What Christians Can Learn From Judaism: The Language

Children raised in Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism generally do not depend on translation for reading the Bible. They are able to read it in the original tongue.

From the time Orthodox Jews are very young, they learn the Hebrew alphabet and Hebrew phonics alongside their education in English subjects. As a result, they learn Hebrew as a second language, and reading it becomes more natural for them than for a seminary student who picks up the language in his twenties. One Modern Orthodox Rabbi I spoke to told me that his Rabbinic contemporaries have vastly superior command of the ancient Hebrew language than do the Old Testament professors at divinity schools such as Yale. This does not surprise me. The Rabbis read all their ancient and medieval literature in Hebrew and use it in the prayers every day.

In the Middle Ages, Clergy from the church could not read Hebrew. They were dependent on Jerome's Latin Vulgate. It was sufficient for most cases. But for difficult hermeneutics, the clergy had to ask nearby Jewish Rabbis to interpret the Hebrew. However, it was not just the Rabbis who knew Hebrew. All Jews in that era were required to learn the language and engage in at least some level of Biblical and Talmudic scholarship. They didn't divide their people into classes the way Christianity has historically done, between the educated clergy and the uneducated lay people. Instead, they put the knowledge and power in the hands of the average Jew.

The New Testament was written in Greek and when it quotes the Tanakh, the authors usually quote the Greek translation called the Septuagint. Hence, it is Greek, rather than Hebrew that is the most important Biblical language for a Christian to learn It makes me wonder: why is it that Evangelicals can go through twelve years of Christian school without learning any Biblical Greek?

Getting the average Christian, and not just the clergy literate in Greek will open tremendous opportunity. It will give Evangelicals more confidence in reading their Bibles for themselves. It will make the task of misrepresenting the Bible very difficult for the cults to accomplish. And it would give us a deeper and richer understanding of the text in its original language.

How can this be accomplished? I believe a Christian elementary school would be able to pull this off. Children are especially skilled at learning new languages, and what they learn tends to stay with them longer. If they start learning Greek in Kindergarten and continue through the sixth grade, they should be able to at least translate some short, basic passages, which will provide a tremendous foundation for later learning. It will help future generations better understand the New Testament, and make it easier for future pastors to transition into seminary. And while it is true that kids who enter these Greek-teaching schools in the fourth or fifth grade will have to play catch-up, Orthodox day schools have coped with a similar situation thanks to families that become newly observant. The kids adapt much faster you expect. So let's get on board and expand our children's horizons.