00:15,390 like, all my questions would be answered and all the problems would go away. 5 00:00:15,724 --> 00:00:18,476 And if you come to it that way, then you're 6 00:00:18,476 --> 00:00:19,894 less likely to 7 00:00:19,894 --> 00:00:22,981 to use the original languages and to use the tools that you have 8 00:00:22,981 --> 00:00:24,482 in a responsible way. 9 00:00:24,482 --> 00:00:28,361 And then more likely to end up, you know, kind of importing meanings 10 00:00:28,361 --> 00:00:29,320 that aren't there, or 11 00:00:29,320 --> 00:00:33,575 like trying to load up one Greek word with like a whole bunch of meaning that 12 00:00:33,742 --> 00:00:36,161 that one word can't really carry, if you know what I mean. 13 00:00:36,327 --> 00:00:39,456 So it's the kind of the kind of magic wand approach to biblical languages 14 00:00:39,456 --> 00:00:42,542 that, you know, want to kind of, maybe discourage. 15 00:00:48,214 --> 00:00:52,385 Andrew Lamicela, Welcome to the Anabaptist perspectives podcast. 16 00:00:52,552 --> 00:00:56,389 So you have spent a lot of time studying biblical languages. 17 00:00:56,598 --> 00:00:58,683 You've taught at different places and colleges 18 00:00:58,683 --> 00:01:00,393 and so forth on biblical languages. 19 00:01:00,393 --> 00:01:04,522 And I got to admit, I really don't know anything about the Greek New Testament 20 00:01:04,522 --> 00:01:06,149 or Hebrew manuscripts or anything like that. 21 00:01:06,149 --> 00:01:08,151 And I feel like I have a lot to learn. 22 00:01:08,151 --> 00:01:11,154 I feel like there's there's some importance here about knowing 23 00:01:11,154 --> 00:01:13,990 where the Bible we have today comes from. 24 00:01:13,990 --> 00:01:17,786 So also, actually, I just heard you were over in the Netherlands teaching is that. 25 00:01:17,994 --> 00:01:18,828 Tell me a bit about that. 26 00:01:18,828 --> 00:01:21,122 Like you just got back, I think. Yeah, I got back. 27 00:01:21,122 --> 00:01:23,208 Just just a few weeks ago now. 28 00:01:23,208 --> 00:01:23,458 Yeah. 29 00:01:23,458 --> 00:01:26,461 It was, it was an opportunity that opened up, pretty unexpectedly. 30 00:01:26,753 --> 00:01:27,253 Yeah. 31 00:01:27,253 --> 00:01:31,132 To teach, basically like first year Greek, 32 00:01:31,132 --> 00:01:34,427 for an eight week term at a really small, kind of evangelical, 33 00:01:34,552 --> 00:01:38,848 but American, kind of English based, seminary in the Netherlands, 34 00:01:38,973 --> 00:01:41,601 just right outside of Amsterdam or an international school. 35 00:01:41,601 --> 00:01:44,521 It's a lot of students from, Africa and Asia, places like that. 36 00:01:44,521 --> 00:01:46,523 So That's that's really neat. So. 37 00:01:46,523 --> 00:01:48,066 Well, okay. 38 00:01:48,066 --> 00:01:52,070 So I think that the general piece I'm 39 00:01:52,112 --> 00:01:56,449 most curious about is lots of scholars have translated the Bible. 40 00:01:56,449 --> 00:01:58,076 We have an English Bible. 41 00:01:58,076 --> 00:02:00,787 Why does studying biblical languages even matter? 42 00:02:00,787 --> 00:02:03,581 You know what? How is this relevant to us today? 43 00:02:03,581 --> 00:02:06,417 And I think that's the big piece that I would I would like to, 44 00:02:07,669 --> 00:02:09,295 understand more. 45 00:02:09,295 --> 00:02:12,173 why does it even matter to study biblical languages. 46 00:02:12,173 --> 00:02:15,176 Like why did you put all this time and effort into learning this? 47 00:02:15,176 --> 00:02:16,678 Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. 48 00:02:16,678 --> 00:02:19,639 I think maybe a a good kind of place to start, 49 00:02:19,639 --> 00:02:22,851 is just to, to acknowledge that, you know, we all speak English. 50 00:02:22,851 --> 00:02:24,894 We have great Bible translations in English. 51 00:02:24,894 --> 00:02:28,606 But the way that Scripture comes to us is not in not in English, but it's, 52 00:02:28,606 --> 00:02:30,483 it's it's in Greek and Hebrew. 53 00:02:30,483 --> 00:02:33,153 And so if we want to be maybe really, 54 00:02:33,153 --> 00:02:37,157 serious and have, yeah, I don't know, put in 55 00:02:37,157 --> 00:02:40,827 maybe the extra effort to get as close as we can, to Scripture 56 00:02:40,827 --> 00:02:43,830 and as close as we can to the original, documents, 57 00:02:43,872 --> 00:02:47,000 studying, the languages that it was written in. 58 00:02:47,333 --> 00:02:47,792 It gets us. 59 00:02:47,792 --> 00:02:49,127 It gets us that little bit closer. 60 00:02:49,127 --> 00:02:51,171 It's like getting closer to the action. 61 00:02:51,171 --> 00:02:54,174 Maybe in a way, there's nuances you can pick up. 62 00:02:54,424 --> 00:02:57,719 There's differences in translation, that can you can 63 00:02:57,969 --> 00:03:01,097 you can start to understand, like, why does the ESV say this? 64 00:03:01,097 --> 00:03:04,184 But the King James said this, and the NIV says something even different. 65 00:03:04,184 --> 00:03:06,311 And you can, if you studied the languages, 66 00:03:06,311 --> 00:03:09,731 you can start to have, more of a sense for why those differences are there. 67 00:03:10,773 --> 00:03:11,774 So, yeah, it's a, it's a 68 00:03:11,774 --> 00:03:14,819 way of, of maybe taking your, your kind of Bible knowledge 69 00:03:14,819 --> 00:03:18,364 and your, your, your study tools, so to speak, to the next level. 70 00:03:18,364 --> 00:03:20,617 Kind of like, upgrading your toolbelt, maybe. 71 00:03:20,617 --> 00:03:22,785 Let's say something like that. Yeah. 72 00:03:22,785 --> 00:03:27,498 And so you spent obviously a lot of time right doing this. 73 00:03:27,540 --> 00:03:29,167 Can you tell me a little bit about that journey. 74 00:03:29,167 --> 00:03:32,170 Like how many years have been been in this, this. 75 00:03:33,004 --> 00:03:34,797 I don't know what you would call it. Field sector. 76 00:03:34,797 --> 00:03:36,174 Yeah. Journey. 77 00:03:36,174 --> 00:03:36,424 Yeah. 78 00:03:36,424 --> 00:03:39,427 It'd be, it'd be interesting just to hear a little bit of that story as well. 79 00:03:39,802 --> 00:03:42,639 yeah, I mean, I was, I was very, very privileged, very fortunate to have a 80 00:03:42,639 --> 00:03:45,892 a pretty solid head start, I guess I'd say with, with studying Greek. 81 00:03:46,559 --> 00:03:48,519 So I was homeschooled and, 82 00:03:49,562 --> 00:03:52,023 yeah, when I was maybe high school, but I think even a few years 83 00:03:52,023 --> 00:03:53,149 before high school, 84 00:03:53,149 --> 00:03:56,319 my parents felt that, like, hey, it would be really useful for me 85 00:03:56,319 --> 00:03:59,322 and my brother to, to start studying NT Greek. 86 00:03:59,322 --> 00:04:02,158 So my mom, I'm not exactly sure how she how she did this, but she, 87 00:04:02,158 --> 00:04:03,785 she actually found, a textbook 88 00:04:03,785 --> 00:04:06,788 that's very widely used in seminaries and Bible colleges. 89 00:04:07,622 --> 00:04:10,208 And so we we got this textbook, me and my brother and, 90 00:04:10,208 --> 00:04:13,294 yeah, we just kind of started working through it, just on our own. 91 00:04:13,294 --> 00:04:15,380 We just take the next chapter and do the exercises. 92 00:04:15,380 --> 00:04:16,714 And so that was, Wow. 93 00:04:16,714 --> 00:04:19,342 So you were just, like, self-teaching yourself Greek Yeah. 94 00:04:19,342 --> 00:04:21,928 I mean, there were there were lectures that came with it, but. Yeah. Yeah. 95 00:04:21,928 --> 00:04:24,806 And I think just one of us on our own, it probably wouldn't have worked, 96 00:04:24,806 --> 00:04:27,225 but we had each other to kind of bounce things off of. 97 00:04:27,225 --> 00:04:28,768 So yeah. So that was where it started. 98 00:04:28,768 --> 00:04:33,606 I did take some classes then, with the fairly typical, 99 00:04:33,606 --> 00:04:34,816 you might say, kind of grammar 100 00:04:34,816 --> 00:04:38,861 and translation approach, through college and then a bit in seminary as well. 101 00:04:40,154 --> 00:04:40,488 And then 102 00:04:40,488 --> 00:04:43,574 I also had, the opportunity to spend a lot of time with, 103 00:04:44,284 --> 00:04:47,328 with a couple friends of mine that had studied Greek in using more of a, 104 00:04:47,328 --> 00:04:50,707 like, communicative method where you actually like, 105 00:04:51,291 --> 00:04:54,502 you tell stories and you actually interact in the language, 106 00:04:54,711 --> 00:04:57,588 so you don't just learn the language by kind of reading a textbook 107 00:04:57,588 --> 00:05:01,426 and then like doing a translation, but you actually learn it by, you know, 108 00:05:01,718 --> 00:05:04,721 using props and using toys and like, telling stories and like, hey, 109 00:05:04,721 --> 00:05:07,307 these three lions went for a walk and it's all in Greek. 110 00:05:07,307 --> 00:05:10,893 And you kind of like, unpack it and you gradually, like, build in complexity. 111 00:05:11,227 --> 00:05:15,231 So I had the privilege to spend, some time with them pretty regularly. 112 00:05:15,440 --> 00:05:17,358 Over, I don't know, a few years. 