Letters from
22 to 29 August 2004
If you'd like to
write a letter of your own, click here.
Greek, Latin,
and Hebrew: in response to our letter last week
I
AM A SEMINARIAN at the Church Divinity School of
the Pacific, an Episcopal seminary in Berkeley, California.
In order to meet the requirements for the Master of Divinity
degree, I am required to study only one semester of either
Greek or Hebrew. After one semester of Greek, I came to the
conclusion that one semester's worth of Greek was next to useless.
I have now completed
five semesters of Greek and recently decided to add another year to
my studies in order to work toward a concurrent MA in Biblical Languages.
I will start the study of Hebrew in a couple of weeks.
Sadly, I think,
the knowledge of biblical languages, or even of biblical studies in
general, is not appreciated by some clergy. I have been advised by
more than one Episcopal priest that taking anything more than an introductory
course to the Old and New Testaments would be a complete waste of my
time. I have not found this to be the case at all, but, of course,
your mileage may vary.
Darren Miner
Episcopal Church of St John the Evangelist
San Francisco, California, USA
23 August 2004
I
LEARNED LATIN AT SCHOOL, New Testament Greek in
my 40s, and intended to learn Hebrew as soon as I retired at
60. Alas busyness has stopped me so far, though I have the
study materials, but I intend to succeed before my 60s are
over. Along life's way I've also learned other languages (European
and Austronesian) and have been enriched by each experience.
Monolingualism is a terrible affliction, especially to those
who don't know they have it! Loved your point
about Biblical literalists who know the scriptures only in their own
language.
Vivienne Hayward
Anglican (of course)
Darwin, AUSTRALIA
vihayward@bigppond.com
23 August 2004
I
STUDIED NEW TESTAMENT GREEK FOR TWO YEARS and am
grateful that I did. Although I am far from fluent, almost
40 years later I still have enough Greek to be able to use
the analytical lexicon and, with the help of an interlinear
translation, can look at which words coincide with the English
translation. I have a fantasy that I will learn Hebrew when
I retire -- perhaps there is a good teaching program for my
computer? It's unlikely but, with God, anything is possible.
[The Right Reverend]
Ann Tottenham
Diocese of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
27 August 2004
I'M
JUST BEGINNING MY SENIOR YEAR at General Theological
Seminary, and I have completed three semesters of Greek. It's
too soon to know if it will be a help for the long run, but
at this point I am very glad that I took Greek and I wish that
I had time to take Hebrew as well, but in three years there
is just too much to get in. The experience of wrestling with
scripture in Greek really made me stop and think in a whole
new way about what was being said and why, and to look at different
translations more critically. I hope that I will have the discipline
to keep working with the Greek once I'm finished here.
I'm a bit of
an academic geek, and I loved the 'puzzle solving' aspect of studying
Greek as well. I think I had an advantage because I understand how
grammar works (being old enough that grammar was still taught when
I was in school, and having had four years of Latin). For some of my
classmates who had no real grasp of grammar (English or other) the
work was much harder. I think that limits the number of people who
will take the time to try Greek or Hebrew in an era where it is not
widely required.
Thanks for asking
this question! I did my own informal survey before I started seminary,
among priests I know. About half said that taking Greek or Hebrew was
the best thing they did, and the other half said it was a waste of
time. I'll be curious to see if your results mirror that.
Kris Lewis
New York, New York, USA
kristi.lewis@verizon.net
23 August 2004
THE
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE ARE INSPIRED by the Holy Ghost
-- their translations, not necessarily so. Translations are
good for instruction and self-edification but have a very limited
value as for doctrine and the study of theology. If the knowledge
of Greek, Latin and Hebrew are lost or even restricted to a
few, and if we begin to depend more and more on mere translations
for studying and preaching, only fundamentalism will thrive,
and most fundamentalists won't even realise how fundamentalist
they are.
Jose O Avila
St Paul's Cathedral (Anglican), São Paulo, SP Brazil
Ipameri, State of Goiás, BRAZIL
joseavil@ig.com.br
28 August 2004
I
BELIEVE THAT NT GREEK (AS A MINIMUM) should be a
must for all theological students, but more importantly it
should be something that every Anglican priest should use every
time they open the Holy Scriptures. No translation can give
us the subtle meaning behind the original word. For example
the understanding that our word 'apostle' comes from the Greek
'to send out' and 'disciple' comes from the Latin and is 'someone
who is under the discipline of a teacher/master', in other
words a learner; leads us to understand the movement in our
Liturgy from the liturgy of the Word to the dismissal. At the
beginning of mass we are disciples (we sit at the Master's
feet -- the liturgy of the Word), and at the end of mass we
become apostles: 'Go in peace to love and serve the Lord' (From
the two Australian Prayer Books). We are sent out to be God's
people in the world.
