Guide to Developing Hebrew Reading Proficiency

[2nd Draft Updated 08/04/13]

This week I was contacted by a student from the first Hebrew course I taught back in 1998—16 years ago, asking for tips on improving his Hebrew.  He was an A student, and in fact, was the best student in the class.  Yet, here we are a decade and half later and he is asking for some tips on improving his Hebrew.  Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon scenario.  Language skills are similar to musical and other comparable skills—they are perishable, meaning that they can become dull or even go away if not deliberately developed and regularly employed. 

It is important for beginning students to know that there is more to learning a language than completing the required course work and earning an A. As a beginning Hebrew student, I was seldom in the top of my class grade-wise, but some things happened for me that greatly aided me in this effort.  

Each year that I have taught, I have recounted some of the key things in my journey that I hope will help my students.  The below is my testimony, in outline form, and which I am sharing with the hope that it may help others, especially my own students, in their language courses.  

1.  Conviction.  I was a B+ language student until one day my professor listed 7 or so common exegetical fallacies on the board.  These fallacies resulted from ministers who mishandle the text of Scripture due to laziness, carelessness, ignorance, or general incompetence in the languages.  I was immediately struck with the reality that I had committed some of these fallacies, and would likely commit more.  By the standards of 2 Tim 2:15, I had reason to be ashamed.  I also knew that faithfulness in this area was a criterion for elder qualification. If I did not address this, I would be unfit for ministry (Titus 1:9). The point—this is not about a grade, or a program, but about honoring the Lord.  I was deeply convicted, even destroyed, by this realization.

2. Repentance and Dependence.  I was broken by this realization and committed myself to plead with God, without stop, until He gave me the desire necessary to work hard at this task.  I recalled Phil 2:12, 13 that it is my responsibility to work, but the will to do so and the enabling to do so come from God.  This means He helped me to realize that I did not possess the necessary will or stamina to accomplish the task before me without His enabling.  However, since He had called me to the ministry, I believed He would supply the requisite qualities/skills that I lacked.  So, I prayed—hard for about a week asking God to do something so extraordinary in my life, that all who knew me would recognize His hand at work in the weakest of vessels, and glorify Him.  After a week of pleading, God dramatically answered this prayer.

3. Resolve and Dependence  (Yes, "dependence" is in here twice). At the end of the week, I had a new passion for God’s Word in the original languages.  I then resolutely took some steps to master Biblical Hebrew.  The following is what I did.

Step 1. Vocabulary Development.  My goal was to develop functional Hebrew skills, not merely to complete a program.  This meant that if I wanted to be proficient in BH, I needed to know the words.  It was now summer, so I committed my summer to this effort.  The result: I picked up John Watt’s Lists of Words Occurring Frequently in the Hebrew Bible and began memorizing vocabulary.  Pleading with God for aid, I inhaled words like a drowning man sucks in air.  Within 5 weeks, I added the most common 600 words from Watts to my vocab.  Gaining additional words became very difficult at this point.  However, I found that I was now able to make out the majority of words in the narrative sections of the OT, so I shifted focus.   

Step 2. Devotional Reading. I was already committed to daily devotional study of Scripture.  At this point, however, I committed to not have devotionals at all unless I did so in my Biblia Sacra (Hebrew OT and Greek NT in a single volume).  This did two things: i. created additional dependence on God as I read and pleaded with Him for help, ii. generated excitement as I saw my new abilities developing and my new vocab. functioning in the wild, so to speak.  By the end of the summer I had added around 1,000 new words to my vocab. and had translated Genesis. Note: I did not focus on parsing or syntax at this juncture, but read with my NASB or with BibleWorks nearby so I could check parsing or grammatical forms as needed and just focused on recognition and muddling my way through the text.

Step 3. Synthesizing.  By the end of the next semester, I had spent up to a couple of hours a day, every day, in my Hebrew Bible for months.  I had also translated the first 26 chapters of Exodus.  At this point synthesis began to happen.  Here’s how:

     i. Rehearsing. Whenever I sensed my skills regressing, I would immediately reread Ruth and Jonah, two small books I had translated in my previous course work and could move through rapidly.  This helped my morale, refreshed my vocab., stimulated me spiritually, and reminded me of aspects of grammar/syntax that I could then generalize and appropriate in other texts.

     ii. Incorporation. For my devotional times, I was also translating the Psalms (though not writing out my translations).  These greatly enhanced the spiritual aspect of my study.  I then began teaching a Bible study from the various Psalms that I was meditatively translating.  This added great depth to my teaching and my students responded positively, which fueled my passion both in teaching and in personal study. 

     iii. Progression. I continued enrolling in exegesis language courses and gained permission to take Aramaic as an M.Div. elective.  At this point, my professor recognized that something extraordinary had occurred to me and we discussed this one day after class.  He then invited me to read Hebrew with him over the summer, along with another professor and a friend who was planning to enroll in Ph.D. studies in Semitics at UCLA.  This affirmation and privilege was exciting and fueled additional passion as I continued to plead with God for aid praying that He would glorify Himself through these efforts.   

     iv. Teaching.  That summer, I was then invited to teach beginning Hebrew grammar for a local Bible institute.  This effort was very natural, gave me an outlet for what I had been learning, and provided opportunity to articulate and simplify difficult aspects of Hebrew grammar.  I was also able to think through different linguistic pedagogical models.  I taught beginning Hebrew to everyone who would listen, whether 1 student or 30, whether compensated or uncompensated, school age or senior citizen.  This refined my teaching skills and prepared me to begin teaching at the seminary level.  Three years later, I had acquired additional research languages and was teaching Latin on Mondays and Wednesdays, Hebrew twice on Thursdays, teaching a Bible study from my Hebrew Bible on Fridays, and Sunday afternoons, and preached two separate sermons on Sunday morning, one from my Greek NT, one from my Hebrew Bible (this was while I was a full time Th.M. student). 