113 00:05:18,443 --> 00:05:19,819 And I was able to. 114 00:05:19,819 --> 00:05:22,488 Yeah, kind of connect maybe the grammar that I had studied 115 00:05:22,488 --> 00:05:26,117 and some of the more kind of technical and abstract, elements of it 116 00:05:26,326 --> 00:05:28,995 with like a living language approach and kind of bring these two together. 117 00:05:28,995 --> 00:05:31,289 So, yeah, it's, it's been a it's been a great journey. 118 00:05:31,289 --> 00:05:34,292 And it's honestly, I was, I would say, 119 00:05:34,334 --> 00:05:37,003 very privileged both in how I was able to get started early 120 00:05:37,003 --> 00:05:39,797 and then in having these, these friends, there available at the right time. 121 00:05:39,797 --> 00:05:41,799 Yeah. 122 00:05:41,799 --> 00:05:44,135 so we're going to pivot a little bit here 123 00:05:44,135 --> 00:05:47,055 and ask, maybe what sounds kind of like a basic question. 124 00:05:47,055 --> 00:05:50,433 Probably should be asked what even is the Greek New Testament like? 125 00:05:50,683 --> 00:05:52,643 We just I think we all kind of know. 126 00:05:52,643 --> 00:05:53,144 Okay. Yeah. 127 00:05:53,144 --> 00:05:56,397 The the Bible, it wasn't written in English, so it was something. 128 00:05:56,606 --> 00:05:57,940 What's the Greek New Testament? 129 00:05:57,940 --> 00:06:00,943 Honestly, what are what are the manuscripts that make it up? 130 00:06:00,943 --> 00:06:04,864 What are some common misconceptions surrounding that as well? Or. 131 00:06:05,698 --> 00:06:07,617 Yeah, just some some context there. 132 00:06:07,617 --> 00:06:09,994 I feel like we could go a little deeper into that. 133 00:06:09,994 --> 00:06:12,413 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a great question. 134 00:06:12,413 --> 00:06:15,041 Maybe, maybe, like, the kind of obvious place to start. 135 00:06:15,041 --> 00:06:17,126 And I think people generally know this is that, 136 00:06:17,126 --> 00:06:20,713 of course, we don't have the original, manuscripts that the apostle 137 00:06:20,713 --> 00:06:23,800 Paul or Matthew or Luke would have originally written. 138 00:06:23,800 --> 00:06:27,470 So, you know, Luke writes his gospel wherever that original document went. 139 00:06:27,553 --> 00:06:29,514 Well, it's lost. We don't have it anymore. 140 00:06:29,514 --> 00:06:31,099 What we have, of course, are copies 141 00:06:31,099 --> 00:06:34,185 and lots and lots of copies and copies of copies of copies. 142 00:06:34,185 --> 00:06:34,811 So there's 143 00:06:34,811 --> 00:06:37,855 there's all of these kind of copies that are out there, and some of them are, 144 00:06:38,064 --> 00:06:40,149 have been found in Egypt and some in, you know, 145 00:06:40,149 --> 00:06:42,652 kind of various places throughout the ancient world. 146 00:06:42,652 --> 00:06:47,365 It turns out we have a total of around 5800. 147 00:06:47,365 --> 00:06:49,951 I think it is manuscripts of the New Testament. 148 00:06:49,951 --> 00:06:52,203 Now, of course, those are those are not all all the same. Right. 149 00:06:52,203 --> 00:06:54,372 So, some of them are pretty late. 150 00:06:54,372 --> 00:06:54,997 They come from maybe, 151 00:06:54,997 --> 00:06:57,667 you know, the year 1100 or something, and then they're not worth as much. 152 00:06:57,667 --> 00:07:00,753 Some are quite early, from the early centuries. 153 00:07:00,962 --> 00:07:02,088 And then, of course, some are full. 154 00:07:02,088 --> 00:07:04,090 They'll have the whole New Testament and then some are, 155 00:07:04,090 --> 00:07:05,591 you know, very, very partial. 156 00:07:05,591 --> 00:07:08,928 So, one of the very oldest is called P 52. 157 00:07:08,970 --> 00:07:11,973 So papyrus 52, and it's this tiny little fragment 158 00:07:11,973 --> 00:07:14,976 and it's about the size of a credit card, Oh okay. 159 00:07:14,976 --> 00:07:16,310 So really really small. 160 00:07:16,310 --> 00:07:16,978 Okay. 161 00:07:16,978 --> 00:07:19,689 got, we've got all these manuscripts but they come in very 162 00:07:19,689 --> 00:07:20,731 different shapes and sizes. 163 00:07:22,066 --> 00:07:24,068 I think that's an important piece because it's pretty easy 164 00:07:24,068 --> 00:07:27,071 to be like oh the Greek New Testaments like this, this book. 165 00:07:27,113 --> 00:07:27,280 Yeah. 166 00:07:27,280 --> 00:07:30,908 And it was all nice and compiled and ready to go for the translators. 167 00:07:30,908 --> 00:07:33,744 That's not really the case then, I suppose. 168 00:07:33,744 --> 00:07:33,995 right. 169 00:07:33,995 --> 00:07:34,704 So there's kind of that, 170 00:07:34,704 --> 00:07:37,457 that intermediate step between we've got all these manuscripts 171 00:07:37,457 --> 00:07:38,499 in different shapes and sizes. 172 00:07:38,499 --> 00:07:42,044 And then how do we actually get to like a kind of solid Greek text 173 00:07:42,253 --> 00:07:44,172 where when we go to translating it to English, you know, 174 00:07:44,172 --> 00:07:45,923 we kind of know what we're working off. 175 00:07:45,923 --> 00:07:49,719 So kind of in between there is this whole process called textual criticism. 176 00:07:50,136 --> 00:07:52,597 Criticism. You know, it kind of sounds like a bad word. 177 00:07:52,597 --> 00:07:53,890 It sounds like we're criticizing the text. 178 00:07:53,890 --> 00:07:57,018 But what it really means is kind of like textual analysis, basically. 179 00:07:57,518 --> 00:08:00,313 So there's kind of a whole, a whole like set of scholars, 180 00:08:00,313 --> 00:08:03,733 this whole kind of subdiscipline, you might say, within biblical studies, 181 00:08:04,567 --> 00:08:05,568 called textual criticism. 182 00:08:05,568 --> 00:08:08,738 So basically what they do is they'll say, okay, here's all these manuscripts. 183 00:08:09,071 --> 00:08:13,784 We have pretty good ideas of when, each manuscript was, was written approximately. 184 00:08:13,784 --> 00:08:16,329 So like this one's from the third century. So that's really old. 185 00:08:16,329 --> 00:08:17,497 This one's from the 10th century. 186 00:08:17,497 --> 00:08:19,207 So that's not worth as much. 187 00:08:19,207 --> 00:08:22,960 Also where the manuscript was discovered, so the kind of 188 00:08:23,002 --> 00:08:24,795 historical origin plays a role. 189 00:08:24,795 --> 00:08:26,923 So basically there's this kind of whole field, 190 00:08:26,923 --> 00:08:29,967 where they'll look at all the manuscripts and then kind of compile, 191 00:08:30,343 --> 00:08:34,096 a sort of best guess, let's say, 192 00:08:34,180 --> 00:08:37,183 on on what the original text would have been. 193 00:08:37,183 --> 00:08:38,893 So it's kind of a process of, 194 00:08:38,893 --> 00:08:42,355 of putting all of those together and doing your best to, to reconstruct. 195 00:08:42,355 --> 00:08:46,150 It's like a, a process of reconstruction and what the original text 196 00:08:46,150 --> 00:08:48,778 would have been. Of course, there's always some controversy in there. 197 00:08:48,778 --> 00:08:52,365 And like, you know, exactly how should the wording be in some cases? 198 00:08:53,032 --> 00:08:56,702 But the, the, the overall the overall picture is, is really, really strong. 199 00:08:56,702 --> 00:09:00,873 Like if you put, if you look at all those manuscripts kind of side to side, 200 00:09:01,290 --> 00:09:05,086 just like beside each other, they, they agree 201 00:09:05,294 --> 00:09:06,879 like very, very much of the time. 202 00:09:06,879 --> 00:09:09,131 So we can, we can have quite a lot of confidence 203 00:09:09,131 --> 00:09:11,592 that even though we don't have, you know, for example, 204 00:09:11,592 --> 00:09:16,681 Luke's original Gospel of Luke, we have so many good copies of it 205 00:09:16,931 --> 00:09:21,143 that we can we can know within just a very, very small, margin of error 206 00:09:21,394 --> 00:09:22,311 what he wrote. 207 00:09:22,311 --> 00:09:24,855 Yeah, with only a few places of kind of disagreement. 208 00:09:24,855 --> 00:09:28,192 That's kind of phenomenal actually, because if you're thinking about 209 00:09:28,568 --> 00:09:33,406 all these people in all these different places, writing copies of Luke, 210 00:09:33,406 --> 00:09:34,156 like you're saying, not all 211 00:09:34,156 --> 00:09:36,075 these manuscripts are found in one place, of course, 212 00:09:36,075 --> 00:09:39,036 because the early church is spreading all around the Roman Empire, say, 213 00:09:39,662 --> 00:09:42,623 and then we can pull all these all these years later and they actually match up. 214 00:09:42,623 --> 00:09:44,792 Yeah, that's kind of wild, right? 215 00:09:44,792 --> 00:09:45,626 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 216 00:09:46,627 --> 00:09:48,004 So I think that's 217 00:09:48,004 --> 00:09:51,007 one of the challenges when people hear, oh, it's 218 00:09:51,841 --> 00:09:55,303 especially when you like things like textual criticism, for example, 219 00:09:55,303 --> 00:09:58,598 or having to compile all this and well, what if we got something wrong and like, 220 00:09:58,598 --> 00:10:01,642 all this stuff, what you're saying is, oh no, no, no, no, we have like 221 00:10:01,642 --> 00:10:05,021 a very high degree of confidence that this is accurate. 