I don't have
Hebrew, but hope to remedy that situation soon. I am doing an MA (Theol)
through a university run by another (very large) Christian denomination
and they do not require either NT Greek or Hebrew in their Biblical
subjects. Both are offered but not essential!
Any serious
student of the Holy Scriptures must have as many tools in his/her 'kit'
as possible. A priest without NT Greek is like a carpenter without
hammer.
Fr Paul Connors
(Vicar of Christ Church Cathedral, Ballarat and Vicar General of the Diocese of Ballarat
Christ Church Cathedral, Ballarat
Ballarat, Victoria, AUSTRALIA
paulwc@netconnect.com.au
29 August 2004
WHEN
I WENT TO SEMINARY, I KNEW after a fashion German
and Latin, but no Greek or Hebrew. I was blessed with three
good teachers who were able to give me real fluency in reading
NT Greek and the ability to grope my way through OT passages
in Hebrew. This has been of incalculable benefit to me and
(I've been told) to my congregations. Basic understanding of
both Biblical languages was possible with just two year-long
courses.
The ability
to read the scriptures with ease in the original languages probably
isn't essential. But I think knowing enough to be able to follow commentary
based on the original languages is almost essential. Otherwise one
is at the mercy of authors. Not every commentator is Raymond Brown!
Richard W. Greene
Holy Trinity, Geneseo, Illinois
Princeton, Illinois, USA
richardgreene@insightbb.com
23 August 2004
I
HAVE TAKEN A SEMESTER EACH of Hebrew and Greek as
part of my studies toward the M.Div degree at Duke Divinity
School. After much blood, sweat, and tears -- learning a new
language in middle age is not easy--I am nowhere close to competent
in either language. Still, I'd recommend that anyone who ever
intends to interpret the scriptures to anyone else via preaching
and/or Bible study spend some time learning at least one biblical
language, if for no other reason than to have some first hand
experience of the limitations of translation.
Maggie Silton
St Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
23 August 2004
WHILE
I SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED TO ADMIT IT, I am one of
those priests who has not studied studied Latin, Greek, or
Hebrew. I did have a fair amount of French but, unfortunately,
most of that has left me.
I do wish, from
time to time, that I could read the original languages of Holy Scripture
(do any seminaries teach Aramaic?) but I doubt that will ever come
to pass. With the help of excellent commentaries, etc. and a mind willing
to learn, nuances of meaning and, very importantly, the cultural context
and assumptions of ancient languages are accessible to all of us.
I was blessed
to have a professor of New Testament who insisted that the contents
of Holy Scripture were available to everyone without a knowledge of
the languages in which they were written. Were it not so, we would
all be immeasurably poorer. But, I do thank God for those persons who
are ready and willing to give their lives to such study. Without them,
we would all be immeasurably poorer.
The Reverend
Carlton Kelley
Non-parochial at the moment
Richmond, Indiana, USA
Frcarlton2@aol.com
23 August 2004
IN
1960 I BEGAN TO STUDY FOR A BD at King's College
London. In my first term I was given a Hebrew Bible by the
British and Foreign Bible Society, as were all my fellow students
on the Honours course. Forty four years later I'm still reading
it (slowly!) every day in our morning prayers as I follow the
english text read by my wife. Four years later at my ordination
in Rochester Cathedral, the Diocese presented all of us newly
ordained deacons copies of the Greek New Testament. Again this
is the greek text I read each morning in our prayers. My whole
ministry has been immeasurably enriched by these two books,
and I regularly come across new perspectives in the course
of Bible reading in Hebrew and Greek ( I'm not happy with the
Aramaic in Daniel!). These books have been with me in my prayers
and my preaching for forty years and I'm still just beginning
to appreciate what Bishop Westcott was talking about. Anyone
who attempts to read the Bible in translation only, and to
lose the richness of the original languages is bound to be
at a loss, like someone trying to read a book with permanently
frosted glasses. To have to write sermons on that basis is
really to deprive your hearers of what they have a right to
hear. They deserve a preacher who has made an attempt to come
to scripture as it was written by those inspired by the Holy
Spirit.
The Very Reverend
Keith Johnson
St Andrew's Church
Caxton, Cambridgeshire, ENGLAND
keith1412@hotmail.com
23 August 2004
I
FEEL FORTUNATE THAT I WAS REQUIRED to study
some Hebrew and Greek in seminary. I wish I'd had more,
but, for many of the reasons you cited in your article,
I did not. While I cannot read biblical texts fluently
in their original languages, I can intelligently use a
lexicon and follow a commentary based on them. Such exposure
as I did have to these ancient tongues makes me realize
that there is no such thing as "the Bible" in
English. Any translation is to some degree a compromise and
an interpretation.