Within 6 or 7 years, I had taught Aramaic, Advanced Hebrew readings, and other similar courses at the post-graduate level but still taught at the institute level.  By this time, I had memorized most of the Torah in Hebrew as well as had translated most of the OT, including the Aramaic sections. 

v. Listening.   At some point, I also began listening to the Hebrew Bible on tape read by a well known Rabbi.  This was helpful, because it taught me variations of pronunciation, like how to deal with ayin, what resh sounds like when it acts as a guttural, proper use of massoretic accents in reading, etc.  This allowed me to access components of poetry related to sound, such as assonance, rhyme, various sorts of word and sound play, etc.  This remains an exciting component of Hebrew study for me and I regularly listen to the Hebrew Bible aloud on my smart phone via the חי app. 

Conclusion. In the end, true mastery of the biblical languages is less like an academic exercise, and more like being in love.  Their acquisition must be passion and dependence driven if you really want to know them.  Know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and by God’s enabling, develop an unquenchable love for the languages, for they are the medium God has chosen to reveal Himself to His people, and to you if you will give yourself to their acquisition.  

Note: For a list of my publicly available audio files of Hebrew text, see here: http://metataphysika.blogspot.com/2013/08/test-psalm-111.html

Anniversary Thoughts: When Love Comes to Les Misérables

Last week was our 20^th anniversary.  We enjoyed a dinner at a favorite restaurant where we had dined exactly 1 year earlier.  Something was very different on this occasion, however.  A year earlier, within an hour of our anniversary dinner, Janet was forced to drive me to the ER where I spent several hours undergoing tests, i.e. we spent our 19^th anniversary in the ER.  Within 45 minutes of finishing our meal, I began having severe, excruciating and unaccountable abdominal pains.   At the time, I was on a cocktail of medications related to my near fatal car crash the previous month.  Apparently these had caused a stomach ulcer and this was the first attack--the episode was presumably brought on by the spicy Mexican food that we ate.  With all of the trauma I had experienced in the accident, we returned to the ER without hesitation.  So, this year we returned to the same restaurant to pick up where we left off. 

Returning to the same place was sentimental to me.  Few can imagine what it is like to be totally incapacitated and forced to rely on others for everything.  Fewer still can imagine the singular beauty and sense of divinity experienced when another completely and selflessly gives herself to care for you in your distress.  In a long term marriage based on selflessness, one or both of the partners is bound to experience a taste of this at some point.  In some marriages, one of the partners may be a long term caregiver for the other.  Janet has ministered to me through more than one such crisis—one with a long term visual disability, the other due to the effects of my car crash which broke my neck and both arms. 

This year, I am of naturally reflecting on her example of Christ-like love and sacrifice, as well as thinking about the scores of other human beings in similar, but more or less permanent situations of incapacity.  There are many in serious, ongoing, and inextricable misery, but those who have a devoted loved one to care for them know a secret hidden to others.  None that I know have articulated this secret better than Victor Hugo.

In a day when every blogger considers himself a luminary, and every twitterer imagines himself as having something worthwhile to say, we have forgotten what literary genius looks like.  True literary genius has an ability to simplify the vastly complex, to paint in word pictures those concepts it has simplified, and then to vividly describe intricate delicate scenarios not personally experienced. Victor Hugo does just this and is a rare example of the genius obscured by the massive quantities of sound-bite style media that inundate us.

While many striking examples from Hugo could be given, most are not reducible to something that could be posted on a blog in a single page. However, the following can be, and for me is deeply powerful.  It is Hugo’s description of an elderly blind priest who was cared for by a devoted sister. Having experienced near complete functional blindness for two months in the summer of 2005 and additional years of visual debilitation, I can tell you from experience that the following sequence in Chapter IV of Book V of Les Misérables captures the essence of the drama experienced by one in such a condition. Consider the following section:

"Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who was there because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, "since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart;" to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the center of these steps, of the speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity; to become in one's obscurity and through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,--few felicity's equal this. The supreme happiness of life consist in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake--let us say rather, loved in spite of oneself; this conviction the blind man possesses. To be served in distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One does not lose the sight when one has love. And what love! A love wholly constituted a virtue! There is no blindness where there is certainty. Soul seeks soul, openly, and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand sustained you; it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your brow; it is her mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to touch Providence with one's hands, and to be able to take it in one's arms,--God made tangible,--what bliss! The heart, that obscure, celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would not exchange that shadow for all brightness! The angel soul is there, uninterruptedly there; if she departs, it is but to return again; she vanishes like a dream, and reappears like reality. One feels warmth approaching, and behold! She is there. One overflows with serenity, with gaiety with ecstasy; one is a radiance amid the night. And there are 1000 little cares. Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and supplying the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the soul. One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a paradise of shadows.”