222 00:10:05,062 --> 00:10:06,897 This was transmitted correctly. 223 00:10:06,897 --> 00:10:09,191 Yeah. Do you want to do you want to say any more of that? 224 00:10:09,191 --> 00:10:12,653 Because I feel like that might be one of one of the big misconceptions 225 00:10:12,653 --> 00:10:15,281 when it comes to Bible manuscripts or the Greek New Testament. 226 00:10:15,281 --> 00:10:15,781 I don't know if. 227 00:10:15,781 --> 00:10:17,450 Yeah, if you have any more you want to add there. 228 00:10:17,450 --> 00:10:21,329 yeah yeah I mean there's, there's definitely, you know, places 229 00:10:21,829 --> 00:10:24,665 a lot of them are pretty small, but there's definitely places 230 00:10:24,665 --> 00:10:28,294 where we don't know for sure, you know, what the wording was in a particular case. 231 00:10:29,253 --> 00:10:32,173 But yeah, when it comes to the big picture, yeah. 232 00:10:32,173 --> 00:10:35,217 The, the agreement between the manuscripts is, is, 233 00:10:35,885 --> 00:10:37,511 something we can put a lot of confidence in. 234 00:10:37,511 --> 00:10:40,222 Yeah, yeah, I think I think there is, like you said, 235 00:10:40,222 --> 00:10:43,225 maybe a bit of a misconception around the some of the time, 236 00:10:43,267 --> 00:10:46,687 especially where you have the kind of scenario where, 237 00:10:47,063 --> 00:10:50,483 some of the older Bible translations, like maybe, you know, the King James 238 00:10:50,483 --> 00:10:53,736 new King James that we're very familiar with and, and they're great translations. 239 00:10:53,861 --> 00:10:55,529 The King James is a beautiful translation. 240 00:10:55,529 --> 00:10:56,781 It's so well done. 241 00:10:56,781 --> 00:10:59,784 You know, given the kind of historical setting it was, it was done in, 242 00:11:00,284 --> 00:11:03,245 but if you compare that with some of the more modern versions 243 00:11:03,245 --> 00:11:07,750 like the ESV and the NIV and others, sometimes, you know, 244 00:11:07,792 --> 00:11:10,878 you'll see a verse or a sentence that appears in the King James 245 00:11:11,170 --> 00:11:14,131 and then it doesn't appear in, say, the NIV or the ESV. 246 00:11:14,423 --> 00:11:18,177 And sometimes it you know, people are maybe, somewhat mistaken 247 00:11:18,177 --> 00:11:21,597 in thinking that the modern translations have kind of removed the verse. 248 00:11:21,806 --> 00:11:23,224 And sometimes you hear this kind of like, 249 00:11:23,224 --> 00:11:25,726 oh, they're taking verses out of the Bible kind of thing. 250 00:11:25,726 --> 00:11:26,519 Yeah. 251 00:11:26,519 --> 00:11:28,437 But what's what's going on there? Right. 252 00:11:28,437 --> 00:11:30,606 You know, everyone has the story of Thomas Jefferson 253 00:11:30,606 --> 00:11:34,110 kind of chopping sections out of his Bible that that's not what's going on. 254 00:11:34,110 --> 00:11:34,360 Right? 255 00:11:34,360 --> 00:11:37,780 So so Thomas Jefferson's not on the translation committee for the NIV, right. 256 00:11:38,364 --> 00:11:41,909 But what what is going on is that there's, you know, 257 00:11:41,909 --> 00:11:44,495 some manuscripts would have had that sentence. 258 00:11:44,495 --> 00:11:45,996 And when the King James translators 259 00:11:45,996 --> 00:11:49,500 did their work, fewer manuscripts had been discovered. 260 00:11:49,875 --> 00:11:52,586 And so they were working with a narrower set of manuscripts. 261 00:11:52,586 --> 00:11:56,173 And so they, they went with what they had and their manuscripts had that sentence. 262 00:11:56,757 --> 00:12:00,553 Now, you know, fast forward into the 20th and 21st centuries, 263 00:12:00,553 --> 00:12:03,097 you know, the translators of the NIV, just, for example, 264 00:12:03,097 --> 00:12:08,018 have a much broader pool of manuscripts and, you know, that translation committee, 265 00:12:08,310 --> 00:12:13,232 they'll look at all of those and they're honest and educated opinion would be that 266 00:12:13,441 --> 00:12:17,027 that sentence probably didn't, you know, appear in the original text. 267 00:12:17,361 --> 00:12:19,572 So it's not a matter of, you know, cutting things out. 268 00:12:19,572 --> 00:12:21,323 It's a matter of doing the best 269 00:12:21,323 --> 00:12:24,910 we can, to reconstruct what that original text would have been. 270 00:12:25,494 --> 00:12:26,120 Yeah. 271 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:29,457 So, so when we're thinking about biblical languages 272 00:12:29,457 --> 00:12:31,584 and Bible manuscripts, all this stuff, 273 00:12:32,668 --> 00:12:36,630 why I'm trying to think how to phrase this, but basically 274 00:12:36,630 --> 00:12:40,843 convince me why I should care about biblical languages, so to speak, I guess. 275 00:12:40,843 --> 00:12:41,093 Right. 276 00:12:41,093 --> 00:12:45,681 Like if, if you had to give a pitch of why should people care? 277 00:12:46,015 --> 00:12:48,017 I yeah, I'd love to hear that. 278 00:12:48,017 --> 00:12:49,518 Whether that's Greek or Hebrew or, you know, 279 00:12:49,518 --> 00:12:52,521 any any of the biblical language, I guess, Aramaic as well. 280 00:12:53,272 --> 00:12:55,274 There's some portions of Bible in Aramaic. 281 00:12:55,274 --> 00:12:58,194 Yeah. Why? Why should I care? Yes. yeah. 282 00:12:58,194 --> 00:13:01,614 I mean, I guess the short answer is we should care, at least to some degree. 283 00:13:02,198 --> 00:13:03,365 About the biblical languages. 284 00:13:03,365 --> 00:13:04,575 If we care about the Bible. 285 00:13:04,575 --> 00:13:07,578 Right. This is this is God's message to us. 286 00:13:07,703 --> 00:13:09,538 And these are the languages it was written in. 287 00:13:09,538 --> 00:13:11,624 So I'm I'm always quick. 288 00:13:11,624 --> 00:13:15,377 I try to be quick to point out that, you know, studying biblical languages 289 00:13:15,377 --> 00:13:16,629 is really worth it. 290 00:13:16,629 --> 00:13:20,174 There's a lot to be gained, but it's not something that everyone has to do. 291 00:13:20,216 --> 00:13:20,508 Right? 292 00:13:20,508 --> 00:13:24,136 So I don't at all think, and I wouldn't want people to get the idea 293 00:13:24,512 --> 00:13:26,889 that, you know, in order to be a good Christian 294 00:13:26,889 --> 00:13:29,892 or even in order to be a good, I don't know, pastor or Bible teacher, 295 00:13:30,226 --> 00:13:33,687 that you have to, like, put in all of the effort to actually kind 296 00:13:33,687 --> 00:13:37,608 of learn the language, to, you know, get in all the vocabulary 297 00:13:37,608 --> 00:13:39,527 and all the grammar and kind of go the whole distance. 298 00:13:40,945 --> 00:13:41,821 But I do 299 00:13:41,821 --> 00:13:44,824 think that in whatever capacity, whether it's just for personal study, 300 00:13:45,032 --> 00:13:45,574 for teaching, 301 00:13:45,574 --> 00:13:50,329 whatever it is, having a sense of maybe how to use the languages in a way 302 00:13:50,329 --> 00:13:54,917 that's responsible, is is important, I would say. 303 00:13:55,459 --> 00:13:55,751 Yeah. 304 00:13:55,751 --> 00:13:58,671 And it doesn't it doesn't have to be like a kind of big centerpiece. 305 00:13:58,671 --> 00:13:59,922 It doesn't have to be the kind of thing. 306 00:13:59,922 --> 00:14:03,259 And sometimes I think it's better, actually, if, you know, Greek words 307 00:14:03,259 --> 00:14:07,763 and stuff don't actually form a big part of of your you're kind of teaching. 308 00:14:08,055 --> 00:14:10,474 I get a little nervous, and I hear people like the Greek and say, 309 00:14:10,474 --> 00:14:13,602 well, okay, maybe, maybe if we back off a little bit. 310 00:14:13,602 --> 00:14:13,978 Yeah. 311 00:14:13,978 --> 00:14:16,647 It's like you get this sense that there's this aurora or this. 312 00:14:16,647 --> 00:14:17,398 Ooh, there. 313 00:14:17,398 --> 00:14:20,401 You know, the Greek, it says this, you know? 314 00:14:20,442 --> 00:14:21,819 Yeah. 315 00:14:21,819 --> 00:14:23,946 Yeah. I can imagine that might be a little frustrating to you. 316 00:14:25,114 --> 00:14:26,782 Do you want to dive into that a bit more? 317 00:14:26,782 --> 00:14:27,575 Because I feel like that. 318 00:14:27,575 --> 00:14:30,452 That's one maybe we should, you know, poke on that a bit. 319 00:14:30,452 --> 00:14:31,161 It is a little bit. 320 00:14:31,161 --> 00:14:31,537 Yeah. 321 00:14:31,537 --> 00:14:32,288 Yeah yeah I mean 322 00:14:32,288 --> 00:14:36,292 I think we were talking about this just before, but I think sometimes, 323 00:14:36,375 --> 00:14:40,796 there's a little bit of a danger for people who, you know, see that 324 00:14:40,796 --> 00:14:45,217 there's value in the original languages and who have a sense rightly, 325 00:14:45,551 --> 00:14:48,762 that there's something to be gained by going back to the original language. 