As for Latin,
I never studied it formally, but a master's degree in music history
enabled me to pick up more than a fair amount of liturgical Latin,
which I have been able to correlate with what knowledge I have of Hebrew,
Greek, English, and some Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.
Had I more leisure
time, I would like to study Russian and Arabic (a cognate of Hebrew).
The Asian languages, I'm afraid, are for Eternity!
The Reverend
Daniel Martins
St John the Evangelist
Stockton, California, USA
frdanmartins@sbcglobal.net
23 August 2004
JUST
WANTING TO ANSWER YOUR NON-SCIENTIFIC SURVEY on
the joys of studying the biblical languages. One caveat: your
question seems geared to clergy. I, too, am in the Blessed
order of Laity, but I too have learned Latin and Greek: Latin
in graduate school (where BF Westcott was among the people
I studied); Greek after I turned 40, because I promised myself
I would, and because I once wept (like Petrarch) when I came
across, in a library, a Greek text I could not read. And because
the Greek script is beautiful.
I have learned
a lot from my Greek studies, and from the various reading groups I've
been in. Working through the text in the original language is a great
discipline against a tendency to skim, skip, and scatter texts. It
has increased both my admiration for good translators and my awareness
of the limits not only of any translation but of all translations.
Reading Greek has deepened my knowledge and love of Scripture, and
has helped me listen more carefully to other sides of our various church
dialogues -- I have learned to 'attend.' And the sheer objective difficulty
of the task has been a balm to me in emotionally troubled times, calming
my heart by focusing my mind.
So I agree
with you that something precious is being lost with the decrease in
study of the ancient languages, not only for clergy, but for laity
as well. Where else will we encounter what J. B. Phillips called the
'Ring of Truth'?
Donna Wessel
Walker
St Andrew's Church, Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
23 August 2004
I
STUDIED FRENCH IN HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. I now
wish I had studied German. But I did also study Hebrew in college,
and I loved it! I love the look and sounds of the language.
Additionally, as a left-hander, I enjoy being able to write
right to left. My seminary (Nashotah House, c. 1981, the
good old days at that place with Michael Ramsey, John Ruef,
Jim Griffiss, Louis Weil, Bill Petersen, and Joe Hunt) required
Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek. By the way, the women in
my class aced the men when it came to languages, and virtually
everything else! I am weekly glad I had both. I can't say I
read fluently, but I am able to read it out loud and to do
the research that helps greatly in sermon preparation and Bible
study. Some exposure to Hebrew and Greek should still be required
for ordination to the priesthood and the diaconate. Nothing
helps us understand the culture of the Bible like hearing,
speaking and writing the languages. I did not study Latin,
but wish I had. Now my 15-year-old son who desires to be an
ancient history scholar is studying Latin and I'm proud of
him.
The Very Reverend
Tom Luck
St Paul's Cathedral
Syracuse, New York, USA
gtluck@saintpaulscathedral.org
23 August 2004
[Read
more letters on Greek, Latin, and Hebrew on page 2]
Time to legitimise
a cyber-communion?
The per capita
income of Newport Beach is US$63,015 and the per capita income
of Luweero is variously estimated at US$300 to US$800
I ASSUME THE CALIFORNIA CHURCHES that want to affiliate with the Diocese
of Luweero will be paying their (hefty) mission shares to the Diocese of
Luweero rather than the Diocese of Los Angeles in the future. Whatever
the theological objections to these churches virtual move to Uganda, it
makes good economic sense. The Anglican Church in Uganda has something
American consumers want, viz. affiliation with conservative dioceses and
oversight by conservative bishops.
The affiliation
of these rich California parishes with the Diocese of Luweero is a
mutually beneficial arrangement: the Church in Uganda gets the money
it needs and conservative American Episcopalians get the theology they
want. The Anglican Communion historically has been committed to geographically
defined jurisdictions but, arguably, it may time to modify that arrangement.
Anglican churches have historically been organized as geographical
parishes but that arrangement is flexible: we recognize that some Anglicans
will prefer to affiliate with congregations outside of the geographical
parish in which the live. Parishes were organized on geographical lines
because, until recently, no other arrangement was feasible: there is
no theological reason for operating this way. Now that most people
drive to church, they have a wider range of options -- and that is
surely a good thing. It is now feasible to loosen up on the traditional
arrangement of geographical dioceses also.