The secret such sufferers know—the beauty of divine love, which is manifested, and made tangible, though on a finite scale, to the sufferer.  Misery is misery, but love is love, and one who is loved in the way described by Hugo understands something of the nature of Christ’ love manifested in His sacrificial coming and dying for a hopeless, miserable, perishing world.  In doing so, Christ came to save those who are most completely les misérables.  In this sense, the caregiver becomes a savior, a Christ-figure, though reflecting but a shadow of the effulgence of God’s ineffable love. My wife has shown me something of this love over the years, and it is marvelous.

"Atheist" in Ephesians 2:12

The oldest Christian, i.e. biblical use of the term “atheist” comes from the Apostle Paul in Eph. 2:12, and is found in P46—the oldest extant copy of Ephesians (written on papyrus). He used the term to describe the previously pitiable state of the Ephesians, who formerly were “separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God [i.e. ἄθεοι/a-theoi] in the world.” This reminder to the Ephesians served as part of his explanation for how God’s grace reconciles such hopeless people, people like us, to Himself. 

 

This text is Codex Boernerianus, a 9th cent. Greek-Latin interlinear part of my BibleWorks 9 data base. The main text is Greek with a Latin translation above it. Here you can see Eph. 2:4-13 plus the first two words of vs. 14. 

Note: in vs. 12, (3rd line from bottom, 3rd word in) you can see both Greek and Latin nomina sacra (abbreviated sacred names) employed for the term atheist. This means that for the Greek, the scribe combined the alpha privative plus the nomen sacrum for God (ΑΘ̅Υ̅), and for the Latin translation also used the nomen sacrum for Deo (dō) above it. Notice also the Latin ligatures, i.e. the use of “&” for et above και.

 

Some Cautions for Original Language Bible Students

Summer is now in full swing and is the time of year when professors work on research and writing projects.  I'm currently working on 14 articles to be published in the new Lexham Bible Dictionary and as a result, won't be writing much in the way of new blog material for a while.  However, I was going over my Hebrew Exegesis syllabus in preparation for the Fall semester and was reminded of the seriousness of acquiring original language Bible tools.  I've pasted the first two pages of my syllabus below, which I use as a preface to sober the minds of my students in preparation for the task before them.  In case you are interested, here are those pages: 

“A little learning is a dang'rous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,

While from the bounded level of our mind

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;

But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise

New distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleas'd at first the towering Alps we try,

Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,

Th' eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But, those attain'd, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,

Th' increasing prospects tire our wand'ring eyes,

Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!”

–Alexander Pope

• Do you wish to study or utilize the original languages?  Hear a “caution” from Victor Hugo.

"[Ursus] was incapable of certain abominations, such as, for instance, speaking German, Hebrew or Greek, without having learned them, which is a sign of unpardonable wickedness, or of a natural infirmity proceeding from a morbid humour.  If Ursus spoke Latin, it was because he knew it.  He would never have allowed himself to speak Syriac, which he did not know. Besides, it is asserted that Syriac is the language spoken in the midnight meetings at which uncanny people worship the devil."  –Victor Hugo, in The Laughing Man, or L’homme qui rit.

Note: In the broader context, Hugo is spoofing the bourgeois.  It seems to me that here, he is spoofing the centuries old phenomenon of ministers who cloak themselves in superficial erudition.  To quote a former mentor of mine, we could employ the phrase, “wannabe evangelical scholars” to describe such offenders in our midst.—RBR 

• In evaluating the role training plays in the life and vocation of the minister, consider the following by F.W. Harvey: “Education is good so long as you know to whom and for what purpose you give it.”  

Note: For some students, training makes them sharp weapons in the hand of God. For others, it makes them unwitting allies of the enemy.  As the student, evaluate your own motives in pursuing education.  Out of one and the same exegesis course there may come both the defender of God’s Word as well as the liberal deconstructionist.  You are responsible to be faithful with your stewardship. —RBR

•  On the old library of a deceased scholar, one writer mused, “It was arranged on the plan of many college libraries, with tall projecting bookcases forming deep recesses of dusty silence, fit graves for the old hates of forgotten controversy, the dead passions of forgotten lives.”

Note: In learning to do exegesis, you are being given a sacred trust, a relevant and timeless trust.  Take care to employ your skills in that which will bear eternal fruit.  Do not become embroiled in unfruitful controversies that distract you from the work God has given you to do.  Put another way, “Only one life ‘twill soon be past; only what's done for Christ will last."  Cf. 1 Tim. 1:6, 7; Ecc. 9:5, 6.—RBR

•  John Frame explains,

“[O]ur exegesis should strive to achieve, as much as is humanly possible, a logically consistent interpretation of biblical teaching.  Yet this goal is not the primary goal.  The primary goal of exegesis is not logical consistency but faithfulness to the text.  And sometimes in trying to formulate one doctrine with logical consistency, we may find ourselves compromising another doctrine of Scripture.  When that happens, something is wrong.  We must not simply push our logic relentlessly to the point where we ignore or deny a genuine biblical teaching.  Rather, we must rethink our whole procedure—our exegesis, our reasoning, the extra-biblical knowledge we bring to bear on the matter, etc. [emphasis original].”[1] 

 * Taken from pp. i-ii of my "HEB621X: INTRODUCTION TO HEBREW EXEGESIS" syllabus

---

[1] John Frame, “The Problem of Theological Paradox” Foundations of Christian Scholarship ed. by Gary North (Vallecito, Cali.: Ross House Books, 1979), 325.