326 00:14:49,430 --> 00:14:52,808 But sometimes there's, I think, a danger of, of kind of trying to use it like a, 327 00:14:52,808 --> 00:14:54,226 like a magic wand, kind of, 328 00:14:54,226 --> 00:14:56,020 you know, so if you, you know, you read the fairy tales 329 00:14:56,020 --> 00:14:57,980 and it's like, oh, they're out in the middle of the desert, 330 00:14:57,980 --> 00:14:59,106 they've run out of food. 331 00:14:59,106 --> 00:15:02,151 But, you know, you just wave your magic wand and all of a sudden, like, 332 00:15:02,151 --> 00:15:05,654 a whole banquet appears, you know, it's like, oh, we got this amazing. 333 00:15:06,071 --> 00:15:09,909 And sometimes you get a little bit of that sense with, with the biblical languages, 334 00:15:09,909 --> 00:15:13,787 where it's like when I read this in English, you know, I have some questions. 335 00:15:13,787 --> 00:15:17,416 It doesn't all make sense for me, but if only I could read it in Greek, then, 336 00:15:17,416 --> 00:15:21,045 like, all my questions would be answered and all the problems would go away. 337 00:15:21,378 --> 00:15:27,009 And if you come to it that way, then you're you're maybe less likely to 338 00:15:27,009 --> 00:15:30,095 to use the original languages and to use the tools that you have 339 00:15:30,095 --> 00:15:31,597 in a responsible way. 340 00:15:31,597 --> 00:15:35,476 And then more likely to end up, you know, kind of importing meanings 341 00:15:35,476 --> 00:15:36,435 that aren't there, or 342 00:15:36,435 --> 00:15:40,689 like trying to load up one Greek word with like a whole bunch of meaning that 343 00:15:40,940 --> 00:15:43,943 that one word can't really carry, if you know what I mean. 344 00:15:44,109 --> 00:15:47,237 So it's the kind of the kind of magic wand approach to biblical languages 345 00:15:47,237 --> 00:15:50,407 that, you know, want to kind of, maybe discourage or. 346 00:15:51,241 --> 00:15:53,535 What would you say is, is a better approach 347 00:15:53,535 --> 00:15:55,871 then to, to the biblical languages? 348 00:15:55,871 --> 00:15:56,872 Because I feel 349 00:15:57,957 --> 00:15:58,415 that, 350 00:15:58,415 --> 00:16:01,627 yeah, I've definitely seen it where, you know, someone has a sermon or. 351 00:16:01,627 --> 00:16:02,753 Yeah, exactly. 352 00:16:02,753 --> 00:16:05,047 And they say, oh, well, the Greek word actually means this. 353 00:16:05,047 --> 00:16:07,758 And then you can extract all these sermon points from it. 354 00:16:07,758 --> 00:16:11,261 It's like, well, you know, that might be a bit much, right? 355 00:16:11,720 --> 00:16:13,222 But it's very easy to do. 356 00:16:13,222 --> 00:16:17,017 What would you say is a better mindset to have as we approach the text 357 00:16:17,017 --> 00:16:17,893 in its original? 358 00:16:17,893 --> 00:16:18,852 Yeah. yeah. 359 00:16:18,852 --> 00:16:21,939 I mean, a lot of the time, I think, I think looking for and expecting 360 00:16:21,939 --> 00:16:25,859 to find maybe different nuances and kind of, small, 361 00:16:25,859 --> 00:16:29,989 I don't know, small things that, maybe can't be captured in translation. 362 00:16:30,739 --> 00:16:32,574 And those kind of. 363 00:16:32,574 --> 00:16:35,411 Yeah, maybe it's not going to just completely revolutionize 364 00:16:35,411 --> 00:16:36,662 your understanding of the passage, 365 00:16:36,662 --> 00:16:39,123 but it's kind of like shade in some extra detail, 366 00:16:39,123 --> 00:16:42,501 or it's kind of like color how you see one word, like in a slightly different way. 367 00:16:43,085 --> 00:16:46,714 And, you know, there are some words and this is where, you know, 368 00:16:46,714 --> 00:16:48,924 you can't expect to find this with every Greek word. 369 00:16:48,924 --> 00:16:54,555 But there are there are some words where you know, the range of meaning 370 00:16:54,555 --> 00:16:59,018 that one Greek word has just doesn't line up very well with any one English word. 371 00:16:59,476 --> 00:17:02,479 And so, you know, the translators, they they've got to pick an English word 372 00:17:02,479 --> 00:17:04,773 because you can't put in a whole dictionary entry. Right. 373 00:17:04,773 --> 00:17:06,025 So you pick one word. 374 00:17:06,025 --> 00:17:10,362 But, but sometimes, being able to look that word up and kind of see the full 375 00:17:10,362 --> 00:17:14,575 range of meaning actually gives you a better sense of, of what the, the verses 376 00:17:15,117 --> 00:17:16,076 is trying to communicate. 377 00:17:16,076 --> 00:17:17,119 That's not always the case. 378 00:17:17,119 --> 00:17:18,996 You know, sometimes like, 379 00:17:18,996 --> 00:17:21,749 you know, people will say like, oh, like I'm reading this verse and like 380 00:17:21,749 --> 00:17:24,877 there's this word impossible, but like, what is impossible really mean in Greek? 381 00:17:25,127 --> 00:17:26,003 It's like, well, 382 00:17:26,003 --> 00:17:28,297 you know, I hate to say it, but it just means impossible, you know? 383 00:17:29,631 --> 00:17:30,924 But but there are those and 384 00:17:30,924 --> 00:17:32,634 maybe I'll give you kind of an example on the other side. 385 00:17:32,634 --> 00:17:38,140 So, so in John one, maybe verse five, John says that, 386 00:17:38,807 --> 00:17:42,269 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not. 387 00:17:42,561 --> 00:17:45,272 And I've, I forget now what some of the English says. 388 00:17:45,272 --> 00:17:47,775 Yeah, we probably should figure out what the English translation say. 389 00:17:47,775 --> 00:17:50,778 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 390 00:17:51,445 --> 00:17:52,029 That. 391 00:17:52,029 --> 00:17:53,155 Yeah that's ESV. 392 00:17:53,155 --> 00:17:54,782 Okay. Do you want to in different. 393 00:17:54,782 --> 00:17:55,532 Yeah. 394 00:17:55,532 --> 00:17:58,702 I don't know maybe So this would be the King James for John. 395 00:17:59,286 --> 00:18:00,954 John, chapter one, verse five. 396 00:18:00,954 --> 00:18:04,541 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. 397 00:18:05,417 --> 00:18:05,667 yeah. 398 00:18:05,667 --> 00:18:08,629 So, so this word you know, the range of meaning is kind of broad. 399 00:18:08,629 --> 00:18:13,467 And so it has often the idea of like to seize or to like, attain. 400 00:18:13,967 --> 00:18:17,471 Sometimes it's to kind of, to grasp, sometimes even like intellectually 401 00:18:17,471 --> 00:18:19,139 like to, to get it. 402 00:18:19,139 --> 00:18:21,975 And so sometimes and I think this is especially a thing 403 00:18:21,975 --> 00:18:25,938 that the Gospel of John, that John himself was kind of fond of, 404 00:18:26,271 --> 00:18:30,359 he maybe use a word that had a broad range of meaning, kind of intentionally. 405 00:18:30,776 --> 00:18:33,320 And so you get different translations for that word. 406 00:18:33,320 --> 00:18:36,949 Maybe it's the darkness hasn't really fully understood the light, 407 00:18:37,282 --> 00:18:39,910 or maybe the darkness hasn't been able to, like, 408 00:18:39,910 --> 00:18:42,830 kind of take hold of the light in some way. 409 00:18:42,830 --> 00:18:45,707 And maybe, maybe then overcome is is a good translation. 410 00:18:45,707 --> 00:18:48,710 The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it. 411 00:18:49,169 --> 00:18:52,589 So so there are some of those cases where seeing seeing 412 00:18:52,589 --> 00:18:56,343 the range of meaning of the word can can help Because it's not like 413 00:18:57,469 --> 00:18:59,304 you pull out your Greek New Testament. 414 00:18:59,304 --> 00:18:59,555 Okay. 415 00:18:59,555 --> 00:19:01,140 You find this Greek word and then you open up 416 00:19:01,140 --> 00:19:04,768 your English dictionary and it's this word and you know this equals this. 417 00:19:05,018 --> 00:19:07,312 That's not really how language works. 418 00:19:07,312 --> 00:19:09,857 And I think it's kind of easy to just 419 00:19:09,857 --> 00:19:11,525 I don't know, just kind of assume that's the way it is. 420 00:19:11,525 --> 00:19:13,360 Right. And it's not really. 421 00:19:13,360 --> 00:19:16,405 So maybe a, a word to keep in mind would be like nuance, perhaps 422 00:19:16,405 --> 00:19:17,364 nuances of meaning. 423 00:19:17,364 --> 00:19:18,198 Yeah. For sure. Yeah. 424 00:19:18,198 --> 00:19:20,784 That's good. 425 00:19:20,784 --> 00:19:22,411 Anything else you want to add on. On that. 426 00:19:22,411 --> 00:19:25,414 Like Why we should care about biblical languages. 427 00:19:26,165 --> 00:19:26,456 Yeah. 428 00:19:26,456 --> 00:19:29,835 I mean, there's, you know, in addition to seeing those maybe nuances 429 00:19:29,835 --> 00:19:32,796 of meaning and being able to to get a better sense of where 430 00:19:32,796 --> 00:19:36,633 kind of one Greek word or phrase doesn't neatly correspond to one English phrase. 431 00:19:37,009 --> 00:19:41,054 There's also some times where there's a certain kind of theological debate, 432 00:19:41,180 --> 00:19:45,559 that will sometimes hinge on a particular word or particular Greek wording. 