Most Anglicans
attend their parish churches and likely the overwhelming majority of
congregations would choose remain affiliated with their geographical
dioceses. But a minority of parishes are not comfortable with the theology
or policies of their geographical dioceses or, more broadly, with the
Episcopal Church in the USA. I don't see why they shouldn't have the
option of affiliating with dioceses that they find more congenial elsewhere.
Let's cut the
rhetoric about obedience and authority, tradition, legality and church
order. The bottom line is that those who object to conservative congregations
affiliating with more congenial African dioceses are motivated by the
belief that conservative views on sexuality and other hot issues are
unacceptable. Their project is to do everything they can to stop people
from holding these views or, at least, to marginalize people who hold
them. They can't do anything about conservative African Anglicans because
the Africans aren't in their jurisdiction -- and it would look really
bad if they cut off aid. But they can exert authority over conservatives
in their dioceses using their legal entitlement to church property
as a lever. Locked into dioceses in ECUSA pressure can be exerted on
conservative congregations: their members can be bullied and manipulated
and their clergy can be marginalized and blocked from professional
advancement.
H. E. Baber
University of San Diego
San Diego, California, USA
baber@sandiego.edu
24 August 2004
Or not time for
a cyber-communion?
THIS IS TO BRING TO YOUR NOTICE some
of my findings as a tourist since my travelling the African and European continents. It is to my greatest dismay that
there is no Anglican church in Guinea Bissau or Cape Verde. That makes
me to wonder if the Anglican communion is sleeping -- or they are tired
of expansion? In
Guinea Bissau, it is the Roman Catholic denomination and Pentecostal
churches.
Therefore, I
am pleading and begging you to come to this poor country with speed,
as the greater number of visitors are purely Anglican, and, with them,
I believe an Anglican church could come to stay in Guinea Bissau.
Please, I am
proud of my church, the Anglican denomination in general, and believe
you will not disappoint your fellow Anglicans in this poor country.
Thanking you
in anticipation, while waiting for response.
Yours Faithfully,
Edwin Godfrey
Okoroma
Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina Lagos, Nigeria
Lagos, NIGERIA
edwingodfrey26@hotmail.com, okoroma2002@yahoo.com
26 August 2004
Prayer and sport
I AM ABOUT TO GO AND ADDRESS a school assembly of some 500 teenage
girls and have been looking for a suitable prayer to use with an Olympic Games theme.
It seems there is precious little in the way of prayer material to
do with sport.
I wonder if
there might be an article on this issue, which, in this country
at least, leaves God a poor second. I would be very interested in having
some ideas of how others pray on this theme.
The Reverend
Frank Nelson
St James Anglican Church
Lower Hutt, NEW ZEALAND
thevicar@paradise.net.nz
25 August 2004
From a 'non-practising'
Roman Catholic
GREETINGS AND GOD'S BLESSING to you all. I recently discovered
this web site as I continue my daily struggle of lost faith.
Like many, I
feel Rome's failings too numerous to list. As a youngster I had to
learn the Mass in Latin. The Vulgate version in English was the bible
used. Today's chaotic clergy know so little, one hopes for a miracle.
The question of fundamentalists and literal King James adherence only
serves to
plant the seed of inquisitional and mendacious mentality.
Some day I hope
to convert to Anglicanism, but this takes time and courage. Keep well,
write when you can.
John W. Maher
Non-practicing ex Roman catholic
Conroe, Texas, USA
oldfiddler@ev1.net
25 August 2004
Just whose BCP
is it?
TSK, TSK, TSK! DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED in accuracy, or otherwise,
of your comments on the BCP story this week. Having followed the link and read the article,
I discovered that the concern mentioned was raised by one Dr MacCarthy,
Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin.
Being half English
and half Irish myself (my own maiden name was McCarthy) I find both
sides of my identity annoyed by your coverage. The Erse in me is indignant
at your inability to discern the difference between English and Irish.
The Anglo-Saxon aspect is peeved at snide editorial comments by someone
who has failed to read the article with any degree of care. Please
return to your usual standards! Incidentally, saying 'Book of Common
Prayer' in the UK usually implies the 1662 version if not qualified,
despite both the original 1549 publication and the 2004 edition! Perhaps
the USA ia unaware of the half millennium of use of the term over here?
Kathhy Wilson
Holy Trinity, Long Itchington
Long Itchington, Warwickshire, UNITED KINGDOM
24 August 2004
Indeed,
in our brief commentary in the News Centre, we
muddled the English, Irish, Church Times, and Prayer
Book Society players in this mini-drama. Apologies.
Earlier letters
We launched our 'Letters to
AO' section on 11 May 2003. All of our letters are in our
archives.
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