Talmudic Nuggets: A Christian's Thoughts About/From an Ancient Jewish Text

I'm involved in an ongoing effort to read the literature of the World's major religions, especially Judaism, so that: 1.) I can understand it accurately, 2) evaluate it correctly, 3.) expound it appropriately, 4.) respond to it competently and convincingly, and 5.) keep others from having to do so, that they may be able to focus on the truth, i.e. the Bible.

The writings of Jewish religious leaders are of particular interest, because they help some with biblical background studies.  The Old Testament (Tanakh/תנ"ך‎), especially the Torah, was/is the text of primary importance for Jewish religion, and until the destruction of the second Temple in AD 70, its exposition and the tradition surrounding it were oral in nature (passed on without being committed to writing).  Jesus was a Jew, born into this tradition, and much of the Gospels show His interaction within this religious context as developed in His day.  His lively interactions with Jewish leaders are often connected to the discontinuity between the Torah (and OT generally) and Jewish oral tradition, and are regularly nuanced such that understanding Jewish/Rabbinic law is not only informative, but sometimes resolves conundra that otherwise remain elusive. 

Also, the Apostle Paul was trained in the school of Gamaliel, one of the most venerated Rabbi's in history (comparing the discontinuity between Paul’s teaching and Talmud is striking).  Of Gamaliel, the Mishna states, "Since Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died, there has been no more reverence for the law, and purity and piety died out at the same time" (Sotah, 15:9)

Interestingly, the destruction of the second Temple changed Jewish religion, law, and scholarship, requiring Jews to develop written texts to preserve the oral tradition.  This is where the Talmud comes into play.  After the destruction of the temple, Jewish religious leaders quickly realized that their oral tradition must be preserved, and so they began doing so in the writings of the Talmud (dwmlt).  The Hebrew verb variously translated “to learn/teach” is based on the root lamad (dml, cf. Ec. 12:9).  The Hebrew noun for “what is taught/teaching” is a modified form of this word, i.e. Talmud.  The Talmud, then, contains the written record of the oral law as it developed, and shows where Jewish leaders developed/taught their views on theology, philosophy, ethics, history, law, customs, mysticism, etc. [Note: the background of this blog site is a photo of my own copy of volume 1 of the Talmud with the green letters (ylbb dwmlt), Talmud Bevaly, i.e. Babylonian Talmud]

A New Testament Example

There are many examples where Jesus acted in a manner fully consistent with the OT law, but in a way contrary to the oral law of the Jewish religious leaders, something that incited their murderous ire.  Reading the Talmud brings clarity on some of these interactions.  One example I have brought out in my preaching is from John 5, which documents Christ’s healing of the man at Bethesda (cf. John 5:10-12).  Note that in vs. 10, the Pharisees had a problem with the man carrying his palate on the Sabbath. They state, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.”  

What is striking about this is that not only have the Pharisees missed the point of the Sabbath (cf. Mark 2:27, 28), but when confronted with this situation, they chose an unnecessarily hard line, even by their own standards.  As later written in the Talmud, we see their law making an exception for precisely this kind of scenario.  In the section on Shabbath, fol 151, col. 2, we read “When a man is dangerously ill, the law grants dispensation, for it says, ‘You may break one Sabbath on his behalf, that he may be preserved to keep many Sabbaths.’”  Note that here priority is given to the preservation of life.  The situational hostility of the Pharisees in John 5 illustrates their fundamental problem (cf. John 5:42-47).

Warning and Exhortation

Having said all of this, I am reminded of a warning and exhortation made by one expert in Judaic literature, who said of the Talmud, “In it is trash and treasure.”  He goes on to state that in the 16^th century, Benedictine Monks “made a particular determined effort to destroy it.”  However, the biblical language specialist John Reuchlin told his peers, “Do not condemn the Talmud before you understand it.  Burning is no argument.  Instead of burning all Jewish literature, it were better to found chairs in the universities for its exposition.”  This is an attitude that would serve us all well.

It seems to me that in the modern climate, the table has taken a dramatic turn.  Secular academic elites would prefer to banish and/or prejudicially vilify the Bible rather than understand it as expounded by its most capable expositors and defenders.  In the spirit of Reuchlin, do not condemn the Bible before you understand it.  Burning is no argument.  Instead of burning (even taken as a metaphor) Christian literature, study at the feet of Christ and invite Him to be your teacher.  This is also an appropriate reminder for us Christians.  