433 00:19:46,435 --> 00:19:48,896 And that's the kind of thing that probably not everyone 434 00:19:48,896 --> 00:19:51,899 is going to be like thinking about or putting lots of effort into. 435 00:19:52,149 --> 00:19:56,695 But it's the kind of thing where, it's useful for a church or, 436 00:19:56,737 --> 00:20:00,449 you know, a community maybe to have some people who are familiar 437 00:20:00,449 --> 00:20:04,494 enough with the original languages to be able to kind of get into that debate, 438 00:20:04,786 --> 00:20:05,787 if you will. 439 00:20:05,787 --> 00:20:08,790 So there's this there's this kind of big scholarly debate about, 440 00:20:09,249 --> 00:20:12,377 faith in Christ or the faithfulness of Christ. 441 00:20:12,461 --> 00:20:15,255 Galatians in Romans is this Oh, interesting. 442 00:20:15,255 --> 00:20:15,589 Yeah. 443 00:20:15,589 --> 00:20:18,634 It's maybe, perhaps not so well-known just among kind of, 444 00:20:19,384 --> 00:20:21,637 you know, you sort of average, you know, everyday Christian. 445 00:20:22,638 --> 00:20:24,473 But there are, there are some of those places 446 00:20:24,473 --> 00:20:27,476 maybe, maybe another example would also be, 447 00:20:28,060 --> 00:20:30,395 you know, you, you hear the kind of knock on your door 448 00:20:30,395 --> 00:20:32,606 and it's the, it's the friendly Jehovah's Witnesses, 449 00:20:32,606 --> 00:20:35,400 and they'll, they'll, they'll try to tell you, hey, you know, in 450 00:20:35,400 --> 00:20:39,988 John one where it says, the word is with God and the word was God. 451 00:20:40,364 --> 00:20:42,199 Actually, that Greek word, God. 452 00:20:42,199 --> 00:20:44,534 It doesn't have the definite article before it. 453 00:20:44,534 --> 00:20:45,994 And so it should be translated. 454 00:20:45,994 --> 00:20:48,622 The word was, a God, yes. 455 00:20:48,622 --> 00:20:51,541 You've maybe heard this. Yes. Oh, I've totally heard this. 456 00:20:51,541 --> 00:20:54,002 Go ahead and just just dive into that case. 457 00:20:54,002 --> 00:20:55,087 Let's use that as a case. 458 00:20:55,087 --> 00:20:56,296 So what's going on there? 459 00:20:56,296 --> 00:20:59,132 Like, do they have any grounds, like, where does this come from? 460 00:20:59,132 --> 00:21:02,094 That they say that? Yeah I mean the short answer is no, 461 00:21:04,054 --> 00:21:05,597 Well, there goes that. 462 00:21:05,597 --> 00:21:07,808 If you’re a Jehovah's Witness and you're watching 463 00:21:07,808 --> 00:21:10,936 this, too bad I guess, or like that's just yeah, yeah. 464 00:21:10,936 --> 00:21:14,022 If you're watching this I mean, sorry, but, you know, this is, this is, 465 00:21:14,022 --> 00:21:17,025 I don't know, a chance to to maybe rethink an important passage. 466 00:21:17,276 --> 00:21:19,569 So, so there's a bit of truth to it, right? 467 00:21:19,569 --> 00:21:23,115 So, you know, the definite article doesn't appear in that verse. 468 00:21:23,407 --> 00:21:24,908 So if it did, we would. 469 00:21:24,908 --> 00:21:26,618 Well, it would, the sentence wouldn't really make sense, 470 00:21:26,618 --> 00:21:29,079 but you would translate the word was the god or something. 471 00:21:29,079 --> 00:21:30,497 But that wouldn't make sense. 472 00:21:30,497 --> 00:21:33,917 But we have this kind of idea of like, oh, definite, 473 00:21:34,209 --> 00:21:38,380 you know, and so if, if the word appears then it’s definite and then indefinite. 474 00:21:38,380 --> 00:21:41,800 And so if the article doesn't appear then, then we want to say it's indefinite. 475 00:21:42,217 --> 00:21:44,886 But that's, it turns out a bit too simplistic. 476 00:21:44,886 --> 00:21:46,763 So somewhere in between definite 477 00:21:46,763 --> 00:21:49,766 and indefinite, there's this idea of being qualitative, 478 00:21:49,891 --> 00:21:53,103 and so maybe, maybe a good example comes from actually first John. 479 00:21:53,437 --> 00:21:56,315 So the same author, but where he says 480 00:21:56,315 --> 00:21:59,776 that, God is love, God is love. 481 00:22:00,193 --> 00:22:02,029 And so I don't know how would we think about the word love? 482 00:22:02,029 --> 00:22:04,656 It's not definite. It's not God is the love. 483 00:22:04,656 --> 00:22:05,949 It's also not indefinite. 484 00:22:05,949 --> 00:22:07,701 It's not God is a love. 485 00:22:07,701 --> 00:22:10,245 Like that doesn't really make any sense, but it's qualitative. 486 00:22:10,245 --> 00:22:12,372 In other words, what is God like? 487 00:22:12,372 --> 00:22:14,708 What's the quality that that God has? 488 00:22:14,708 --> 00:22:16,877 And in this particular statement, God is love. 489 00:22:16,877 --> 00:22:18,170 That's what God is like. 490 00:22:18,170 --> 00:22:20,630 And then the very same thing is of course in John one. 491 00:22:20,630 --> 00:22:22,424 So the word was with God. 492 00:22:22,424 --> 00:22:25,177 And what was the word like? The word was God. 493 00:22:25,177 --> 00:22:26,803 Yeah. So it's right. 494 00:22:26,803 --> 00:22:30,849 You can end up getting into a really kind of theologically bad place if, 495 00:22:30,849 --> 00:22:33,852 you know, you try to jump in with like, oh, it's got to be either 496 00:22:33,852 --> 00:22:36,396 definite or indefinite, you don't have enough kind of, 497 00:22:36,396 --> 00:22:39,566 maybe background on how those things work, maybe. 498 00:22:39,566 --> 00:22:42,569 Also the broader point is, 499 00:22:42,944 --> 00:22:46,031 not every not every Christian needs to know the whole 500 00:22:46,031 --> 00:22:49,451 the full grammatical kind of argument for what's going on in that verse. 501 00:22:49,743 --> 00:22:52,120 But it is useful if there are a few people around, 502 00:22:52,120 --> 00:22:53,580 if there's someone in your church 503 00:22:53,580 --> 00:22:55,874 that you can go to and say, hey, you know, the J.W. 504 00:22:55,874 --> 00:22:58,126 said this, can you help me understand this? 505 00:22:58,126 --> 00:23:01,963 And that's the kind of situation where, you know, having some sort of access 506 00:23:02,798 --> 00:23:05,801 to biblical language resources can actually be really helpful. 507 00:23:06,218 --> 00:23:09,930 that's actually kind of a big deal because, because I mean, without this 508 00:23:11,014 --> 00:23:13,016 seems like it'd be pretty easy to manipulate 509 00:23:13,016 --> 00:23:16,103 the text and come up with some, some kind of weird ideas. 510 00:23:16,144 --> 00:23:19,147 I mean, JWs is a good example. 511 00:23:19,231 --> 00:23:19,648 Where. 512 00:23:19,648 --> 00:23:22,484 Yeah, they have their own translation, which I, which I have a, I have a copy of. 513 00:23:22,484 --> 00:23:23,777 It's kind of interesting to leaf through, like. 514 00:23:23,777 --> 00:23:25,153 Wow. That's okay. 515 00:23:25,153 --> 00:23:27,614 That's a, you know, that's different, you know. Yeah. 516 00:23:27,614 --> 00:23:31,576 And but it's kind of easy to, to manipulate the text 517 00:23:31,576 --> 00:23:34,579 if you are trying to pull a certain angle or something. 518 00:23:34,621 --> 00:23:36,373 So I, I really see what you're saying there. 519 00:23:36,373 --> 00:23:39,126 If you have some people that actually know a little bit about it, 520 00:23:39,126 --> 00:23:40,752 you can't get pulled off. 521 00:23:40,752 --> 00:23:42,671 Yeah. You know, with that. Yeah. 522 00:23:42,671 --> 00:23:46,591 That's interesting because it actually and this is maybe Bunny Trail, but, 523 00:23:46,758 --> 00:23:50,679 there's a friend of mine in an Anabaptist church, 524 00:23:50,679 --> 00:23:54,057 and they had someone who's come and started joining their church, 525 00:23:54,474 --> 00:23:57,310 and, this person started teaching some of this very stuff. 526 00:23:57,310 --> 00:24:00,814 Like what Jesus wasn't, wasn't actually God because they had 527 00:24:01,398 --> 00:24:04,151 they I don't know where they got it, but they found probably some resources 528 00:24:04,151 --> 00:24:05,110 on the internet or whatever. 529 00:24:05,110 --> 00:24:07,237 And it's like, oh, well, you know, Jesus, what now? 530 00:24:07,237 --> 00:24:09,030 You know, maybe this Trinity thing isn't really real. 531 00:24:09,030 --> 00:24:13,535 And like, as they started going down that fast track of heresy very quickly, 532 00:24:13,535 --> 00:24:17,038 I started being pretty vocal about it, you know, in a, in a church environment. 533 00:24:17,038 --> 00:24:21,877 And it's like suddenly you, you do kind of want to have some knowledge of 534 00:24:22,085 --> 00:24:26,173 how to combat that, because it's not just, a slight misinterpretation here. 535 00:24:26,173 --> 00:24:29,759 And now we're getting we're getting outside of the orthodox, you know, belief, 536 00:24:29,968 --> 00:24:31,470 you know, outside of Orthodox Christianity. 537 00:24:31,470 --> 00:24:34,473 So, with that being the case, right. 538 00:24:34,639 --> 00:24:37,851 Maybe, you know, I can imagine some people listening to this saying, yeah, okay, 539 00:24:38,143 --> 00:24:40,604 I kind of like to look into some biblical languages, you know, 540 00:24:40,604 --> 00:24:42,063 where can I learn and learn more? 541 00:24:42,063 --> 00:24:45,859 So, obviously this is a massive field of study, 542 00:24:45,942 --> 00:24:48,904 but where is a place someone could start if they're interested in this? 543 00:24:48,904 --> 00:24:50,071 yeah, yeah, that's a great question. 