My ??? is why did you learn?

[anderpow]

Why did you learn Hebrew or Greek? What made you want to learn either language and drove you to stick with it this may have been ask before,
But I myself am hopefully about to start mounces book on Greek, My drive is that i want to be able to read God's word in it's original language.
What drove you and keeps you going? Thx:idea:

[themuzicman]

I studied because I heard a lot of greek scholars saying how this word means that and that word means this, and I realized that there just isn't a 1-1 translation for every word, but that the translator has to make decisions for me, if I'm only going to read the english version.

Now, the translator STILL makes that decision, but I can get in and understand the nuance and reason for that decision, and get a better understanding of any passage that may come into question regarding its original meaning.

However, greek/hebrew alone is a bit dangerous, under the rule of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." You need to take hermeneutics, historical theology, biblical theology, and systematic theology (etc.) to provide you with a broad context of understanding scripture and how the church has read scripture in the past to get the best view of how a passage is best understood.

Michael

[xkim]

I would suggest getting into the original texts while learning, instead of going straight through the book beforehand. I started doing bible studies with the original text while I was going through Mounce, and found that it really helped, both in terms of making the learning "stick," and providing motivation to learn more. Of course, you want to acknowledge the limits of such study, and will want to consult the better commentaries before trusting your results (even advanced students do that!). Also, you might want to start out with Johannine literature, which is in general easier greek.

[nomad7674]

What drove you and keeps you going? Thx

Two reasons for me:

1. It counted toward my college language credit to take Koine Greek (though it meant taking 2 years instead of 1 year of a modern language)

2. It was important to me to be able to read and hear the Bible in something close to what Jesus may have spoken. The closer we are to his actual words, the closer we are to hearing his voice.

Honestly, I have not kept up with it as much as I should have since college, but I keep an interlinear and a lexicon nearby for my personal study, so it has been VERY useful even so.