Sample Excerpts    

In my recent reading of the Talmud, I found several nuggets of treasure for stimulating reflection.  The following are some of those excerpts which show some of the wisdom to be gleaned from this ancient text.  You’ll note a couple of key features: 1.) for pedagogical and taxonomical purposes, they express categories of virtue in groups of four; 2.) they combine rhetorical expression with wisdom and desire for piety.  Let me encourage you to reflect on these, particularly noting where these reflect biblical wisdom, and/or spiritual experience.  

Communion with God as Paradise

"The Talmud states that, 'Four men entered paradise—these are there names:--Ben Azai, Ben Zoma, Acher, and Rabbi Akiva” (hagigah, fol. 14, col. 2).  'Maimonides … teaches that the Paradise or garden here is … the retreat of profound philosophic meditation.  These five … [reflections] were: 1.) To know that there is a God; 2.) to ignore every other beside Him; 3.) to feel His unity; 4.) to love His person; and 5.) to stand in awe of His Majesty (Vad Hachaz, chap. 4, sec. 19).  Deep thought in these matters was spoken of by the Rabbis as promenading in the garden” ( _ Hebraic Literature_).

Note: In this respect, I think we (Christians) can all identify with Maimonides on the splendor of meditation on God.  It must be remembered, though, that one can have an existential religious experience, be able to produce architectonic theological formulations, bask in the joys of profound philosophical meditation, yet still fail to know Christ savingly.  In this regard, this should be a warning to us all.

Characters of Men Reflected in Attitudes about Possessions (From Nedarin, fol. 64, col. 2.)

      

      “Four things mark the characters of men:--He who says what is mine is mine, and what is thine   is thine, is, according to some, a moderate man, but, according to others, a child of Sodom; he who says what is mine is thine, and what is thine is mine, is an ignorant man; he who says what is mine is thine and what is thy own is also thine, is a pious man; he who says mine and thine are both my own, is a wicked man.”

Note: I recently used this in a Facebook post to make a point rhetorically.  I posted the above but added the line, “For this, I'll probably get audited to prove what is mine is actually thine.”

Characters of Men Reflected by their Passions (Avoth, chap. 5, sec. 16.)

     

      "There are four kinds of men, according to their degrees of passionateness:--He who is easily provoked and as readily pacified, and who loses more than he gains; he whom it is difficult to rouse and as difficult to appease, and who gains more than he loses; he who is not readily provoked, but easily pacified, who is a pious man; he who is easily provoked and with difficulty appeased, who is a wicked man."

    

     Characters of Men Reflected in their Generosity (Ibid., chap. 5, sec. 19 )

     "There are four classes of men who give alms, and they are thus distinguished:--He who is willing to give, but unwilling that others should do so, he has an evil eye toward others; he who wishes others to give, but does not do so himself, he has an evil eye toward himself; he who gives, and induces others to give, he is pious; he who gives not, nor wishes others to give he is wicked."

     Characters Of Men Reflected in their Learning (Avoth, chap 5, sec. 19)

     

     "There are four marks by which one disciple differs from another:--One learns and does not teach, one teaches and does not learn, one learns and teaches, and one neither learns nor teaches."

      Characters of Men Reflected in their Teleology (Avoth d'Rab Nathan, chap. 29)

"Four things, if kept in view and gravely pondered over, deter from sin:--That a man consider whence he cometh, whither he goeth, who the judge will be, and what the future will bring to pass."

BibleWorks in the Real, Modern World: 4 Examples of how BW9 is Essential to the Modern Minister

Recently in a FaceBook group dedicated to the study of the original language Bible, a professor friend in Southern Ca. posted an image of Codex Alexandrinus from the British Library so that we could examine the nomina sacra (“sacred names” abbreviations in ancient texts).  I was sitting in my backyard in Ark., while another participant engaged in doctoral work at the University of Birmingham, was at home in England. While commenting on the lunar sigma (ancient form of the Greek letter sigma), I was suddenly struck with the novelty of the situation.  I remarked, “What a special time in the history of the church when men can sit in different states and continents and discuss orthographic issues related to the ancient witnesses, while simultaneously viewing those witnesses in their leisure and via their mobile phones.”  Indeed we live in a special time in the history of the church when technology has made it possible to engage in biblical studies in a way that previously would have been the stuff of science fiction.

Along these lines, I am reminded of a quote from Luther in the introduction of the Hebrew grammar I use.  It reads,

Though the faith and the Gospel may be proclaimed by simple preachers without the languages, such preaching is flat and tame, men grow at last wearied and disgusted and it falls to the ground. But when the preacher is versed in the languages, his discourse has freshness and force, the whole of Scripture is treated, and faith finds itself constantly renewed by a continual variety of words and works.

It is a sin and shame not to know our own book or to understand the speech and words of our God; it is a still greater sin and loss that we do not study languages, especially in these days when God is offering and giving us men and books and every facility and inducement to this study, and desires his Bible to be an open book (A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew, p. 12).

           

Keep in mind these words from Luther are ca. 500 years old.  Surely the culpability of ministers in the present day is even greater when so many sophisticated tools are available to us.  How great must be the urgency for us—His Gospel witnesses—not to be content with the novelty of what God has given us.  Rather, we must employ these new tools, in these last days, to press home the truth of God’s Word in the expansion of His Kingdom.  BibleWorks 9 is the most sophisticated, powerful, versatile tool available to the modern minister in his Kingdom expanding work.   I’ve been using BibleWorks for over 15 years.  Below I will highlight some of the key ways it helps me and why it should be the primary tool for the modern day Gospel minister.