544 00:24:50,071 --> 00:24:52,699 Maybe I can kind of break it up into into kind of two questions. 545 00:24:52,699 --> 00:24:56,870 So, if people want to learn like actually 546 00:24:56,870 --> 00:25:00,332 really, really learn Greek or Hebrew, it's a worthwhile investment. 547 00:25:00,707 --> 00:25:02,250 And I can, I can maybe point 548 00:25:02,250 --> 00:25:05,253 you toward a kind of a couple of resources to, to maybe get started. 549 00:25:05,295 --> 00:25:07,005 But it is it is a big investment. 550 00:25:07,005 --> 00:25:10,300 And, you know, sometimes maybe some of the, 551 00:25:10,300 --> 00:25:13,803 the payoff, so to speak, it comes it comes a bit later on. 552 00:25:14,054 --> 00:25:16,056 So you kind of have to put in a bunch of grunt work, 553 00:25:16,056 --> 00:25:19,726 to kind of get like past that initial, you know, hump, let's say, 554 00:25:20,101 --> 00:25:24,648 and then once you, once you like, have have gotten to, maybe a further point, 555 00:25:24,856 --> 00:25:27,901 that's when you start being able to kind of see those nuances and know 556 00:25:27,901 --> 00:25:30,946 how to like, use what you've learned responsibly. 557 00:25:31,488 --> 00:25:33,114 So, so maybe I can kind of give you 558 00:25:33,114 --> 00:25:36,076 a couple of resources, but maybe for most people, 559 00:25:36,117 --> 00:25:39,621 it's almost more helpful to think kind of on the other side, I'll probably 560 00:25:39,621 --> 00:25:43,041 never, like, put in, you know, invest all the time to, to get the whole way. 561 00:25:43,333 --> 00:25:46,086 But What are some resources that can maybe, 562 00:25:46,086 --> 00:25:49,339 be helpful in using the biblical languages responsibly? 563 00:25:49,422 --> 00:25:52,425 For, for someone who's not going to kind of master them 564 00:25:52,968 --> 00:25:54,469 so there's a great resource out there. 565 00:25:54,469 --> 00:25:54,928 It's free. 566 00:25:54,928 --> 00:25:57,556 It's super easy to use and it's called the Net Bible. 567 00:25:57,556 --> 00:26:01,059 So net it stands for New English translation I believe. 568 00:26:01,518 --> 00:26:04,604 But what this translation is kind of known for is their notes. 569 00:26:04,813 --> 00:26:06,648 So the net notes. 570 00:26:06,648 --> 00:26:09,234 So basically it's it's an English Bible translation. 571 00:26:09,234 --> 00:26:12,320 It's, you know, it reads pretty similar to maybe the NIV or the ESV. 572 00:26:12,612 --> 00:26:16,700 But there's a lot of places, where when they came to that sort 573 00:26:16,700 --> 00:26:20,787 of difficult translation decision, like, you know, how do we get this into English? 574 00:26:20,787 --> 00:26:23,707 We've got to either pick this word or this word, and we can't capture all of it. 575 00:26:24,666 --> 00:26:27,002 They basically write a little footnote explaining, 576 00:26:27,002 --> 00:26:30,797 sometimes that that kind of decision, or other times 577 00:26:30,797 --> 00:26:33,383 if there's like a word that maybe the meaning is disputed 578 00:26:33,383 --> 00:26:35,844 and they'll, they'll explain in a note saying, 579 00:26:35,844 --> 00:26:38,847 some scholars think that this word means this. 580 00:26:38,847 --> 00:26:41,766 Other scholars would take it more on, on this track. 581 00:26:41,766 --> 00:26:44,519 And so, you know, here's what we think and here's why. 582 00:26:44,519 --> 00:26:47,522 And they also have notes on, on textual criticism as well. 583 00:26:47,522 --> 00:26:50,358 So if there's one of those cases where, you know, some translations 584 00:26:50,358 --> 00:26:53,528 will include a sentence or a word, other translations leave it out, 585 00:26:53,778 --> 00:26:56,865 they'll actually give you like a, you know, a kind of one paragraph, 586 00:26:56,865 --> 00:26:59,868 a little summary of like, Codex, Sinaticus, Vaticanus, and 587 00:27:00,577 --> 00:27:03,663 P 46 include this particular word. 588 00:27:04,205 --> 00:27:05,999 But these manuscripts over here don't. 589 00:27:05,999 --> 00:27:07,751 And so by looking at all these manuscripts, 590 00:27:07,751 --> 00:27:11,630 we think that the best decision is to include it or to not include it. 591 00:27:11,921 --> 00:27:13,423 So that's why we translated it this way. 592 00:27:13,423 --> 00:27:16,259 So it's, it's this free kind of wealth of information, 593 00:27:16,259 --> 00:27:19,304 that you can, you can access without necessarily having to, 594 00:27:19,304 --> 00:27:21,765 you know, put in all the work to, to master the language. 595 00:27:21,765 --> 00:27:23,933 Net notes. that's, that's really interesting. 596 00:27:23,933 --> 00:27:25,226 I, I've never heard of that before. 597 00:27:25,226 --> 00:27:30,315 That could be a very valuable resource for digging more into, you know, the, 598 00:27:30,357 --> 00:27:32,817 maybe the, some of the biblical languages or that manuscripts of things, 599 00:27:32,817 --> 00:27:36,071 but also just for general Bible study I would think. 600 00:27:36,071 --> 00:27:37,322 Right. Yeah. yeah. 601 00:27:37,322 --> 00:27:39,366 And for seeing like, why do translations differ? 602 00:27:39,366 --> 00:27:42,369 It's basically kind of a little window into the translators thought process. 603 00:27:42,577 --> 00:27:44,287 that's, that's really cool. I've never heard of that before. 604 00:27:44,287 --> 00:27:45,872 yeah, it's a good resource. 605 00:27:45,872 --> 00:27:49,376 So, I mean, I think, I think if you want to, if you want to go, the whole way 606 00:27:49,376 --> 00:27:52,796 and try to, to get to a more advanced level, there's, 607 00:27:52,796 --> 00:27:54,714 I mean, there's, there's different things you can do. 608 00:27:54,714 --> 00:27:57,300 There is, of course, the whole grammar translation method. 609 00:27:57,300 --> 00:27:59,886 So you can, you know, go to your kind of local Bible college 610 00:27:59,886 --> 00:28:02,889 or seminary or something and kind of sign up for a Greek class. 611 00:28:02,931 --> 00:28:05,934 You'll probably get a textbook and you might get some kind of workbook, 612 00:28:06,059 --> 00:28:08,645 and you'll probably spend a lot of time studying, 613 00:28:08,645 --> 00:28:11,272 grammar and, like, here's how this tense works 614 00:28:11,272 --> 00:28:13,108 and here's what cases are all about, and here's 615 00:28:13,108 --> 00:28:15,527 what the nominative and the dative do and all this. 616 00:28:15,527 --> 00:28:16,945 And then you'll spend a lot of time translating. 617 00:28:16,945 --> 00:28:18,113 And that can be useful. 618 00:28:18,113 --> 00:28:21,658 A lot of people have, have been able to kind of work 619 00:28:21,658 --> 00:28:23,993 through that way toward, toward a pretty high level. 620 00:28:23,993 --> 00:28:25,620 So that's that's not bad. 621 00:28:25,620 --> 00:28:29,457 There's also there's also and we we talked about this a bit earlier, but, 622 00:28:29,457 --> 00:28:33,211 the whole communicative kind of side of things where you tell stories and you. 623 00:28:33,211 --> 00:28:34,796 Yeah. Yeah. 624 00:28:34,796 --> 00:28:38,633 But that takes it from just being like a, a dead language 625 00:28:38,633 --> 00:28:40,009 that I'm reading on the page to. 626 00:28:40,009 --> 00:28:42,095 You're actually speaking and engaging with it. 627 00:28:42,095 --> 00:28:44,305 Yeah. That seems significant. 628 00:28:44,305 --> 00:28:45,932 It is. Yeah, it is. 629 00:28:45,932 --> 00:28:49,769 I mean, it's it's definitely, you know, helped me 630 00:28:50,061 --> 00:28:53,648 a ton, in, in kind of getting the language, you know, 631 00:28:53,648 --> 00:28:56,735 internalized, we sometimes say, or kind of getting it deep, deep into your mind. 632 00:28:56,985 --> 00:28:58,778 And it it really, really makes a difference. 633 00:28:58,778 --> 00:29:00,447 Then when you go to actually read it, 634 00:29:00,447 --> 00:29:03,116 you don't right away think, okay, how do I translate this word? 635 00:29:03,116 --> 00:29:04,117 And what is this? 636 00:29:04,117 --> 00:29:06,578 But eventually it starts to feel like you can just kind of read 637 00:29:06,578 --> 00:29:09,038 it and understand it and you're like, oh yeah, that's what Jesus was saying. 638 00:29:09,038 --> 00:29:10,290 And it it kind of flows. 639 00:29:10,290 --> 00:29:11,332 It kind of. Yeah. 640 00:29:11,332 --> 00:29:14,002 So there's let's see. 641 00:29:14,002 --> 00:29:17,172 One resource that people might look at is, 642 00:29:17,172 --> 00:29:18,923 it's called the Biblical Language Center, 643 00:29:18,923 --> 00:29:21,009 which is a guy called Randall Booth who kind of, 644 00:29:21,968 --> 00:29:23,094 let's say pioneered. 645 00:29:23,094 --> 00:29:25,430 I think it's probably fair. 646 00:29:25,430 --> 00:29:29,476 A kind of revival of of studying ancient Greek with communicative methods. 