1.)   BibleWorks for the Church Planter.  When in church planter mode, I do not have time to read materials not directly related to my preaching/teaching.  This means no luxuriating in commentaries or the kinds of books included in a lot of other software programs.  While planting the current church where I am the Pastor-Teacher, I worked a secular job 32 hours a week while preaching/teaching 2-4 times per week.  This is why BibleWorks is indispensable.  First, its sophisticated original language tools allow(ed) me to develop expository sermons in a fraction of the time required if using any other source(s).  Additionally, the church planter must be mobile.  His office may be the local library, coffee shop, his living room or wherever a quiet place may be found.  Because church planting is like building a plane mid-flight, I have sometimes taught/preached impromptu messages from my BibleWorks equipped laptop, examining various translations, grammatical forms, original language texts, alt+tabbing back and forth from my sermon notes on the fly.  Full time pastors able to spend 40 hours a week of study in their offices may have the luxury to use traditional tools or other software, but bi-vocational church planter-expositors in the modern world likely do not. 

2.)   BibleWorks for the Counselor.  A component of our church’s discipleship philosophy includes intensive discipleship, i.e. nouthetic counseling.  In fact, the most personally traumatic counseling case I have had showed up half way through week 1 as a full time pastor at our present church.  BibleWorks was an indispensable tool during the difficult weeks/months following, and continues to be indispensable in my counseling and training work now. 

In just a few seconds, during a counseling appointment or in the middle of a midweek lesson, when a parishioner asks me an impromptu question (on Wednesday evenings I have my computer on a specially designed stand built into my pulpit; sometimes even on Sunday evenings), I can do a quick structural or textual analysis of any passage drawing on both my favorite translations, as well as original language manuscripts, including the Masoretic Text (hereafter MT), LXX, Vulgate, Peshitta, UBS, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, etc. 

For example, last night while teaching on bibliology, I suddenly remembered a point I like to make from Psalm 1.  I typed in the reference and invited the congregation to turn there.  In the MT, my eye goes straight to the Masoretic accents (included in the more recent editions of BibleWorks).  I instantly see the placement of the rebia over the term translated “the man” (הָאִ֗ישׁ), which identifies the first division of the verse, as well as the placement of the oleh weyored, which shows me that the principle division is over the word translated “wicked” (NASB).  Understanding this division and the purpose of the accent impacts my understanding of the nature of what is generally understood to be a progression of sin.  I also quickly notice that the second two lines are in parallel but are inverse to the first line.  This shows me that the Masoretes ascribed as much weight to the second two “movements” of verse 1 as to the first suggesting this is not as much about progression as most tend to think.  Rather, it appears the Masoretes viewed the second two movements epexegetically, i.e. as explanations. 

Also, observation of the conditional clause opening verse two quickly reminds me of the apparent antidote serving as a preventive to worldliness.  As a pastoral counselor, this is, after all, what I want to get at.  BibleWorks allows me to make these sorts of observations at a glance.  I can choose to explain or keep private the technical data as appropriate.

3.)   BibleWorks for the Pastor-Teacher.  I am a pastor-teacher, and that means that one of my key responsibilities is preaching.  On Sunday mornings, I preach from the NT, Sunday evenings I preach from the OT.  On Wednesday evenings, as noted, I do counseling training or teach on various theological or apologetic issues.  In short, every ecclesiastical, theological, apologetic, etc. issue is before me.  In most of these cases, the issue ultimately gets back to the text.  I prepare every sermon/lecture/lesson using BibleWorks, Microsoft Word, and various other tools as helpful.

I have stated for years that at any time, any place I can prepare an original expository sermon from any text, or address any theological issue provided I have my BibleWorks equipped laptop.  You may have been expecting me to say Logos, because of its vast library.  Unfortunately, however, I don’t have the luxury of time to read non-essential material [see note below].  What I can do, though, is make a couple of quick copy-paste motions and produce a quick masoretic accent diagram, as in the case of Psalm 1 I referenced above.  Or, if dealing with a NT passage, I can usually produce a quick sentence-flow diagram such as the following from Eph 1:3:

Greek NT

(1:3) Euvloghto.j o` qeo.j kai. path.r

tou/ kuri,ou h`mw/n = VIhsou/ Cristou/(

                  o` euvlogh,saj h`ma/j                            

evn pa,sh| euvlogi,a|                  

                                             pneumatikh/|

evn toi/j evpourani,oij

evn Cristw/|(

Modern Hebrew NT

aWh %WrB' 

ybia ~yhil{a/h' 

                                                 x:yviM'h; [:WvyE WnynEdoa]

Wnt'ao %r:Be rv,a]            

   AnA[m. ymeV.mi

       vp,N<h; tK;r>Bi-lk'B.

                                                                            x;yviM'B;

Latin Vulgate

1:3 benedictus Deus et Pater

                           Domini nostri = Iesu Christi

         qui benedixit nos

         in omni benedictione

spiritali

         in caelestibus

         in Christo

In addition to Greek, I often diagram the text in Hebrew, Aramaic/Syriac, because doing so allows me to get a feel for the Semitic character of the writer’s thinking and/or text [note: pasting in the various foreign language fonts into this post caused some alignment issues above].  I want to see literary structures, words, forms, grammatical/syntactical constructions, etc. that may parallel OT passages.  I often diagram the passage in Latin, because doing so aids me in getting a feel for how the Latin fathers and important theologians of the past understood and formulated their theology.  I don’t spend a lot of time on this since I’m not typically doing serious research in the course of preaching, but  because of the capabilities of BibleWorks, these activities happen in a matter of a couple of minutes. 

4.)   BibleWorks for the Teacher/Professor. Over the past 15+ years I have been privileged to teach the Bible in 5 languages in multicultural environments.  These have ranged from theological Latin emphasizing the Vulgate with urban Korean Jr. High students, English Bible with African-American intercity high schoolers, Biblical Hebrew with lay people in an institute environment, and advanced Hebrew reading & biblical Aramaic with post-graduate seminary students, etc.  It’s not hard to imagine why BibleWorks is the go to software for these kinds of activities. 

BibleWorks has grammars, lexicons, and other resources for research languages, but also includes searchable Korean, Chinese, and other Bibles.  I can quickly put together quizzes/exams for any of the languages that I know or with which I have a basic familiarity.  This is very important for a Bible/language professor because development of quiz and lecture material is a never ending process, and one that must be done quickly and efficiently.

Currently I teach seminary level Hebrew, Greek, and exegesis (both OT/NT divisions).  BibleWorks is unquestionably the greatest tool I have for doing this work, and here’s why.  BW9 has tools for every phase of instruction for my Greek and Hebrew exegesis courses.  Those familiar with seminary training know how helpful this is.  During exegesis courses, the typical curriculum requires students to produce an exegetical paper in steps.  BibleWorks really seems as though it was designed with this activity in mind.

For example, when I teach Greek diagramming, I can directly project (or print and hand out) the relevant sections of Leedy’s diagrams on a screen and walk the students through examples, sometimes straight from their chosen passages.  When in the OT, teaching diagrammatical analysis based on the Masoretic accents is simple, with the use of BibleWorks and a projector.  As I noted above, there are also the necessary lexicons, theological dictionaries, concordances, grammar books, etc. for all three biblical languages, so I can easily employ or refer the students to the relevant materials.  Unfortunately there are not yet many Latin tools available, but perhaps this will come.

More recently, though, there is a significant development that takes instruction related to text-critical analysis to a whole new level.  Various universities, libraries, and museums have been digitizing their ancient artifacts and documents, including biblical manuscripts, and making them available to the public. As a result, this semester I was able to give interactive lectures on early New Testament texts using P46 (ancient papyrus document containing the oldest extant copy of Ephesians) as a test case via the University of Michigan's P46 page, and another website dedicated to ancient biblical manuscripts.

Using BW9, I was then able to project Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, and others on a screen and walk students through the process of textual criticism.  This new development, especially the inclusion of some of the most important ancient manuscripts in BW9, is a revolution in biblical studies. This will aid in what some have called the "democratization" of textual criticism, which is absolutely phenomenal.  For years, my students were unable to do a real text-critical paper because they simply did not have access to ancient manuscripts. Now they can, however, and my entire course is being revamped in light of this revolution.

By including ancient manuscripts in their software, BibleWorks has made possible the Biblical Studies equivalent of the medical student moving from an anatomy textbook, to dissecting the cadaver.  Ask the student with the knife if she thinks this is a big deal.  Ironically, the student now has something even superior to access to the actual manuscripts.  Previously, a scholar had to travel across the world to gain access to a given text where he would potentially strain his eyes to examine it.  Now, however, we have high definition images of manuscripts on our computers, and BW9 allows us to magnify, sharpen, color, etc. these texts without physically touching them.   This is a tremendous aid to those of us who have ruined our eyes through too much gazing at manuscripts.  In fact, I’m wearing an eye patch as I type this review, but able to utilize the manuscripts thanks to the text magnification and sharpening features in BW9. 

A simple illustration comes to mind taken from the first time I projected Sinaiticus on a screen in class.  Working through the translation of Eph. 6 with the students, we immediately noticed in verse 1 that Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, BYZ all read “in the Lord,” as does NASB and ESV, but Vaticanus does not—it has a deletion of the nu as well.  Interestingly, our UBS texts put “in the Lord” in brackets.  A student immediately alerted me to the interesting fact that the textual apparatus in our UBS texts gave the rating of “C” for the reading “in the Lord” despite the strong witnesses for it, which means that “the Committee had difficulty in deciding which variant to place in the text.”  This was surprising to us and the class then enjoyed a profitable time talking through text-critical principles.  

Conclusion

I am a church planter, a pastor-teacher (expositor), a nouthetic counselor, sometimes apologist, and a multidisciplinary seminary professor.  At maximal pace, I preach/teach 5-9 times per week in addition to my pastoral responsibilities.  Like other ministers, I entered the ministry to change the World for the glory of God.   Without question, in the real, modern World, BibleWorks 9 is the single greatest tool I have for doing this.  