647 00:29:30,101 --> 00:29:34,481 So, with the Biblical Language Center, they have some, some pretty good, 648 00:29:34,481 --> 00:29:38,902 pretty solid, online resources where there's like some, like, animations 649 00:29:38,902 --> 00:29:39,360 and some, 650 00:29:39,360 --> 00:29:43,490 some kind of self-guided, like, lessons that, that take you through a story. 651 00:29:43,490 --> 00:29:44,949 It's all kind of based on, 652 00:29:44,949 --> 00:29:47,702 a young boy who's like, he goes to school and you kind of like, 653 00:29:47,702 --> 00:29:50,830 learn all this vocabulary and all this grammar as you kind of watch 654 00:29:50,830 --> 00:29:53,833 the boy go through his kind of daily life, sort of thing. 655 00:29:53,833 --> 00:29:56,085 So that's, that's probably a useful place to start. 656 00:29:56,085 --> 00:29:59,798 He also does, they, they do some, like, in-person, 657 00:30:00,298 --> 00:30:03,718 more like intensive style, like, here come for, for this whole period of time 658 00:30:04,052 --> 00:30:07,055 and like, you know, get immersed in ancient Greek. 659 00:30:07,180 --> 00:30:08,598 So that's, that's maybe a place to start. 660 00:30:08,598 --> 00:30:10,141 Biblical language center. 661 00:30:10,141 --> 00:30:15,522 There's also another kind of, site online called bib lingo. 662 00:30:15,855 --> 00:30:18,316 It's bib lingo. 663 00:30:18,316 --> 00:30:20,735 Bib lingo.org. I haven't used it myself. 664 00:30:20,735 --> 00:30:24,572 But they, they're looking to do something very similar kind of create, 665 00:30:24,864 --> 00:30:28,743 communicative immersive environment like through through an online 666 00:30:28,743 --> 00:30:30,203 online platform. 667 00:30:30,203 --> 00:30:33,998 There's always, you know, if, if someone wants to, to travel to, 668 00:30:34,624 --> 00:30:37,418 to the Middle East and if, you know, conditions allow, there's a place called 669 00:30:37,418 --> 00:30:42,340 the Polis Institute, where they also do, very, very communicative. 670 00:30:42,340 --> 00:30:44,509 I haven't been there, but some of my friends that I, 671 00:30:44,509 --> 00:30:46,636 that I would have studied with had had gone there and, 672 00:30:46,636 --> 00:30:48,221 you know, you hear stories of kind of everyone 673 00:30:48,221 --> 00:30:51,349 speaking Greek at lunch time and, you know, all this kind of thing. 674 00:30:51,349 --> 00:30:53,726 So that's there's cool stuff out there. Yeah. 675 00:30:53,726 --> 00:30:55,270 Because I think, like, 676 00:30:55,270 --> 00:30:57,105 read, you know, reading the Greek New Testament 677 00:30:57,105 --> 00:30:58,398 or something or biblical languages, 678 00:30:58,398 --> 00:31:01,359 you don't think of them as something that's spoken. 679 00:31:01,526 --> 00:31:03,194 And that's just kind of, I don't know, like, 680 00:31:03,194 --> 00:31:07,240 I think I silly preconception, but like, this this is what people spoke 681 00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,368 at the time, like, I mean, this is this is the language that was used. 682 00:31:10,368 --> 00:31:13,746 And it's just kind of easy to think of us as this dead, dry, dusty thing. 683 00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,000 I don't know, it feels like there's a mindset, mindset 684 00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:20,044 shift there, doing what you're talking about there. 685 00:31:20,128 --> 00:31:21,087 That's kind of neat. 686 00:31:21,087 --> 00:31:21,546 yeah. 687 00:31:21,546 --> 00:31:24,340 It also has the advantage of being a lot more enjoyable 688 00:31:24,340 --> 00:31:28,553 which you know, it's it's kind of a it sounds maybe like, like a sort of, 689 00:31:28,595 --> 00:31:29,721 you know, side benefit, 690 00:31:29,721 --> 00:31:32,724 but it actually is the case that, like, if you can enjoy studying Greek, 691 00:31:32,849 --> 00:31:36,436 you're actually a lot more likely to do more of it and actually get farther 692 00:31:36,603 --> 00:31:37,520 with it. 693 00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:38,771 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 694 00:31:38,771 --> 00:31:42,525 And like, you know, at the end of the day kind of grammar and translation, 695 00:31:42,525 --> 00:31:45,653 like, you know, some of us are able to enjoy that kind of thing somewhat. 696 00:31:45,653 --> 00:31:48,197 But, you know, it does get kind of old after a while. 697 00:31:48,197 --> 00:31:51,159 And if you can actually like, find that you're having fun 698 00:31:51,159 --> 00:31:54,579 and like, oh, this is a great story and that's how you're learning it, 699 00:31:54,579 --> 00:31:58,333 then you're you're probably a lot, you know, likely to get get pretty far. 700 00:31:58,499 --> 00:31:59,918 So yeah. 701 00:31:59,918 --> 00:32:03,087 So so you can speak biblical. 702 00:32:03,087 --> 00:32:06,007 Biblical Greek. A bit. Yeah. Yeah. 703 00:32:06,007 --> 00:32:07,634 That's wild. 704 00:32:07,634 --> 00:32:08,051 Yeah. 705 00:32:08,051 --> 00:32:09,427 That's wild. 706 00:32:09,427 --> 00:32:11,721 depends on, you know, what sort of field or topic. Right. 707 00:32:11,721 --> 00:32:13,932 If it's Bible words, I'm pretty familiar with them. 708 00:32:13,932 --> 00:32:17,018 If it's like, you know, I don't know how to how to frame a wall 709 00:32:17,018 --> 00:32:19,479 or something like that, you know, I don't I don't know those words, 710 00:32:19,479 --> 00:32:21,731 you know, or, or I don't know. 711 00:32:21,731 --> 00:32:22,899 Yeah. 712 00:32:22,899 --> 00:32:26,235 Can you and again maybe this is diverting a little bit, but 713 00:32:26,945 --> 00:32:29,948 how close are we to the language that Jesus 714 00:32:29,948 --> 00:32:33,242 and the apostles, would it be what spoke or written in yeah. 715 00:32:33,242 --> 00:32:34,911 I mean, sometimes. 716 00:32:34,911 --> 00:32:37,914 So, so Greek as a language has an extremely long history. 717 00:32:37,997 --> 00:32:38,206 Right. 718 00:32:38,206 --> 00:32:41,334 So we can kind of trace back and I haven't studied a lot of this, 719 00:32:41,584 --> 00:32:45,713 but the people who, who are scholars on this, can trace back to, 720 00:32:45,755 --> 00:32:49,425 well, before the time of Jesus, hundreds and even thousands of years before Jesus. 721 00:32:49,801 --> 00:32:51,844 Like what Greek was like back then, right? 722 00:32:51,844 --> 00:32:54,764 Because languages kind of always evolve. They're always changing. 723 00:32:54,764 --> 00:32:57,058 So there's really old forms of Greek, like there's Homer, 724 00:32:57,058 --> 00:32:58,726 there's even stuff before Homer. 725 00:32:58,726 --> 00:33:00,603 Then you come to around the time of Jesus. 726 00:33:00,603 --> 00:33:03,606 And we usually call this kuni Greek or Koine. 727 00:33:04,023 --> 00:33:08,069 And so this was the kind of, the, the version of Greek 728 00:33:08,194 --> 00:33:11,280 that became the sort of, worldwide 729 00:33:11,572 --> 00:33:14,575 or let's say, the kind of known world, 730 00:33:14,909 --> 00:33:17,829 it was the the language of wider communication, the language that people 731 00:33:17,829 --> 00:33:21,457 would have mostly spoken like the Roman Empire we’re saying essentially. 732 00:33:21,874 --> 00:33:22,333 Yeah. 733 00:33:22,333 --> 00:33:25,169 And and of course, Alexander the Great would have, would have spread it 734 00:33:25,169 --> 00:33:28,089 in all of his conquests a few hundred years before Jesus. 735 00:33:28,089 --> 00:33:31,009 And then it so it was, you know, Greek kind of spoken in Greece. 736 00:33:31,009 --> 00:33:33,094 But as Alexander spread it and as it became 737 00:33:33,094 --> 00:33:36,305 more of an international language, it simplified in some ways 738 00:33:36,556 --> 00:33:40,268 some of the kind of extra complexity of it, like got flattened out a little bit 739 00:33:40,601 --> 00:33:43,688 just because, you know, the more it spreads, the more it kind of evens out. 740 00:33:43,855 --> 00:33:46,983 So we call this Kuna Greek, Koine means common. 741 00:33:46,983 --> 00:33:49,193 So it was kind of like common language. 742 00:33:49,193 --> 00:33:51,320 Then, of course, you know, that's the time of Jesus. 743 00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:54,240 But Greek has been spoken continuously all that time. 744 00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:57,618 And so fast forward to, to modern, modern times. 745 00:33:57,618 --> 00:33:58,828 And we have modern Greek. 746 00:33:58,828 --> 00:34:00,121 So it's, it's the same language 747 00:34:00,121 --> 00:34:03,541 for all those thousands of years, but it's just evolved, quite a bit. 748 00:34:04,042 --> 00:34:07,920 So, so we really like the manuscripts we have for what is the New Testament 749 00:34:07,920 --> 00:34:11,424 now is almost like a historical snapshot of the language of the time. 750 00:34:11,424 --> 00:34:12,717 It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 751 00:34:12,717 --> 00:34:17,305 And actually, it, it turns out that, for, for some time, 752 00:34:17,305 --> 00:34:21,517 a lot of scholars actually thought that the language of the New Testament was like 753 00:34:21,517 --> 00:34:24,729 a specific version of Greek that was, like, only used for the New Testament. 