Note: I have not tried Logos.... [original noted has been edited]

An Afternoon With Dr. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Dr. Rosaria Butterfield was in Little Rock yesterday to do an interview on the subject of her blockbuster book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, at Family Life Today, the radio ministry of Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine.  Due to the graciousness of a special friend (Stephen Bean), and the FL staff, Janet and I were invited to sit in.  We have greatly anticipated this interview for a couple of months and were not disappointed.  In fact, all present were riveted by what is surely one of the most important/pivotal interviews yet to come from FLT.  I made a comment to this effect to one of the studio engineers—he agreed that it was “certainly in the top group.”

In the introduction, Bob Lepine stated that Butterfield’s book was the most important book he’s read this year; I have stated several times that it was likely the most important autobiography I have read (perhaps due to its relevance), and certainly the best of the last 50 books I have read.  Point being: everyone needs to read her book, listen to her Patrick Henry interview, read the various articles available by/on her, peruse her website, and then listen to the FLT broadcast scheduled to be aired over 3 days in September (2013). 

For almost 2 ½ hours, the half dozen of us present were virtually mesmerized as Dr. Butterfield shared a testimony that desperately needs to be heard by us all.  It was so rich that it’s going to take me a few days to process it.  Fortunately, the FLT staff generously sent me home with the entire uncut interview on flash drive.  As an unexpected bonus, they have graciously volunteered to allow me to use the content in my apologetics courses (provided I do not make the audio files available).    

Over a couple of hours, Dr. Butterfield poured out her thoughts on some of the most relevant social/cultural issues facing the contemporary church in America.  I think all of us, including the host and co-host had the sense that we just needed to sit quiet and listen.  Point being, it would be impossible for me to try and summarize the interview except to say that it follows the themes of her book, though explores select, crucial questions in more detail.   I think we all felt that the interview really should be given more than a three day slot, though that’s likely unpractical.

As I mentioned, I don’t think I can adequately summarize the interview, but I took notes and will provide a couple of thoughts that I highlighted.    

1.)  Rosaria Butterfield is brilliant, though humble and self-deprecating, a comprehensive worldview thinker, fiery, and will never fit into a nice, comfortable evangelical box.  E.g. in her presence, I suspect the typical evangelical will always feel challenged, though in a healthy, refreshing way.  At least this is my experience. 

2.)  I was impressed with the reality that Rosaria Butterfield is a special trophy of God’s grace, raised up for a special time and place in the history of the church (perhaps a kind of 21^st century American Esther).  I am excited to see how she will be used of God in the years to come.  She currently has a very busy schedule.  E.g. she’ll be giving an open lecture to the Family Research Council June 12^th, something in regards to which she has asked us to pray, and by extension, I am asking you to pray.  She needs to be heard, and she deserves our support.

3.)  In my view, this interview, and Dr. Butterfield’s larger testimony, is pivotal for understanding the socio-sexual dynamics of homosexuality in our culture. If you don’t care to understand this, I doubt you’re interested in meeting the culture where it is with real answers, which leads to the next point.

4.)  The following is the take home point I want to leave with anyone reading this post.  Prior to coming to faith, Dr. Rosaria Champagne’s key problem with Christianity was Christians, whose response seemed to always be that “Jesus is the answer, without bothering to hear what some of my questions might be.”  Her conclusion was that Christians were dangerous, anti-intellectual, and Christianity was a “Strange mixture of patriarchy and superstition.”  She explained that as an intellectual, scholar, and professor, “... one of my jobs was to be on a war against stupid.”  This resulted in her being at war against Christianity, and this continued until she “Met people who could talk openly and honestly about sexuality and not fall down dead in the process.”  For her, these people arrived in the persons of Pastor Ken and Mrs. Floy Smith, who “genuinely became my friends.”  She explains that Pastor Smith’s “gentle authority allowed me to open up.”  In the end, this gentle, strong (and perhaps daring) pastor and his wife led her to faith in Christ.  From this, Butterfield explains a key lesson for Christians: “Hospitality is the God ordained path to evangelism.  Your home is a way of escape for somebody.” However, she cautions, “Hospitality does not mean fellowship, but going and getting the stranger from the gate.”  Pastor Ken “didn’t attempt to bring me to the church; he brought the church to me.”  “He made the long journey to me, and then made the long journey back [with me] to Christ.”  It was somewhere in this loving hospitality that she repented and came to a realization: “I realized this in my repentance, ‘Jesus, I was persecuting you the whole time.’” 

5.)  Much to my delight, Dr. Butterfield has tentatively agreed to do a Skype/Facetime interview for my next apologetics course, likely at BMATS (Conway campus), provided we can get the dates/times worked out.  If you're interested in seminary training designed to prepare you for ministry in the 21st century, be sure to check out our catalog and/or call the Dean, or email me.  Hopefully we can schedule this for next Spring (2014) or the following Spring (2015).  

Links: 

           i. Here’s a link to some of the notes I made while reading her book.  They need to be updated and edited, so please excuse any formatting issues: http://metataphysika.xanga.com/771966404/trainwreck-conversion

ii. Here’s a link to Rosaria Butterfield’s website: http://rosariabutterfield.com