754 00:34:24,729 --> 00:34:27,190 And they sometimes thought of it as like Holy Spirit Greek. 755 00:34:27,190 --> 00:34:30,526 Because, yeah, it's kind of hard to imagine that now. 756 00:34:30,526 --> 00:34:32,361 Like, how could anyone think that? Right? 757 00:34:32,361 --> 00:34:35,364 But whoa. Was okay. Yeah. 758 00:34:35,448 --> 00:34:37,325 I never heard that one ever. 759 00:34:37,325 --> 00:34:39,243 you know, King James only ism kind of, you know, 760 00:34:39,243 --> 00:34:42,163 put back onto onto the New Testament manuscripts themselves. Yeah. 761 00:34:42,163 --> 00:34:45,625 But of course, at that time, there was a lot less like manuscripts 762 00:34:45,625 --> 00:34:50,338 and texts just available or known, that were written from that time period. 763 00:34:50,630 --> 00:34:54,342 So, yeah, there was this kind of sense that like, oh, well, this is, you know, 764 00:34:54,342 --> 00:34:57,178 it's not exactly the kind of Greek that we call classical Greek. 765 00:34:57,178 --> 00:35:00,473 So from like maybe 400 years before with like all the kind of, 766 00:35:00,473 --> 00:35:04,268 famous playwrights and, philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. 767 00:35:04,352 --> 00:35:05,353 It's not that. 768 00:35:05,353 --> 00:35:07,855 So it must be something different. It must be kind of Holy Spirit. 769 00:35:07,855 --> 00:35:10,608 But then, lots of papyri were discovered. 770 00:35:10,608 --> 00:35:14,862 So basically these, basically kind of pieces of paper, 771 00:35:14,862 --> 00:35:17,323 in, in Egypt and kind of the surrounding areas, 772 00:35:17,323 --> 00:35:21,327 that were written in like the very, very same form of Greek, 773 00:35:21,327 --> 00:35:24,330 like the same kind of historical stage of the language. 774 00:35:24,831 --> 00:35:27,083 And so then over time, people started to realize like, yeah, 775 00:35:27,083 --> 00:35:28,292 this is not anything special. 776 00:35:28,292 --> 00:35:29,168 It's just 777 00:35:29,168 --> 00:35:31,295 this was just the language that everyone was speaking back then, 778 00:35:31,295 --> 00:35:34,549 you know, there's like shopping lists and just random, like pieces of paper 779 00:35:34,549 --> 00:35:35,424 that now we have that. 780 00:35:35,424 --> 00:35:38,010 It's like, okay, this is what Greek was like at that time. 781 00:35:38,010 --> 00:35:39,762 And that's kind of wild that, like, 782 00:35:39,762 --> 00:35:42,723 there's something interesting there, you know, to where 783 00:35:43,766 --> 00:35:46,644 God's Word was in a common language of the time. 784 00:35:46,644 --> 00:35:50,606 You know, the common trade language of really the biggest empire in the world, 785 00:35:50,606 --> 00:35:53,609 I suppose, or one of the biggest empires in the world 786 00:35:54,026 --> 00:35:56,112 that's got to have been a contributing factor 787 00:35:56,112 --> 00:35:58,614 to the growth of early Christianity, you know, for sure. 788 00:35:58,614 --> 00:35:58,906 Yeah. 789 00:35:58,906 --> 00:36:02,910 I mean, because everybody could read it or have it read to them, you know. 790 00:36:03,077 --> 00:36:04,787 yeah I mean several 791 00:36:04,787 --> 00:36:08,499 you know if, if hypothetically Jesus had come several hundred years before, 792 00:36:09,333 --> 00:36:12,336 it would probably not have been as easy, to get 793 00:36:12,336 --> 00:36:14,630 of course, there's always maybe some kind of international language, 794 00:36:14,630 --> 00:36:18,259 but it wouldn't have been as easy to to get the message out to such a wide 795 00:36:18,259 --> 00:36:22,305 group of people in a language that, you know, pretty much everyone knew. 796 00:36:22,930 --> 00:36:23,973 Yeah. 797 00:36:23,973 --> 00:36:25,391 Well this, this is fascinating. 798 00:36:25,391 --> 00:36:27,059 I feel like I'm learning a lot here. 799 00:36:27,059 --> 00:36:30,188 Like we're kind of taking the whirlwind tour through, you know, biblical languages 800 00:36:30,188 --> 00:36:34,025 and manuscripts and early, you know, early writings and things. 801 00:36:34,025 --> 00:36:35,776 But I actually like, 802 00:36:37,069 --> 00:36:37,820 it seems like, 803 00:36:37,820 --> 00:36:41,282 you know, this is actually kind of important context to know because we're 804 00:36:41,282 --> 00:36:44,452 talking about God's word here, you know, and like how it got to us today. 805 00:36:44,452 --> 00:36:49,332 And I think that's an important story to oversimplify or misunderstand 806 00:36:49,332 --> 00:36:53,169 or have all these biases and prejudices and things, you know, around how. 807 00:36:53,252 --> 00:36:56,255 Well, I think it's this way and, I think so. 808 00:36:56,547 --> 00:36:58,216 Yeah. This is, this kind of is pretty great. 809 00:36:58,216 --> 00:37:02,011 So as we kind of look at the whole package of what all we've covered, 810 00:37:02,595 --> 00:37:04,138 the kind of tie it all together. 811 00:37:04,138 --> 00:37:04,805 Yeah. 812 00:37:04,805 --> 00:37:07,892 Is there anything you'd like to to conclude with? 813 00:37:07,892 --> 00:37:10,436 Or maybe a piece of advice or encouragement you like to give 814 00:37:10,436 --> 00:37:13,439 to listeners on this topic, or just anything in general? 815 00:37:13,439 --> 00:37:14,649 Really? Yeah. 816 00:37:14,649 --> 00:37:14,941 Yeah. 817 00:37:14,941 --> 00:37:19,111 So, so maybe, maybe one piece of advice that I think can probably be be useful 818 00:37:19,111 --> 00:37:23,449 for everybody, is just to, to make use of different English translations. 819 00:37:23,532 --> 00:37:23,783 Right. 820 00:37:23,783 --> 00:37:27,620 So, so whichever English translation you think of as maybe your kind 821 00:37:27,620 --> 00:37:31,874 of primary one, maybe it's the ESV or you, you like the King James, whatever it is. 822 00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:34,377 You know that that can be great. 823 00:37:34,377 --> 00:37:36,379 And we have a lot of great English translation. 824 00:37:36,379 --> 00:37:38,339 So, so read that translation, memorize it. 825 00:37:38,339 --> 00:37:39,006 It's great. 826 00:37:39,006 --> 00:37:41,634 But, you know, now and then, especially if you're thinking 827 00:37:41,634 --> 00:37:43,678 through a passage, you maybe get a little stuck on something. 828 00:37:43,678 --> 00:37:45,388 And like, I wonder exactly what this means. 829 00:37:45,388 --> 00:37:46,806 Grab another translation. You know, 830 00:37:46,806 --> 00:37:50,017 pull up the, the NIV, look at the new King James, look at the net Bible. 831 00:37:50,851 --> 00:37:55,022 And sometimes, what you have is, a word or phrase 832 00:37:55,314 --> 00:37:59,527 that doesn't directly correspond to any one thing in English. 833 00:37:59,860 --> 00:38:04,115 And by kind of looking at a few different English manuscripts, you can get a 834 00:38:04,115 --> 00:38:08,077 better picture of what what the original, the original meaning would have been. 835 00:38:08,077 --> 00:38:12,331 So I think, I think comparing, just, you know, crack open a few different English 836 00:38:12,331 --> 00:38:15,626 Bibles, put them right beside each other, and that's, that's like a, a great way 837 00:38:15,626 --> 00:38:19,171 of getting kind of one step past, just what you would otherwise have. 838 00:38:19,422 --> 00:38:21,549 Yeah. That's that's really good. Yeah. 839 00:38:21,549 --> 00:38:24,677 And that's, that's, that's very simple and something anybody can do. 840 00:38:24,927 --> 00:38:28,347 Could it be immediately actionable to their own study of Scripture. 841 00:38:28,848 --> 00:38:31,642 Wow. Well, Andrew, this is this has been great. 842 00:38:31,642 --> 00:38:35,521 This is, we don't typically go into, you know, Bible manuscripts 843 00:38:35,521 --> 00:38:38,607 in biblical languages and, you know, you know, early 844 00:38:38,607 --> 00:38:39,650 church history and things like that. 845 00:38:39,650 --> 00:38:43,988 But, I think this is important and, and, I learned a lot. 846 00:38:44,030 --> 00:38:47,825 So thanks for being willing to come on the podcast, this evening 847 00:38:47,825 --> 00:38:49,869 and for everything you shared tonight. Yeah, yeah. 848 00:38:49,869 --> 00:38:52,163 Thank you for having me. It's been really good to be here. Thank you. 849 00:38:53,122 --> 00:38:56,125 Thanks for listening to this episode with Andrew Lamicela. 850 00:38:56,125 --> 00:38:58,544 Learning Greek can greatly inform our study of Scripture, 851 00:38:58,544 --> 00:39:01,922 but there are many other tools and methods for engaging with the biblical text. 852 00:39:01,922 --> 00:39:06,010 We did an episode on this and you can find it linked in the description down below. 853 00:39:06,260 --> 00:39:09,221 We also have a monthly email newsletter which you can subscribe 854 00:39:09,221 --> 00:39:12,683 to on our website at Anabaptistperspectives.org. 855 00:39:13,100 --> 00:39:16,103 Thanks again for listening and we'll see you in the next episode.